for every minute, as it flies away, narrows the limits of your pleasures, and brings you nearer to death and judgment. Mourn, for if that judgment overtake you in your present state, you are

indeed without hope.

Yet, though you have thus misused the talents committed to your charge, though you have rebelled against your Creator, and despised his commandments, yet is this hand still stretched out to save you. He has graciously vouchsafed to lengthen out your days, to give you this present time, that you may forsake your evil ways, and repent, and return to him. Embrace then, I beseech you, the offers of pardon which he has made. You have seen the shortness and uncertainty of life, delay not for a moment your acceptance of his mercies. Hesitate not in your decision, there can surely be no deliberation be tween Jehovah and Belial, no choice between heaven and hell. Flee from the haunts of crime and the society of the wicked. Confess humbly your past sins to God, be strong in your faith in his promises, trust in your Redeemer's atonement for pardon, and implore the aid of his Holy Spirit to guide and direct your path. Thus fortified, thus upheld, your future course will be far more peaceful and more pleasing, than the past has proved. You will be free from the remorse and anguish which dog the steps of guilt, and hea

venly hope and ardour will be there instead. May God bless this feeble attempt to rouse you from your supineness, to a sense of your 'danger;

may he fill your hearts with love and gratitude,

that ye may so profit by the time still left, so by his blessing employ aright the year now opening before you, that when another shall succeed, (if your lives be spared till then) ye too may have cause to rejoice.

SERMON XI.

HEBREWS IX, 13, 14.

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

It seems to have been a principal object with St. Paul, in composing this most beautiful and impressive epistle, to demonstrate the superiority of the Christian over the Jewish dispensation. And this he does without, in any respect, detracting from the importance justly due to this latter ordinance of the Almighty. It was indeed a wonderful economy, and as the sequel proved, admirably calculated to fulfil the purposes for which it was designed. For however men may sometimes, in their flippancy and folly, amuse themselves with endeavouring to cast ridicule upon its many solemnities, and stigmatize its various

services and ceremonies as unmeaning and absurd, certain it is, that during a succession of many ages, it separated the nation who obeyed its laws from the Gentile idolators who lived around them; and preserved amongst them, in spite of their oft repeated offences and wanderings, a knowledge of the only true and holy God, whilst every other people on the face of the globe, were polluted with the foulest rites of pagan worship. It is a fact, I repeat, which calls forth our deepest admiration of the infinite wisdom by which it was brought to pass, that the Jew, far inferior as he was to many of the nations which surrounded him in all the arts and elegancies of life, as well as in the refinements of literature and science, was yet, in that knowledge which alone is truly valuable, the knowledge of the statutes and judgments of God, immeasurably superior to the wisest philosophers that ever flourished in the schools of Greece or Rome. Far be it then from the Christian's spirit, to think lightly of the covenant of Judah; or to attempt, in these later days, to cast one speck of darkness upon the disk of that glorious sun, which shone so brightly and so steadily in an almost universal gloom, that pillar of fire from heaven, which guided the sons of Israel amid all their wanderings.

It is only when compared with our own more blessed dispensation, that the religion of the Jews

is found to be imperfect and unsatisfactory. And this too, when we attempt to consider it as a scheme complete in itself, and not merely as the type and forerunner of a better covenant. In this latter light, and in this only, can we appreciate the harmony which exists between the Jewish and Christian dispensations. For much, which when regarded by itself seems strange and unaccountable, becomes clear and convincing, when viewed as a significant emblem of a fuller and more perfect institution. No part of the Levitical ritual seems, at first sight, more extraordinary than its numerous sacrifices. Almost every impurity which was contracted, was to be removed by the blood of some selected animal. It may not be improper here, to explain briefly the nature of that purification, which the victims demanded by the laws of Moses effected in those who offered them. And this the rather, because strange mistakes have sometimes been made, from not considering the real character and tendency of the various oblations, which formed so material a part of the Jewish worship.

St. Paul in the 4th verse of the 10th chapter of this epistle to the Hebrews, declares, "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." Now Moses commands in the 16th chapter of Leviticus and the 30th verse, that "on that day" namely the day of expi