sceptre? A beggar boy might succeed as well as he, in his sordid occupation. But why did he appear meanly occupied, but as I compared his employment with some nobler business that might have occupied him? Go, then, with me to some place of idle concourse, and I will show you many a mind occupied as meanly, compared with its powers, and perhaps with its ultimate destiny, as in the case named. It is more than possible that the youth who is wasting his evenings in noisy laughter and trifling, if not lewd and profane conversation, might soon render himself capable of the noblest excursions of science, and follow Newton in his track among the stars.

Ah! who does not see, that if men had minds only, no conscience, no powers of affection, nor hopes of immortality, the belittling occupations of sin disgrace their intellectual character, and fix reproach upon them. But when we consider man in his nobler parts, capable of loving and honoring his Maker, capable of being employed as angels are, in executing the noblest designs of infinite love, how can we fail to see, in the ordinary enterprises of depraved men, danger that they will let down their nature; danger that they will find, when life is done, that they have degraded their being, as well as lost their souls. Suppose that Newton, after he made his noble excursions in science, could have remembered that he was once a menial, occupied with the merest drudgeries of life-would it not have seemed to him a pity that he had not begun his excursions earlier, and not employed his noble mind in what must have tended to cramp and contract its powers. And should those hereafter become Christians, who now are quite content with the little playthings of time and sense, how would they mourn at the retrospect. And be it otherwise, it alters not the fact, that ungodly men are employed in a manner beneath the dignity of their nature.

5. I remark again, that the pleasures of the wicked are not abiding. What joy they have, and it is far beneath what they might have, is fleeting and transitory. There is no steady light of day shining upon their path; they walk by the glimmerings of a taper, or at the best, by the lightning's glare, or the twinkling of some distant star. If somewhat happy, they often know not why, or if they know why, dare not dwell on the cause of their joy, knowing it to be such that a single hour may make them wretched. Would they tell the reason why they are happy, it would be seen to be merely a reason why they should be afflicted and mourn, and convert their laughter into mourning, and their joy into heaviness. Every object on which their joy depends is perishing-is a dying

and a transitory object. They were not created to be the permanent food of an immortal mind. They answer as the mere playthings of men that have no richer treasures, no "inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, eternal in the heavens." In the dying hour, at the farthest, and often long before, the treasures of the ungodly take to themselves wings, and fly away as an eagle toward heaven. Just when they calculated that their joy would be perfect, it proves a dream. What they grasped at was a mere shadow, and shrunk away from their grasp. Their hope perished, when God took away the soul. To expect permanent bliss, and base the hope of it on that which worms can devour, and thieves break through and steal, is to expect grapes of thorns and figs of thistles; is to sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind; is to pierce ourselves through with many sorrows.

6. The ungodly are conversant only with dangerous pleasures. Their pleasures are constantly the means of their undoing, being guilty and forbidden. That a nature capable of loving his Maker, should fix his supreme attachment elsewhere, is offering God a perpetual insult, and exposing the offender to the indignation and wrath of the holy and jealous Jehovah. The stronger our affections, and of course the higher our pleasure, the more imminent our danger. The best chance of safety consists in not allowing ourselves to be very happy, if our joy is not in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. I know that common opinion, and dangerous as it is common, that men should feel it their duty to be happy, but I see no warrant for it in the Scriptures. If to be very happy we must love idolatrously what God has forbidden us to love, then is nothing plainer than that our guilt must increase with our happiness, and God be the more offended. In such objects, then, if we be asked whether it is our duty to try to be happy, the answer is in the negative. God would see his creatures happy, if they will joy in him, but has said in his word that delight is not seemly for a fool, and has bid the ungodly to be afflicted and mourn. Hence all those amusements where ungodly men find their highest delight, are but cunningly devised means of doing without God, and are dangerous, in proportion as they are fascinating. Nor is it kind to wish them the undisturbed enjoyment of these, high and absorbing idolatries. Were I in India, I would oppose the worship of the pagoda, because there is worshiped in these little sanctuaries, the images which God has forbidden both the making of, and bowing down to; but I would oppose more yet the feasts of Jugernaut, because an artful priesthood has thrown more

fascinations about the sacred car of that idol. At the worship of the latter, an Indian would be the most exhilarated, or if you please, the most happy, but for this very reason the most guilty Then he would devote his whole heart to the false god, and then offend his Maker most. It is thus, precisely, with unregenerate men. There are some of their pleasures which, perhaps, they could be persuaded to abandon, but others they would risk their lives to defend. But the whole are unsafe pleasures, and those the most loved the most dangerous. Let the man sit down thus deliberately, and make out the full catalogue of those objects that hold his heart away from God, placing at the top of that list his highest, dearest idol, where his heart clings with the grasp of death, and he may rest assured that the most beloved object is the most dangerous, and that the residue are dangerous in proportion to the strength of affection. Till we have given God the supreme place in our hearts it is dangerous to love any object, as one the most trifling may become, before we are aware, our supreme idol. How has the game at cards weaned away a man from his family, and become dearer to him than his beloved wife and his flock of children? And the guilty carouse, and the forbidden cup, how have they a thousand times torn asunder every ligature that held the husband and the father to his home, and his fireside? What pleasure, then, is not a dangerous one, if our supreme delight is not in God?

