the week, and parcelling out every hour of the day for one idleness or another, - for doing nothing, or something worse than nothing; and that with so much ingenuity, as scarce to leave a minute upon their hands to reproach them. Though we all complain of the shortness of life, yet how many people seem quite overstocked with the days and hours of it, and are continually sending out into the highways and streets of the city for guests to come in and take it off their hands. If some of the more distressful objects of this kind were to sit down, and write a bill of their time, though partial as that of the unjust steward, when they found in reality that the whole sum of it, for many years, amounted to little more than this, that they rose up to eat,to drink, to play, to play, — and had laid down again, merely because they were fit for nothing else:

when they looked back and beheld this fair space, capable of such heavenly improvements,

all scrawled over and defaced with a succession of so many unmeaning ciphers, good GOD!-how would they be ashamed and confounded at the account!

With what reflections will they be able to support themselves in the decline of a life so

miserably cast away, should it happen, as it sometimes does,- that they have stood idle even unto the eleventh hour? We have not always power, and are not always in a temper, to impose upon ourselves. When the edge

of appetite is worn down, and the spirits of youthful days are cooled, which hurried us on in a circle of pleasure and impertinence, — then reason and reflection will have the weight which they deserve ;- afflictions, or the bed of sickness, will supply the place of conscience; and if they should fail, old age will overtake us at last, and show us the past pursuits of life, and force us to look upon them in their true point of view. If there is anything more to cast a cloud upon so melancholy a prospect as this shows us, it is surely the difficulty and hazard of having all the work of the day to perform in the last hour; - of making an atonement to GOD, when we have no sacrifice to offer him, but the dregs and infirmities of those days, when we could have no pleasure in them.

How far GOD may be pleased to accept such late and imperfect services, is beyond the intention of this discourse. — Whatever stress some may lay upon it, - a deathbed repentance

is but a weak and slender plank to trust our all upon. Such as it is; to that, and GOD'S infinite mercies, we commit them, who will not employ that time and opportunity he has given to provide a better security.

That we may all make a right use of the time allotted us, GOD grant through the merits of his Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

SERMON XXXVIII

ON ENTHUSIASM

For without me, ye can do nothing. - ST. JOHN xv. 5.

Overse, having told his disciples,

UR Saviour, in the former part of the

That

he was the vine, and that they were only branches; intimating, in what a degree their good fruits, as well as the success of all their endeavours, were to depend upon his communications with them ;-he closes the illustration with the inference from it, in the words of the text, For without me, ye can do nothing. - In the 11th chapter to the Romans, where the manner is explained in which a christian stands by faith, - there is a like illustration made use of, and probably with an eye to this, where St. Paul instructs us, that a good man stands as the branch of a wild olive does, when it is grafted into a good olive-tree; and that is, it flourishes not through its own virtue, but in virtue of the root, and such a root as is naturally not its own.

It is very remarkable in that passage, that the apostle calls a bad man a wild olivetree; not barely a branch (as in the other case), but a tree, which, having a root of its own, supports itself, and stands in its own strength, and brings forth its own fruit. - And so does every bad man in respect of the wild and sour fruit of a vicious and corrupt heart. -According to the resemblance, if the apostle intended it, — he is a tree, has a root of his own, — and fruitfulness, such as it is, with a power to bring it forth without help. But in respect of religion, and the moral improvements of virtue and goodness, the apostle calls us, and reason tells us, we are no more than a branch; and all our fruitfulness, and all our support, — depend so much upon the influence and communications of GOD, — that without him we can do nothing,— as our Saviour declares in the text. There is scarce any point in our religion wherein men have run into such violent extremes as in the senses given to this, and such-like declarations in Scripture, - — of our sufficiency being of God;

some understanding them so, as to leave no meaning at all in them; others, - too much : -the one interpreting the gifts and influences