evanescent boundaries are so finely shaded off, that eyes of flesh and blood cannot discern the all-important lines of demarcation.

It shall be my endeavour, nevertheless, to exhibit to you some leading features, which enable you, may in your several conditions of life, to know and well to mark those paths, which, on the one side of the decisive line, guide our footsteps unto God, or those which, on the other side, lead to the habitations of the dead. But I shall reserve this subject for my next discourse.

Many, however, who are now present, may not hear me again. Let me, then, conclude by exhorting all those who are on system aiming below the mark of the prize of their high calling-who are living to man rather than to God, and measuring their obligations by the general standard;-let me exhort them to offer up their ceaseless prayers to God; that he will enlighten their understanding, and show them the dangers that surround them. Wherever the boundary-line, which separates good from evil, may be traced, those who follow the multitude are not upon the confines, but in the dark interior of that land which knows not God. Let them rise, then, at the call of heaven, above the mists and shades

that hover round them, and survey that scheme of things which faith discloses to the mind.

In the view of this they will perceive, that, even in morals, there are sublimer duties than the children of this world dream of. They will see that virtue itself is but an empty name, unless it has God for its author and its end. Their whole soul will centre in the conviction, that to love and bear true allegiance to his Creator, is man's only wisdom, his happiness, and the perfection of his nature: while to depart in affection from the living God, is the essence of all sin, is the death and misery, the loss and final ruin of the soul.

These persuasions coming with new light and power to the awakened senses, can bring down the lofty looks of the proud and often have they filled that man, who before had boasted of his own righteousness, with mingled surprise and horror-they have made his own darkness visible to him-they have placed the deep delusions of his soul before his eyes, and rendered him a terror to himself—they have shown him that he was living in rebellion against God-that he was trifling with incensed omnipotence-and, still more wonderful, that he was despising and insulting infinite goodness, tenderness, and love.

Second Series.

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When these convictions reach the soul, the same hand that wounds, is still more ready to heal. And while the awakened sinner bewails his past offences-while he is filled with anguish for his own ingratitude, and with amazement at the patience and forbearance of that Heavenly Father who has so long spared him the Gospel gently whispers to the softened soul, that to sincere repentance and true faith nothing is impossible; that if we mourn for our sins, we shall be comforted; that if we believe on the Lord Jesus, we shall be saved; that if we come, with all our guilt and misery, to the blood of atonement, our sins and our iniquities will be remembered no more. Thus, to him that believes, all things become new; the past is now as if it had never been; the future opens a flood of light, and scene of endless glory, to his view; and straight before him runs the path of life, leading to the fulness of joy, and to pleasures at God's right hand for evermore.

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SERMON VI.

1 John, v. 19.

THE WHOLE WORLD LIETH IN WICKEDNESS."

I proposed in my last discourse, to point out to you some of those features by which we may ascertain whether we are on the right or on the wrong side of that important line which separates between the world that lieth in wickedness, and that system of God's providential arrangement, in which duty calls us to perform our several parts.

To be as practical as I can, I shall, for the benefit of my very youngest hearers, begin with the earliest period of active life. Even at the tender age when young persons are, for the first time, sent to school, two worlds are there presented to their view; and each solicits their entrance into it. Religion tells the child that a school is a gracious opportunity given him by God, to acquire that knowledge. which may, in after life, render him a blessing

to society; and that the precious hours of childhood, if thrown away, can never be redeemed. It tells him that his first duty, under God, is to his teachers; to repay them for their labours, and to convert their anxieties into pleasure, by the gentleness of his deportment, his docility to their instructions, and his obedience to all their just commands. It tells him, also, that while to his equals he should invariably show kindness, openness, and goodnature, yet he owes it to them, no less than to himself, to his master, and to God, to resist all their solicitations to idleness, vice, or folly.

To the virtuous and happy child who lays these things to heart, a school is, as far as he is concerned, a part of God's world. To him it is so: while to many of his school-fellows, perhaps, the very same seminary is a part of that world that lieth in wickedness. These latter embark at school with a set of notions wholly different from those of the former. A school is, in their idea, (and would to God, that the unaccountable folly of grown persons did not often encourage them in so hateful a delusion!) a school is, I say, in their idea, a place where a boy is called upon to shew his manliness, by systematic coarseness, cruelty, selfishness, and brutality. Their lesson they consider as an odious task, which they are