implanted in thy nature. One way or another, thou must be always employed. Woe to the man who by his own folly is doomed to bear the pains and penalties of idleness. Rest is the void which mind abhors. An idle man is the most miserable of all the creatures of God. He falls upon a thousand schemes to fill up his hours, and rather than want employment, is contented to lie upon the torture of the mind, while the cards are shuffling, or the die is depending. The glory of our nature is founded upon exertions of activity. From the want of them, those in the more affluent stations of life, whose fortune is made at their birth, so often fail in attaining to the higher improvements and honours of their nature. Have you not, on the other hand, seen men, when business roused them from their usual indolence, when great occasions called them forth, discover a spirit to which they were strangers before, and display to the world abilities and virtues which seemed to be born with the occasion? While there are so many splendid objects to allure the mind, why trust your character to be evolved by accident? Why leave your glory in the power of fortune?

This activity is not only the source of our excellence, but also gives rise to our greatest enjoyments. Even the lower class of enjoyments, animal pleasures, are not only consistent with a life of activity, but also derive from it additional sweets. Hours of leisure suppose hours of employment; they alone will relish the feast, who have felt the fatigues of the chase. But mere animal pleasures are not of themselves objects for a wise or a good man. Unless they are under the direction of taste; unless they have the accompaniments of elegance and grace; unless they promote friendship and social joy; unless they come at proper intervals, and have the additional heightening of being a relief from business, they soon pall upon the appetite, and disgust by repetition. Has sensuality a charm when thy friend is in danger, or thy country calls to arms? Who listens to the voice of the viol, when the trumpet sounds the alarm of battle? When the mind is struck with the grand and the sublime of human life, it disdains inferior things, and, kindling with the occasion, rejoices to put forth all its strength. Obstacles in the way only give additional ardour to the pursuit: and the prize appears then the most tempting to the view, when the ascent is arduous, and when the path is marked with

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blood. Hence that life is chosen, where incentives to action abound; hence serious engagements are the preferable objects of pursuit; hence the most animating occasions of life are calls to danger and hardship, not invitations to safety and ease; and hence man himself, in his highest excellence, is found to pine in the lap of repose, and to exult in the midst of alarms that threaten his being. All the faculties of his frame engage him to action: the higher powers of the soul, as well as the softer feelings of the heart; wisdom and magnanimity, as well as pity and tenderness, carry a manifest reference to the arduous career which he has to run, the difficulties with which he is destined to struggle, and the sorrows he is appointed to bear. Happiness to him is an exertion of soul. They know not what they say, who cry out, "Let us build tabernacles of rest." They mistake very much the nature of man, and go in quest of felicity to no purpose, who seek for it in what are called the enjoyments of life; who seek for it in a termination of labour, and a period of repose. It is not in the calm scene; it is in the tempest; it is in the whirlwind; it is in the thunder that this Genius resides. When once you have discovered the bias of the mind; when once you have recognised your path in life; when once you have found out the object of the soul, you will bend to it alone; like an eagle when he has tasted the blood of his prey, who disdains the objects of his former pursuit, and follows on in his path through the heavens.

Thus have I set before you your obligations as men, to make a right use of life, and have shewed you, from the principles of nature alone, without having recourse to Christianity, that the excellency and the happiness of man consists in a virtuous course of action, and in making a proper improvement of time. Let us now, in the second place, take in the considerations suggested by the Christian religion, and see what new obligations arise from it, to urge us to redeem the time.

It is the doctrine of revelation, then, that the present life is a state of probation for the life to come; that we are now training up for an everlasting existence; and that, according to our works here, we shall be judged in a future world. According, therefore, as you now sow, hereafter you shall reap. reap. The time is now passing that decides your fate for ever. The hours are at this instant on the wing, upon which eternity depends. In this view, let me

exhort you to look back upon your past life. Call your former hours to an account. Ask them what report they have carried to Heaven. Is there any thing in your life, to distinguish it from mere existence? Do you discern any thing but shadows in that mirror which remembrance holds up? Is the book of memory one vast blank, or blotted all over? If this be the case, and I am afraid it is the case with a great part of men,-What better are ye than the animals of the field or the forest? Like you they sleep and they wake; like you they eat and they drink; like you they perform the various functions of nature. Alas! my brethren, did Almighty God create you after his own image, that you might sink that image to the resemblance of a beast? For what have you done since you came into being, to distinguish yourselves from the brutes that perish? Have you glorified God in all your actions? Have you made your calling and election sure, by a lively faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, by repentance from dead works, and by universal purity of heart and life? Have you enriched your mind with the treasures of wisdom? Have you adorned your life with the beauties of holiness? Have you laid up many deeds of piety and charity, as a good foundation against the time to come? Unless you have done these things, you have done nothing. You have been blanks in the universe. You are as if you had never been. You have been fast asleep; nor has your sleep been the less sound, that you have dreamed you were awake.

