spring up at length, and the fruit will be according to the seed: "For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." (2.) Weigh in this balance your time and opportu nities of grace and salvation, and you will find them very weighty. Precious time and seasons of grace, Sabbaths, communions, prayers, sermons, and the like, are by many now-a-days made light of: but the day is coming, when one of these will be reckoned more valuable than a thousand worlds, by those who now have the least value for them. When they are gone for ever, and the loss cannot be retrieved, those will see the worth of them, who will not now see it..

What

USE III, and last.-Be warned and stirred up to "flee from the wrath to come." Mind eternity, and closely ply the work of your salvation. are you doing, while you are not so doing? Is heaven a fable, or hell a mere scare-crow? must we live eternally, and will we be at no more pains to escape everlasting misery? will faint wishes take the kingdom of heaven by force? and will such drowsy endeavours as most men satisfy themselves with, be accounted fleeing from the wrath to come? Ye who have already fled to Christ, up and be doing: ye have begun the work; go on, loiter not, but "work out your salvation with fear and trembling:" "fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Remember ye are not yet ascended into heaven; ye are but in your middle state. The " everlasting arms" have drawn you out of the gulph of wrath ye were plunged into in your natural state;

they are still underneath you, that ye can never fall down into it again: nevertheless, ye have not yet got up to the top of the rock: the deep below you is frightful; look at it, and hasten your ascent. Ye who are yet in your natural state, lift up your eyes, and take a view of the eternal state. Arise, ye profane persons, ye ignorant ones, ye formal hypocrites, strangers to the power of godliness, "flee from the wrath to come." Let not the young adventure to delay a moment longer, nor the old put off this work any more: "To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts; lest he swear in his wrath that ye shall never enter into his rest." It is no time to linger in a state of sin, as in Sodom, when fire and brimstone are coming down on it from the Lord. Take warning in time. They who are in hell are not troubled with such warnings, but are enraged against themselves that they slighted the warning when they had it.

Consider, I pray you, (1.) How uneasy it is to lie one whole night on a soft bed in perfect health, when one very fain would have a sleep, but cannot get it, sleep being departed from him! How often will one in that case wish for rest! how full of tossings to and fro! But, ah! how dreadful must it then be to lie in sorrow, wrapt up in scorching flames through long eternity, in that place where they have no rest day nor night! night! (2.) How terrible would it be to live under the violent pains of the cholic or gravel for forty or sixty years together, without any intermission! Yet that is but a very small thing in comparison of eternal separation from God, the worm that never dieth, and the fire that is never quenched.

(3.) Eternity is an awful thought: O long, long, endless eternity! But will not every moment in eternity of woe seem a month, and every hour a year, in that most wretched and desperate condition? Hence ever and ever, as it were a double eternity. The sick man in the night, tossing to and fro on his bed, says, 'It will never be day:' complains that his pain ever continues; never, never abates. Are these petty time-eternities, which men form to themselves in their own imaginations, so very grievous? Alas! then, how grievous, how utterly insupportable, must real eternity of woe, and all manner of miseries be! Lastly, There will be space enough there to reflect on all the ills of one's heart and life, which one cannot get time to think of now: and to see that all that was said of the impenitent sinner's hazard was true, and that the half was not told. There will be

space enough in eternity to carry on delayed repentance, to rue one's follies when it is too late; and, in a state past remedy, to speak forth these fruitless wishes- O that I had never been born! that the womb had been my grave, and I had never seen the sun! O that I had taken warning in time, and fled from this wrath, while the door of mercy was standing open to me! O that I had never heard the gospel, that I had lived in some corner of the world, where a Saviour and the great salvation were not once named !' But all in vain. What is done cannot be undone: the opportunity is lost, and can never be retrieved: time is gone, and cannot be recalled. Wherefore, improve time while you have it; and do not wilfully ruin yourselves by stopping your ear to the gospel call.

And now, if ye would be saved from the wrath to come, and never go into this place of torment, take no rest in your natural state; believe the sinfulness and misery of it, and labour to get out of it quickly, fleeing unto Jesus Christ by faith. Sin in you is the seed of hell; and, if the guilt and reigning power of it be not removed in time, they will bring you to the second death in eternity. There is no way to get them removed but by receiving Christ, as he is offered in the gospel, for justification and sanctification: and he is now offered to you with all his salvation: "And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.-And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." Jesus Christ is the Mediator of peace, and the Fountain of holiness: he it is who delivereth us from the wrath to come. "There is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." And the terrors of hell, as well as the joys of heaven, are set before you, to stir you up to a cordial receiving of him with all his salvation; and to determine you unto the way of faith and holiness, in which alone you can escape the everlasting fire. May the Lord himself make them effectual to that end!

Thus far of man's eternal state; the which, because it is eternal, admits no succeeding one for ever.

FINIS.