paper-makers, to avert for a moment the ravages of hunger. Fever being prevalent, many have died, and some persons have been buried without a coffin. From Connamara, the intelligence is most afflicting. Many have died from want of food, and many others are dreadfully affected from eating sea-weed and shell-fish; several have been drowned by permitting the tide to surround them while searching for this species of food."

"I cannot explain to you the dreadful state of this side of the country; men, women, and children dying so fast every day. I saw two dead bodies carried on horses' backs to the grave, without a Christian to accompany one of them."]

SERMON XV.

ROMANS xv. 4.

ἵνα διὰ τῆς ὑπομονῆς καὶ τῆς παρακλήσεως τῶν γραφῶν τὴν ἐλπίδα ἔχωμεν.

"That we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope."

Literally, "That we might have that hope, which is by the patience and consolation of the Scriptures."

HEN once a man knows that he has a soul, and

WHEN

will live for ever, he must either contrive to turn away his thoughts from such things altogether, that is, he must make himself as much like a brute beast as he possibly can, or he must in some way or other maintain within himself the hope of everlasting happiness. For to look forward to endless being in torments is too much for any heart to bear. That thought, whenever it comes strongly across the mind, can only be met by such a feeling as the Prophet Isaiah has described: The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites; who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? We may judge how intolerable the thing itself will be when it comes, by observing how intolerable the thought is beforehand. No man can endure, even in fancy, to dwell long upon everlasting burnings, as his own portion. It must end either in madness, or in repentance, or in entire and wilful hardness of heart.

The last of these three, it is to be feared, is much the most common case. For that sort of forgetfulness into which men lull themselves on purpose, not choosing to meditate at all on the future condition of the wicked, because they do not care to find out how near to it they may be themselves; this state of mind, whether they will believe it or no, is a wilful hardening of the heart, and is fast becoming entire and incurable.

Of this we may judge by what the Apostle St. Paul says concerning the condition of the Gentiles before the coming of our blessed Lord. He says they were, first, having no hope, and then, without God in the world. That is, having lost or never having had any hope which they could depend on, of happiness in a world to come, they gave themselves up to work all uncleanness with greediness, till at last they brought themselves to leave off thinking of God at all.

And yet their temptation to do so was not nearly so strong, in one respect, as that is which wicked Christians bring upon themselves; for they, the wicked heathens, only wanted the hope of eternal happiness to encourage them in the right way. It does not appear that they had any certain knowledge of an eternal misery, into which sin, unrepented of, would cast them hereafter. But this, wicked Christians have, as certainly as they have the words of Jesus Christ, that there is a worm that dieth not, and a fire that shall not be quenched, prepared for the wicked, and those who will not deny themselves. Now if the mere doubting, whether there were such a place as heaven, was so miserable to many heathens, that to get rid of the thought of it they plunged into all sorts of base and abominable pleasures, it is not to

be wondered, if the certainty that there is such a place as hell, should often drive impenitent and obstinate Christians to drown their own misgivings with worse than heathenish wickednesses. Naturally, and of themselves, the terrors of the Lord would make them repent. But if they will not do so, then those terrors only serve to harden them the more, by engaging them deeper and deeper in vice and folly, that if possible they may hide their eyes from them.

Now those who know least among Christians, know what the word 'Hell' means, know what God's purpose is in having them put in mind, from time to time, of eternal, intolerable torments. And surely, if they had the least care for their own souls, they would consider what has now been said, would perceive, and would lay it to heart, that once having been told that there is such a place as hell, they cannot be as if they had never heard of it. They must be either a great deal the better, or a great deal the worse, for what God has told them of His purposes concerning the wicked.

I have said that a great many of the Gentiles found their doubts about eternal life so uncomfortable, that rather than think on them they gave themselves up to all sorts of wicked pleasures. Others there were who could not bear to give up the thought, but not having any clear promise of Almighty God to shew for it, wandered, in their restless imaginations, round and round the world in search of something to confirm it. So impossible is it for men, if they think at all of such things, to be in any way contented without some hope of its being well with them after death.

But, what is very melancholy to think of, there are

a great many Christians indeed, who put themselves of their own accord into the blind and miserable condition from which those heathens, of whom I last spoke, were continually trying to escape. There are thousands and tens of thousands among us, who cannot help thinking at times of the things of the next world, and how it may be between them and their God, and they cannot do, cannot be at all comfortable, any more than those heathens could, without hope. Now if they would take the plain, straightforward way of the Gospel, which is, to repent and turn from their sins, and do works meet for repentance, then they would have hope indeed, such hope as would never make them ashamed. But not having the heart to do this, they have recourse to the saddest and vainest shifts and expedients to keep their hope and their sins together. And in general, I grieve to say, they are but too successful in doing so. Take the worst sinner in the height of his iniquity, and let the thought of sudden death come across him; nay, let some accident happen which shall seem to bring death close to him, the chances are, that in spite of reason and of the Bible, you will find him provided with some excuse, some ground of false hope, some plea why his case need not be looked on as so very much worse than his neighbours'.

This is so constantly the case, that one very seldom meets with an instance of a person condemned to die for the worst offences, without his making the best of his situation, and contriving some vain hope for himself, instead of that only hope which the Gospel can by any means allow him, a hope in true repentance founded upon the merits of Jesus Christ.

From such cases as these we may see how abso