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I now call upon you to arise, or be for ever fallen. is now high time to awake. Almighty God now calls upon you to finish the work which he hath given you to do. Glory, and honour, and immortality, are set before you. Up then and be doing, and the Lord shall be with thee. With such views of your duty, and upon these principles of action, you will never join in the apology which some make for themselves, that the general tenor of their lite is innocent, and that they have at least the negative merit to do no harm. Perhaps this account may be true; but let me ask such persons, have you ever considered the parable of the master who called his servants to account? He delivered talents to each of them, according as he saw fit, with this charge, "Occupy till I come." The servant who received the one talent, was negligent and slothful. He wrapt up his talent in a napkin, and hid it in the earth.

He thought he did well, if he secured the capital till his Lord's return. But the master received the talent with indignation. He cast the unprofitable servant into utter darkness, and condemned him to weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. The poor wretch was neither a thief nor a murderer. He had not wasted his Lord's goods. He had your plea,-he had done no harm. But he was found guilty of idleness and sloth; he received his sentence, and was condemned to punishment. That which is the ground of your security, could not save him from condemnation.

But, in good earnest, do you no harm? Is it no harm to wander from the cradle to the grave, in a labyrinth of amusements, either vain or childish? Is it no harm to waste in dissipation and expensive pleasure, that wealth which might have saved an honest family from beggary and want? Is it no harm to squander in one continued round of vanity and folly, those precious hours on which your future happiness depends? If there be harm in human actions, this is harm. It is a criminal negligence which will turn the scale of your eternal doom.

To you, my younger friends, this duty recommends itself under the most interesting claims. You are now in that period, when time can be improved to the best advantage. With you, every hour of life is precious. The misimprovement of youthful days is more than the loss of time. It were of little consequence to throw away a few days from your life; but along with these, you cut off the substantial improvements, the real joys of maturer age. Figure to yourselves the loss which the year would sustain, if the spring were taken away?-such a loss you sustain. No tears, nor lamentations, nor bitter upbraidings, will ever recal that golden period. The star sets, to rise no more; the flood rolls away, never to return.

Your own experience, my aged brethren, will urge the instant necessity of redeeming the time. Consider the fate that awaits you soon. A few steps will bring you to the threshold of that house which is appointed for all living. Man that is born of a woman, is of few days. He cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down; he flieth as a shadow, and continueth not. By the unalterable law of nature, all things here hasten to an end. An irresistible rapidity hurries every thing to the abyss of eternity;-to that awful abyss, to which all things go, and from which

nothing returns. The great drama of life is perpetually going on. Age succeeds to age, and generation to generation. Not long ago, our fathers trod the path which their fathers had trodden before them; we have come into their room, and now supply their places. In a little time we must resign to another race, who in their turn also shall pass away, and give place to a new generation. The race of men, saith a Jewish writer, is like the leaves of the trees. They come forth in the spring, and clothe the wood with robes of green. In autumn they wither, they fall; the winter wind scatters them on the earth. Another race comes in the season, and clothes the forest again.

Consider the world, my friends, as you saw it at first, and as you see it now. You have marked vicissitude and alteration in all human affairs. You have seen changes in almost every department of life. You have seen new ministers at the court, new judges on the bench, and new priests at the altar of the Lord. You have seen different kings upon the throne. You have seen peace and war, and war and peace again. How many of your equals in age have you survived? How many, younger than you, have you carried to the grave? Year after year hath made a blank in the number of your friends. Your own country hath insensibly become a strange land, and a new world hath risen around you, before you perceived that the old hath passed away. The same fate, that hath taken away your friends, awaits you. Even now the decree is gone forth. The king of terrors hath received his commission, and is now on his way If you have misemployed your time, that talent which God hath put into your hand; if your life is marked with guilt or folly, how will you answer to your own heart at that awful hour? For previous to the general doom, Almighty God hath appointed a day of judgment in the breast of every man. The last hour is ordained to pass sentence on all the rest. your former life will there meet you again. How will you then answer at the bar of your own heart, when the collected crimes of a lengthened life, at one view, shall flashi upon the mind; when the ghosts of your departed hours,. of those hours which you have murdered, shall rise up in terrible array, and look you in the face?-What would you then give for that time which you now throw away? What would the wretch who lies on a bed of angony, ex

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