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or honours, or pleasures, for which every nerve is strained, every effort employed, and every hardship braved and mastered, and for which land and sea are all put in motion-but which are destined soon to vanish away, like a dream, into nothing? But religion bath "promise both of the life which now is, and also of that which is to come." Oh! what an inheritance will not she bring at last-valuable as the soul, and unfading as eternity-spotless holiness, immortal dignity, and inconceivable bliss! Why, then, will ye refuse to "be zealous" here, and in the business of your souls, even "the one thing needful," to engage heart, feelings, and hands! "Awake, thou that sleepest : arise from the dead, and Christ will give thee light and life."

4. Life is short, and the opportunities of grace uncertain. Be up, therefore, my friends, and doing. Your journey towards the heavenly Canaan set about instantly, and in good earnest. Commence to climb

the arduous ascent of "Zion's holy hill," amid all "the fiery darts of the wicked," ever "trimming your lamps, girding your loins, and going forward to meet your Lord!" Cease not in your vigilance, nor relax in your laborious energies, till after you have surmounted all the heights and dangers of this world's wilderness, its cares and crosses, its afflictions and temptations-the glittering turrets of the New Jerusalem shall burst upon your enraptured eyes-till the helmets of your spiritual warfare are exchanged for diadems of glory-your shields for the robe of the Saviour's righteousness, and your swords for harps of

praise in the mansions of bliss-till the earth beneath. give way to the paradise above, and time itself shall be swallowed up in eternity! Even now are we within one step of "the judgment seat of Christ." Only the precarious breath of our nostrils intervenes between us and its overwhelming solemnities. The hand of time which marks the duration of our existence here, must very soon with some, and will ere long with all, of us, have run the circle of the dial.-Nay more: the day of grace may be shorter, if you grieve the Holy Spirit, than even the brief and uncertain day of your lives here. If you harden your hearts to the truth, and your ears to every pious admonition-if you are not active and zealous in "working the works which you have been sent into the world to do," God may give you over to a reprobate spirit, to the dominion of sin and the bondage of the flesh, so that all our heavenderived principles being darkened, enslaved, and blighted though the glory of the Gospel pass continually before us, you will neither have eyes to see, nor ears to hear, nor hearts to feel, its sacred and transporting influences. Then, just as at the hour of final dissolution, and while we may enjoy health of body, and every temporal blessing, will this terrible denunciation be true as to the condition of our souls, through eternal ages—“he that is unjust shall be unjust still, and he which is filthy shall be filthy still, and he that is righteous shall be righteous still, and he that is holy shall be holy still."

God grant that these considerations may induce you to "wait upon the Lord" with more fidelity than here

tofore, to "renew" your endeavours to love and serve him aright" to mount up with wings as eagles-to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint." For, "behold," saith Christ, "I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be."

SERMON XVIII.

ON THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE.

BY THE

REV. GEORGE WEIR,

MINISTER OF HUMBIE.

PSALMS XC. 5, 6.

"Thou carriest them away as with a flood: they are as a

sleep in the morning they are like grass which groweth

:

up. In the morning it flourisheth aud groweth up: in the evening it is cut down and withereth."

It is highly becoming that our thoughts should at times be directed to the consideration of the solemn and affecting truths which, in the page of Scripture, are urged upon our attention—that the world in which

we live is a world of change, and that the period of man's continuance in it is uncertain and fleeting. So ready, indeed, are we to form an erroneous estimate of life, and so much inclined to flatter ourselves with the hope that we may be privileged to reach the goal of a protracted old age, before our candlestick be removed out of its place, and we be gathered to sleep with our fathers, that such a subject can never be ill-timed, seeing that, when duly considered, there is none that is calculated to exercise a more salutary influence over us. Heedless, as we often are, of the things of eternity, we need to be frequently reminded that the season of probation is limited in its duration, and that upon the right improvement of it, our everlasting happiness is suspended. The tide of time is rolling onwards_in its course, and the little bark of man is carried away by the stream, as it floats upon the bosom of the waters. Hours, and days, and years are meting out the term of human existence. "Is there not an appointed time for man upon the earth? Are not his days also like the days of an hireling? As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and as an hireling looketh for the reward of his work, so man is hurried onwards to his lonely dwelling-place, and the mourners are seen in the streets." High, then, as man may be: though crowned with glory and honour, and empowered with the exercise of dominion over the living creatures by which he is surrounded, yet all this glory, and all this power with which he is invested, are unstable in their nature : and he himself is carried away as with a flood: he is as a sleep: he is like grass which groweth up: in the

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