effectual amendment.

And oh that that necessary work may not prove already too late to save the land from famine! Oh that some prevailing prayer, some fast such as God hath chosen might be found out, able, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, to cast out the unclean spirit, which hath entered in and dwelleth in our country! Did we not know that with God all things are possible, many signs in these present times might give us good cause to fear, lest that most incurable of His judgments should be even now coming upon us, which is described in the following verse of Jeremiah: Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush; therefore shall they fall among them that fall; in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith the Lord. I will surely consume them, saith the Lord, there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig-tree, and the leaf shall fade, and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them.

3. Lastly; we have abused the good gifts of God to be an occasion of malice and grudging, of railing and slander, of strife and envying. We have loved. pride better than peace, we have not been contented to be rich, or wise, or knowing, or otherwise prosperous, except we could shew ourselves richer, wiser, more knowing, more prosperous, than our neighbour, and that at his expense. We have thought, many of us, to win and keep a high place in the world's opinion, by pursuing trifling losses and little slights with a great revenge, till we had blown them up with our own breath into an intolerable evil; we have spent the money which God gave us for our families and the poor, in buying means to vex some fellow

Christian; the precious time which should have been employed in working out our salvation, and the precious thoughts which should have been set upon things above, we have thrown away and misspent for ever upon plots of malice, rash judgments, evil-speaking, and all uncharitableness. But let us hearken to the reproof of the Apostle: Whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal? Let us hearken to his counsel also; he is speaking to those Corinthians who were going to law together: Why, saith he, do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? So shall we bring peace to our souls, and a blessing on our ways; so should we do our part towards wiping off the reproach of our country, and staying the sword of the destroying angel, which, for aught we know, may be even now stretched out, to smite her with famine and pestilence, for the pride and maliciousness of her children.

I might mention other crimes, so common at this day, that they might almost be reckoned national sins; as the shameless neglect of the Holy Sacrament, the discontented murmurs of the poor against the rich, the carelessness of the rich about the souls of the poor, but the time would fail me; and methinks that first leaf of the roll of our deadly sins which hath been already unfolded before you, is written full enough, within and without, with lamentation, and mourning, and woe for us: contains enough in it alone to shew how great reason we have to tremble at the denunciation in my text: A fruitful land maketh He barren, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein. Pride, covetousness, extravagance, drunkenness, un

cleanness, maliciousness, for which, if we would escape the arrows of God's wrath now and hereafter, we are bound to humble ourselves day and night before Him, in our own behalf and in behalf of this whole nation; these are the accursed things which must in any wise be put away out of the camp of Israel.

And let no man say, 'It is true, these things are the causes of danger, and if the whole nation would reform I would reform too; but what matters one sinner more or less in bringing down or staying the judgment of heaven upon so large a kingdom as this?' My brethren, one sinner more or less might have made a great difference in the case of Sodom, in the day when God promised to spare it if he found but ten righteous persons there. And how knowest thou, if thy repentance be not just what is wanted to complete the number, for the sake of which God may forbear to send a famine upon this land? Wherefore, if thou wouldst fain escape that which nature above all things fears and loathes; if thou wouldst not be cursed in the city, and cursed in the field, cursed in thy basket and thy store, cursed in the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep: if thou wouldst not be cursed when thou comest in, and cursed when thou goest out, if thou wouldest not have thy little ones to perish upon thy knees with hunger and thirst, and thou thyself left desolate, friendless, and godless, to pass through the land, hardly bestead and hungry, then make haste and turn thee from all those evil ways to which these things are threatened. And then fear not, though dearth or any other judgment come upon the country for its sins, thou wilt be saved from

its worst effects. Food and raiment, as far as is necessary, thou wilt never want, so long as it is good for thee to live, for so much God hath promised to His elect thou wilt be free from the worst of famines, the famine of the Word of the Lord, and if thou suffer with the wicked for a short time in this vale of misery, it is but in order to thy reigning with the righteous in higher glory, when thou shalt come to the mountain of the Lord's House, the Heavenly Jerusalem, where all they shall be admitted to dwell, who have come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

To which blessed estate God of His infinite mercy bring us all, through Jesus Christ.

EASTLEACH,

June 15, 1817.

SERMON X.

ST. LUKE xix. 41, 42.

Καὶ ὡς ἤγγισεν, ἰδὼν τὴν πόλιν, ἔκλαυσεν ἐπ' αὐτῇ, λέγων, Οτι εἰ ἔγνως καὶ σὺ, καί γε ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ σου ταύτῃ, τὰ πρὸς εἰρήνην σου· νῦν δὲ ἐκρύβη ἀπὸ ὀφθαλμῶν σου.

"And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes."

THERE

HERE are few errors more common, or more deadly, than that of imagining that it is in our power to repent whenever we will. 'It is never too late while there is life there is hope.' 'My condition will not be desperate, if I do give way to this one temptation; for I mean to live and repent of it.' Thus the man deceives himself, and the sin is committed without further scruple.

But if this argument was a good one yesterday, it is a good one to-day, and will be so to-morrow; and the temptation will certainly not be less. There is. therefore every chance of the sin being repeated and heightened, and so on even till death come upon us, and cut us off in the midst of good resolutions and bad performances. This is exceedingly natural, and experience too sadly shews that it is exceedingly

common.

Now when we see and feel nothing but mischief flowing from a particular opinion, it is enough to set us upon examining that opinion again, if haply by