should be habitual and fixed. This is the steadfastness of faith. This the peace of the full assurance of hope.

But it is chiefly with admonition that our subject addresses us. Like all other men, we, too, are tempted to evil by the false security of delayed retribution. We, too, brethren, in our several places, are likely to go on in our favorite indulgences, blinded to their injurious and mischievous character, because we do not clearly discern their ill consequences. One is sure there is no harm in his amusements; and another none in his idleness; a third finds none in indecent talking or profane wit; a fourth counts his falsehood, and a fifth his fraudulency, and a sixth his impurity, to be safe practices, because as yet they have brought no misery or shame; and who knows that they ever will? In our moments of sober reflection we are amazed at the obstinate infatuation of sin; thus secure, thus self-complacently persisting, when every day brings to light terrible tales of vengeance delayed, and retribution postponed, only to come down on the thoughtless delinquent with the more inevitable ruin; and when, also, though the guilty might escape the righteous judgment of God even till the grave closed upon him, yet the divine government, and all the divine attributes, and the deep misgivings of the human soul, and the warning voice of human nature in all things and all times unite to attest that his doom shall follow him into the unknown future, and inevitable retribution prey upon him in eternity. And yet we go madly on, as if the experiment never had been made; as if nothing beyond the moment had ever been known; as if the apostle had not reminded us that one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day; as if Christ had not warned us that the summons shall come at such an hour as we think not; as if health and sickness, life and death, Providence and the church, were not full of

daily, hourly voices to alarm and dissuade us; as if our eyes had not seen examples of the fulfilment of these divine warnings!

I have seen the young man, in his hot ambition and self-confident strength, give himself up with intemperate zeal to his favorite pursuit, —perhaps study, perhaps business, perhaps pleasure, — refusing the care of his body, and scorning the admonitions of prudence and friendship. The sentence against which they warned him was not executed speedily, and he persevered, till, at length, the day of retribution came, and his abused constitution gave way, and he either walked through life an enfeebled, inefficient, baffled, suffering, disappointed man, or sank into the grave through a premature decay.

I have beheld a young man in all the loveliness of beauty and all the promise of genius, the idol of affectionate friendship, the expectation and reliance of parental love. He allowed himself to taste the cup of pleasure; he accustomed himself to its exhilarating draught; it seemed to him but harmless indulgence, and he smiled at the graver friends who cautioned him against it. He knew that it did him no injury at first, or he should feel it; and, when the injury had actually begun, he had grown incapable of feeling it, and, therefore, still argued that it had not come. And so he was beguiled, till his genius was dimmed, and his beauty grew haggard, and his tastes depraved; and, when the long-delayed sentence was executed against him, it found him a loathsome vagabond in the street, and appointed him his burial from the house of the pauper.

I stood, as a minister of Christ, where I was called to speak the words of his truth and love, at the bedside of a departing fellow-being. I had seen him living as the world lives; content with the measure of goodness that the world

allows; enjoying what the world's wealth can buy; and no one knew that he had sacrificed for it the integrity of his soul; that he had purposely stifled his religious convictions, and devoted himself to sense and Mammon. He lived on in the false security of worldly prosperity. His long-abused conscience had ceased to upbraid him. He had sunk into the deceptive quiet to which custom always leads. Little did he imagine the tenor of the sentence against him, which, after so long delay, his conscience was to utter in the calm hours when he lay waiting for the dying struggle - how it should torture him with the memory of his unfaithfulness, and tear him with agonizing remorse. And then I saw and you that have not seen can feebly imagine them terrible struggles of the spirit in the storm of its selfreproach, which could not look back without shame, nor within without shuddering, nor forward without despair; which could have no mercy on itself, and dared not hope for mercy from God. O, there is nothing in all the calamities of life to compare with the horrors of such a deathbed!

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And yet there may be one spectacle even more deplorable than this—that of the hardened and determined transgressor, who is beyond even the grace of remorse; who cannot, even if he would, feel the burden of his condition; and dies in brutish unconcern, regretting nothing, believing nothing, hoping nothing, fearing nothing; but speedily to awake to the reality of that unutterable judgment, which, because long delayed, he stupidly defied.

And all these, and all such, were beguiled against their reason, against experience, against warning and conscience; yet beguiled by the delusive hope-hoping against hopethat the sentence which was not executed speedily would not be at all.

Let us lay no such corrupting delusion to our souls. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap. Though a sinner do evil a hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God; but it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow, because he feareth not before God."

SERMON XXIV.

THE FACILITIES AND THE HINDERANCES TO RELIGIOUS LIFE ON THE PART OF THE SCHOLAR.*

A

COLOSSIANS III. 23.

WHATSOEVER YE DO, DO IT HEARTILY, AS TO THE LORD, AND NOT

UNTO MEN.

ALTHOUGH this injunction is addressed by the apostle to a particular class of men, it is evidently applicable in its spirit and power to all alike. It asserts the universal rule of religion, repeatedly enforced in the New Testament in various forms of speech,—that, in order to true virtue and divine acceptance, man must act heartily; not grudgingly, not by compulsion, not because he fears punishment; but from the heart, from the right disposition, cheerfully, from principle. The inward impulse is to give its character to the act and the life; and this, in the devout spirit of obedience, from a sense of responsibility to God, in conformity to his will, not as to men, for the sake of their reward or good opinion, from motives of interest, or policy, or human regard alone, but with a religious mind, that refers itself always to something above man and the earth, and acknowl

* Preached in the chapel of the University at the commencement of a collegiate year.