both God and the world? If this be the case; if we think that we can love God with half our hearts, and minds, and serve him with half our strength, we are presumptuously aiming at what our Saviour has pronounced to be an impossibility, Religion is every thing, or it is nothing: let us put the momentous question to ourselves, Which of the two do we consider it? And And may God incline our hearts to fix themselves entirely and unchangeably upon his grace and favour, and to choose that good part which no man ever yet repented of having chosen. Arduous, it must be confessed, is the task of maintaining an open and firm adherence to our God in a world which, in one shape or other of its vanities and pomps, is the idol set up by our adversary the devil, to seduce us into the paths of sin and perdition. But help is laid for us on him that is mighty, and if we daily seek that help in a believing application to the throne of his grace, he will direct us by his wisdom, and support us by his mercy, he will deliver our souls from death, and preserve our feet from falling, Let us by prayer maintain a constant guard upon our hearts, that no temptations may seduce us from that glorious Being to whom we have solemnly devoted ourselves; let us renounce all principles and practices irre

concilable with our duty to him, and declare not only with our lips, but in our lives, that "the Lord he is the God, the Lord he is the God."

SERMON XXII.

GENESIS, c. xix. v. 14.

And Lot went out and spake unto his sons-in-law, which married his daughters; and said, Up, get you out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked to his sons-in-law.

Ir is the remark of an eminent divine, that "the first requisite in religion is seriousness;" and yet it is certain that nothing excites less seriousness in the world around us. Awful and momentous as its concerns are, their influence is obstructed by that of objects which apply immediately to the senses. The pleasures or the projects of the passing day absorb and engross every faculty of the mind, every affection of the heart, confine our views to this life and its interests, and at length shut out all thoughts of a world beyond the present, and much more the idea of making preparation for it by repentance and newness of life. The main object therefore of religious ordinances is to coun

teract this aversion of the carnal mind from spiri tual objects, to engage reason, faith, and hope, in combat with sense and appetite, and to awaken a thoughtless and careless generation to serious apprehension and concern for the salvation of their souls, and deliverance from the wrath to come. In the terrible doom of Sodom we have an emblem of that sure and sudden destruction which shall come upon all the workers of iniquity. What the sacred historian records of Lot and his sonsin-law in the text, is applicable to the circumstances of every people to whom the word of God is preached by his authorized and faithful ministers. God" who is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, mercifully warns the wicked and impenitent that a destruction hangs over them more terrible than that of Sodom. The preachers of the gospel set before their hearers life and death, blessing and cursing; as ambassadors for Christ they beseech them with a holy importunity and earnest address, to be reconciled to God; they conjure them to save themselves from that ruin in which they must otherwise be involved, with the corrupt and unbelieving generation among whom they live, to escape for their lives, and not to perish with the ungodly. But what is the fruit of these so

lemn warnings? Some there are who, touched and awakened by the heavenly voice, resolve to renounce the pleasures of sin, "to fly earnestly for refuge and lay hold upon the hope set before them" in the gospel. But the bulk of the people to whom the terms of salvation are announced, receive them in the same manner as the sons-inlaw of Lot received the warning of that pious and zealous man, not only with disregard but with levity. Carnal and unregenerate persons not only make a mock at sin, but they equally deride its threatened punishment. The truth of this representation can be proved by the strongest of all evidence, the immoral and irreligious conduct of those who live within the sound of the gospel. Though the sons-in-law of Lot received his solemn warning as a mockery, we are not warranted to suppose that they were men without religion, for to such characters this righteous and holy man would not have given his daughters in marriage. But they were "lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God," and therefore could not resolve to depart out of Sodom, for "where their treasure was their heart was also." This was the real cause of their postponing the life of their souls to the enjoyment of the "pleasures of sin for a season." Treating the words of their