Are we altogether safe from doing so?

There is a strange and fearful uniformity of character about sin. One generation of men may differ from another in manner of life, in civilization, in learning, in very many points; but as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. All along, age after age, there is the same earthly, wilful temper there, prone to depart from the living God; and accordingly, strange as many of the usages and practices of which we read in the Bible seem to us, whatever we are told of men's conduct, of their way of thinking and acting, shews us to ourselves as if they had lived under the same circumstances as ourselves, and not thousands of years ago, in another quarter of the globe, under a wholly different dispensation of God's will.

Never

As of old, so now, one sin leads to another; and therefore it is that going on in anything which you know to be wrong is so very dangerous. allow yourselves to think lightly of any sin, however slight it may be. There are many sins of which you will be tempted to think lightly, many sins of which the world speaks lightly, and even merrily; but do not you follow a multitude in thus doing evil. God's Word calls them fools who make a mock at sin.d You can never be too careful about the first beginning of sin the first wrong step may be fatal. You never think of grossly breaking God's command

ments; or if the thought of being thieves, or murderers, does enter your hearts, you put it from you with horror. But do you never covet that which is your neighbours? do you never set your heart upon things which God's providence has not given you? are none of your affections inordinate? Do you never pass harsh judgments on your neighbours? never indulge anger and passion, sullenness, and a settled dislike towards those who, you think, have wronged you? In all this you are breaking the law which Christ has given you, you are casting off His authority as your King, you refuse to listen to Him as the great Prophet, you, in fact, say that you have no need of that full and perfect Sacrifice which He, as on this day, offered as the great High-Priest, once for all. You league yourselves with those who nailed Him on His cross. This seems shocking. So also did the priests and scribes think the declaration, that the husbandmen who rendered no fruit should be destroyed, and the vineyard given to others. They said, God forbid! No doubt they felt what they said; but did it do them any good? did they hang back at all the more from their wish to seize upon the Heir and cast Him out of the vineyard, and slay Him? did they act upon their own prayer that God would turn aside such awful consequences? No! they were as Balaam was: he could say, Let me die the death of the

righteous, let my last end be like this! but he loved the wages of unrighteousness too much to seperate from the enemies of God's people; and, prophet as he was, he died the death of a sinner. The vineyard was taken from those who killed the Son of God, it was given to others; and from the day that the preaching of the Apostles first invited a new set of husbandmen into it, it has at times passed from hand to hand, as the great Householder has seen good. Many a church that once flourished as the garden of the Lord, is now a waste howling wilderness. We are now intrusted with the vineyard are we rendering the fruits in their season? If not, if we are deaf to all the calls upon us, if we crucify the Son of God afresh, the vineyard shall be taken from us: others shall render the God's word shall not

fruit which we withhold. return unto him void, but shall prosper in the thing whereto he sent it, whether he will hear, or whether we will forbear.

National sins bring national punishments: Church and people suffer when Church and people have done what they can to reject Christ. But what are the sins of nations and churches? They are the sins of this man and that man, of this woman and that woman, of this child and that child; living

e Numb. xxiii. 10.

f Ibid. xxxi. 8.

g Isaiah lv. 11.

in the same country, members of the same Church, all put together, and yet seen distinct by the eyes of Him who as on this day tasted the sharpness of death for us, and who we believe shall come in glory "to be our Judge.”

SERMON IV.

PREACHED ON THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EASTER, 1839.

2 PETER, ii. 15, 16.

Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbad the madness of the prophet.

The case and character of Balaam were brought before you in the first Lesson of last Sunday afternoon; and we have gone on with his history in the first Lesson of this morning's Service. His name is found in other passages beside that which I have just read to you as the text; and we shall be most likely to judge rightly of this very remarkable and most unhapy man, if we carefully collect and compare the different places in which he is mentioned. I