Thus the Christian can look back to the time when his heart went after forbidden pleasures, but when he had no fruit in those things of which he is now ashamed, and the end of which is death. They were neither innocent, nor rational, nor satisfying, nor elevated, nor abiding, nor safe.

How wonderful, that he should have made his escape from such a labyrinth of danger! It will be to the good man a source of wonder for ever, that sin did not prove his ruin. And the grace of God, which snatched him as a brand from the burning, will be in the future world the subject of his elevated and eternal praise.

Having noticed how entirely without any fruit or enjoyment was the good man in his unconverted state, in those things which he once tried to enjoy, we shall

II. View him under the operation of that shame and regret to which his past conduct has subjected him. Unregenerate men have no idea that they are now putting forth those affections and betraying that character that they shall hereafter be ashamed of.

They have usually very high-minded notions of their own demeanor as honest, and upright, and dignified, and above all censure. But this pride is the result of their ignorance of their own hearts, of the law of God, and of that spirit and temper which the gospel requires. The man has only to know himself, to become ashamed. And this would never be but for the agency of the Holy Ghost. He would continue till he dies in all the pride of unbelief, if not enlightened from above. But we have our eye on the man whom it was the Divine purpose to bring to a timely repentance, and to do this would first render him ashamed of the very things which he once sought as his supreme delight.

He is brought to see that God is worthy of his whole heart, and that he has withheld it, and has worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is over all, God blessed for ever. He becomes conscious of a quarrel with his Maker, but for no reason that he dare now assign. Every attribute of his nature is glorious, and every act of his government holy, and just, and good.

And still the sinner has placed his supreme love on some idol, and refused to love and worship his Maker and his Redeemer. Years and years he persevered in this course of downright revolt, breaking every law of his rightful Sovereign, and suffering his heart to be governed in all its affections by some worthless object, that did not deserve his love. And all this time, as he now sees, God was his kind and gracious benefactor. This thought fills him with the deepest shame. As if one should discover, late in life, that some good man, that he had always hated, and ten thousand times abused, privately and publicly, had been his kind and constant benefactor; had fed his family, and provided covertly for all his wants; how covered with shame, in that case, would he be, on discovering that he had his best friend in one that he had ever treated contemptuously, and hated and abused most cordially.

Thus the good man, when he waked to a sense of his condition, was filled with confusion. "Then shalt thou be ashamed," says the prophet, in the name of the Lord," and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done." And the Psalmist says, "Thou makest me to bear the iniquities of my youth." His shame is greatly enhanced by the consideration that he must now be indebted, as he always has been, for all his benefits to one whom he has always expelled from his affections.

He sees, too, that the ground of his preference for idols was a depraved and base heart, that would prefer any thing to God,

would love a stock or a stone more than the infinitely adorable and kind Creator; and in the mean time, would not be convinced that the course he took ruined him, that his misplaced affections polluted and belittled his mind, and that he was ensnared, and impoverished, and destroyed by the works of his own hands. Now it is that the man becomes filled with shame and confusion of face. I proceed,

III. To show that the end of these things would naturally have been, to the now regenerate man, and must be to all men who do not repent, death: the end of these things is death. This will be seen, when we consider, That a course of sin leads to bad society, absorbs precious time, engenders an erroneous creed, benumbs the right affections, nourishes the wicked passions, and provokes the Spirit of

God.

1. A course of sin leads to bad society. If men will be transgressors, they must of necessity associate with men of similar pursuit. The gregarious nature of man prompts him to seek society, and renders him unhappy when alone, or when insulated from his fellows. Hence men that do not love the Lord, must mingle with that portion of the human family that have on the same general character. And those who have gone the greatest lengths in vice, have thus opportunity to approach and pollute all the residue. Suppose, then, that some unrenewed man should determine not to be polluted by those who are worse in temper and habits than himself, how shall he prevent it? Suppose him not profane, how shall he be a social man if he will not associate with the godly, and not come in contact and be injured by those who lift their mouth against the heavens? Suppose him not accustomed to speak lightly of Divine institutions, or of good men, or those measures that promote the prosperity of the Church; still how shall he be social with the ungodly, and not come into constant fellowship with men of this character? Make the attempt to collect a company of sober, serious, thoughtful, ungodly men, and if you do not soon discover that no such society can be formed, then have we very much mstaken the true state of the world. Where will you assemble them? Not at the sanctuary—not at the place of conference and prayer-not by the fireside of the man of God:-there the godly meet. You must keep your serious unregenerate man at home, or you must carry him to the place where sinners love to meet, and then you bring him in contact with profanity, and lewdness, and evil speaking; and, first or last