lion, much sin and murmuring, would have been spared; and they would have entered into rest with minds unembittered by the recollection of mercies abused, and God provoked. If we look inward to the experience of our own hearts-if we recollect the testimony of years past and gone, they will surely speak of long and guilty inattention to the duty of serving God who hath called us to his kingdom and glory. There are periods in the life of man, resembling those eminences over which the traveller occasionally crosses, and whence, as he looks backward, he may see the deviations he has made from the true path, the mazes in which he has been bewildered, and the worthless pursuits in which he has wasted the unreturning hours allotted for his journey. At one of those periods have we arrived.1 Another year has been taken away from our little date of life; and as respects all the purposes which the unsearchable compassions of God in Christ Jesus meant it to subserve, is now with those beyond the flood. Another year has opened upon us, Having received help of God, we continue unto this day. The fig-tree has been unfruitful, and its barrenness has provoked the terrible sentence, "Cut it down; why cumbereth it the

'Preached at the commencement of the year 1825.

ground?" But the voice of our irresistible Advocate has prevailed for a longer probation. We are here this day, in the journey of life, as Israel in the march between Mizpeh and Shen, between time and eternity, assembled, as I hope, under the influence of that grateful love which the preserver of our lives well demands, to raise an altar in our inmost hearts, which may be inscribed with the impressive title, "Ebenezer ; hitherto the Lord hath helped us." Look back then upon that year through which Almighty power and goodness have conducted your footsteps; and what do you behold! O, how many offers of love have you heard, which, unworthy as were the ambassadors by whom they were proclaimed, would have become the power of God to your salvation, if ye had opened your hearts to admit them! How many opportunities have you enjoyed of studying the scriptures, and "receiving with meekness that engrafted word which was able to save your souls!" How many have been the gracious calls of that Saviour, who would have convinced you of sin,— in the laver of whose blood ye might have been cleansed from the stain of guilt-by the work of whose intercession your cause might have been maintained at the right hand of God-and from whose exhaustless fulness ye might have received strength to produce fruit, as the branch

derives nurture from the vine!

How many

seasons of prayer have passed away, in which ye might have offered the sacrifice of the heart, and wrestled with God successfully for blessings infinite in value, and eternal in duration, instead of using the cold and formal language of a mere lip-service, and external homage! How many opportunities have ye possessed of walking with God, like Enoch, and of illustrating the holy character of his religion so unequivocally, that men must have taken knowledge of you that you had been with Jesus! Such, my brethren, might have been the record of the year through which we have passed. What is the reality? Let the conscience of every one who hears me, let my own conscience, as indeed and in truth it does, return a righteous verdict, and say, while it covers us with shame and confusion of face, "Guilty, guilty." And what should be the cry uttered by every one of us, in arrest of judgment, and in bar of condemnation? God be merciful to me a sinner!

What then remains? Redeem the time. How may this be done? Shall we recall the months, and weeks, and days, of the departed year? As well might we stand upon the sea shore, and cry to the advancing ocean, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther," with hope that it would obey the bidding, as bring back one moment

of the past.-No, my brethren: our only practicable mode of redeeming time is by an increasing zeal and diligence to do the work of God, and to attain by his grace a meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light. Forgetting the things that are behind, save only to contrast them with what they might have been, to be humbled by the comparison, and to value still more the atoning mercy of the cross, by which the sin we have incurred may be pardoned, let us reach forth toward those things that are before, "not counting ourselves to have attained, or to be already perfect ;" Rather let us add to our faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity that we may henceforth neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Why are ye slack to go to possess the land? Suppose ye, that Satan, the implacable enemy of man ever intermits his designs, or rests from his plots and snares of death? The great lights of heaven pursue not their courses with a motion more unwearied, or more silent, than are his attempts to ruin men. Does God the father slacken in the exercises of his goodness? Every mercy we receive-nay, every breath we draw,

declares the contrary. Does the neglected Saviour cease from his work and labour of love? Witness the ordinances of his house, the calls of his solicitude, the gospel of his grace, and all the astonishing process of his mediatorial work. Does the Holy Spirit swerve from his compassionate office? Does he not rather strive and wrestle with us, that, subdued by his energy, and made new creatures in Christ Jesus, we may be prepared to join the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven? Is it then for us, whose souls are kept from the uttermost woes of the second death, and gladdened with the bright hope of everlasting life, by this unwearied exercise of mercy on the part of God-is it for us to rest in sloth and listlessness, short of the blessedness whither the Scriptures direct us? If there were a possibility that sorrow should reach the glorified spirits who have gained the rest of heaven, that sorrow would arise from a recollection of time mispent and lost in earthly vanities, when it might have ministered to the glory of the eternal Trinity, and to their own preeminence among the triumphant armies of God. Why then should we deprive ourselves of the like advantages, and see them hurrying away like the grains of sand in an hour glass, without an endeavour to improve them, until they shall