remission, even on a dying bed, must not for one moment be made a plea for the sinner continuing in the indulgence of his vices. It must not be permitted to induce him to maintain a careless spirit-to strive to heal the hurt of his soul, by whispering a delusive peace. He must not wrest Scripture to his destruction; or suppose that, because the thief upon Calvary was a recipient of pardoning mercy, he may delay to turn to God; that because the sinner's salvation is wholly by "grace through faith, without the deeds of the law," he may give full scope to his evil propensities. Let him remember, that "now is the accepted time," and that this very hour of culpable indifference may be the last of his earthly existence; that whatever his hand findeth to do, he is to do it with all his might; for that there may be but one step between him and death; and that when the night cometh, when his feet shall "stumble upon the dark mountains," it will be impossible for him to turn to the Lord, for he that is unjust must then be unjust still, and he that is filthy must then be filthy still. Let him think of the uncertainty of life; of the certainty of death; of time how short; of eternity how long; of the grave how sure; of judgment how awful; and as he values the salvation of a soul that can never perish, but must

than that we must die; and nothing more uncertain than when that event shall occur! The Bible warns us, in language the most forcible, not to delay imploring forgiveness from the Lord.

Endeavour not then, I beseech you, amidst the glare, and vanity, and folly of the world, to exclude all solemn thoughts of your mortality, or to hide from yourselves the fact, that whatever be your path in life, it inevitably leads down to the dreary chambers of the sepulchre; but live in the habitual recollection that "death hath passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Suppose not that this habitual recollection will unfit you for the necessary occupations and enjoyments of life. It will unfit you for no legitimate occupation--for no blameless enjoyment. It will quicken your sense of duty-your conviction of responsibility. It will render you more earnest in prayermore anxious to obtain an interest in the merits of the Redeemer, that he may remember you in his heavenly kingdom. It will teach you to view terrestrial objects in their true and proper colours. It will point out to you the utter folly of centring the affections in a world which must soon be relinquished. It will stimulate you in your Christian course, and quicken your aspirations after those joys unspeakable, which are prepared at God's right-hand for evermore. For rest as

sured of this great truth, that "he is not blessed who is enabled to forget that there will be a day to him the last, but he who lives as if every day were that last-the man who can commit himself to God's gracious keeping, when he lies down to rest, unconcerned whether he awake in this world or the next."

Happy, indeed, was the dying malefactor in the assurance vouchsafed, that he should be that very day with his Saviour in paradise. Well might he exclaim, that the day of one's death is better than the day of his birth. A brand mercifully plucked from the burning-a monument of free, unmerited, sovereign grace; he would not have exchanged the agonies of the cross for the dignity of Pilate, for the government of Herod, for all the honours of imperial Rome. Happy under life's bitterest trials is that Christian believer, who has fled to Christ, the only refuge of the sinner, and in him, like the malefactor before us, found" a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest;"-the believer, whose

transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, unto whom the Lord doth not impute iniquity;" inconceivably happy as he approaches that solemn hour, which is for ever to close his eyes upon a false and fleeting world! For him to be "absent from the body is to be present with the Lord" for ever; it is to cast aside the fetters which

chained him to the earth, for the liberty of the ransomed company, who walk the streets of the new Jerusalem; and who can doubt but in that company the malefactor before us occupies a conspicuous place? It is to change "the earthly house" of a perishing tabernacle for "a building of God, an house not made with hands eternal in the heavens." When our last hour shall arrive, and shivering we shall " start and shrink to pass death's narrow sea," when heart shall faint and flesh shall fail, and speedily that hour must come, may the last faltering accents heard from our dying lips be, "Lord Jesus, remember me;" and may each one of us, justified, and sanctified, and washed, and saved, through unmerited our Lord and Saviour, when he cometh in the might of his heavenly kingdom.

grace and mercy, be acknowledged by

SERMON XXII.

ANGELS REJOICING OVER THE REPENTANT SINNER.

LUKE XV. 10.

"There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."

THERE are few passages which more powerfully illustrate the importance and necessity of repentance, than that which is to form the subject of our present meditation, and it is difficult to conceive how that importance and necessity could have been more strikingly enforced, than by the representation of the host of heaven, feeling deeply interested in an occurrence, which too often calls forth ridicule upon earth.

The whole chapter before us, indeed, is eminently calculated to arrest the attention, and to affect the heart. It sets forth the nature of that