bad neither; many are worse than I am! What man is there that sins not? why should I then fear more than others? Was I not baptized? Is not God merciful? Did not Christ die for sinners? Beside, were I to grow so serious, and so good, all mine acquaintance would deride me, and ask whether I also will turn enthusiast, and enter on the melancholy way of religion." By these and the like thoughts, the poor sinner, who began to awake, falls asleep again; shuts his eyes, which the Lord had begun to open, that he might see his danger; and will not probably open them again before death stares him in the face; and hell, as the prophet expresses himself, is moved from beneath to meet and swallow him up; unless, indeed, God strikes his impenitent heart with some fearful judgment, and makes him also cry out, "Lord, save, or I perish."

Suppose again the Spirit of God gently strives with him, as is the case sometimes, especially when the sinner is disengaged from business and pleasure if he feel himself unhappy; if the emptiness of his heart make him confess that he wants something; is it likely he will acknowledge that he wants God? or that he will apply to Jesus Christ, the great Physician of souls? No: it will be time enough, he thinks, on his death bed, to call earnestly for mercy, and ask "the peace of God that passes all understanding." What does he do then? Why, he runs away from himself and God, (if I may so speak,) endeavours to divert himself from his melancholy, and raise his low spirits, for this is the name which he gives to those dawnings of conviction; and obtains an unhappy relief by plunging into business, diversions, or drunkenness; perhaps also by reading unprofitable books, having recourse to trifling company, or overcharging himself with the cares of this life.

Thus does the natural and unawakened man frustrate all the strivings of God's Spirit to show him his danger; thus he remains the willing servant of sin, content with the bondage of corruption, inwardly and outwardly unholy, and satisfied so to be, not only not conquering sin, but not endeavouring to conquer, especially that sin which so easily besets

him.

Such is the state of every unawakened man, whether he be a gross, scandalous transgressor, or a more reputable and decent sinner, having the form though not the power of godliness.

O you who are in that condition, if I have showed you in some mea. sure the state of your hearts, let me beseech you not to harden them the more on that account; rather give place to conviction. For Christ's sake let conscience be heard; if it cries, "Thou art the man," be not ashamed to confess to God your mistake about your spiritual state. Turn the text into a prayer, and say, "Lord, have mercy upon me, I am a mere natural man still: I never understood the things of thy Spirit; they have been foolishness to me, neither could I receive them, for they are spiritually discerned, and I want thy Spirit; but spare me a little, and let me recover thy favour in Christ, before I go hence and be no more seen. Wake my soul to righteousness, and that I may never more plead for sin, or wilfully and knowingly transgress against thee, give me that knowledge of' thee wherein standeth my eternal life. I own it to my shame, I am a stranger to it; but, Lord, spare me a little, teach me, and let me obtain in this world the knowledge of thy truth,

and in the world to come life everlasting." Nothing, brethren, but the desire I have that you should thus pray from a feeling sense of your wants, has made me use such plainness of speech. Be not displeased, then, at my endeavours to awaken you, and open your eyes. You are undone for ever, unless your wound be probed in such a manner as will make you see and feel the necessity of applying in time to him that can heal you, even the Lord Jesus Christ. In him you shall find all that you want in yourselves; he is the second Adam, from whom you must derive a new nature. To him your souls must be united in one Spirit; from him you must receive pardon and grace, life and power, holiness and happiness. He is ready to bestow all these things upon you, if you are but willing to ask him sincerely. And he requires but one proof of your sincerity, and that is, not to seek your happiness in the world, and in created things any longer; but in him alone. Begin then to deny yourselves those sinful gratifications which separate God from your souls, and choose rather to mourn now in hopes that you shall be comforted, than to enjoy the pleasures of the world for a season. If you have not resolution enough to make that happy choice, to desire with St. Paul, "to know nothing but Jesus and him crucified;" O look to yourselves, see the horror of your state. You are heirs of the curse entailed upon every child of Adam. By nature you are children of wrath; you wander like lost sheep in the wilderness of this world; you are "dead in trespasses and sins." You have sold yourselves to the prince of the air, who leads you to perdition as a sheep is led to the slaughter, and you know neither who leads you, nor whither you are led. In a word, you are as yet without God and without Christ in the world; and Adam's sin, with your own, of which you never truly repented, removes you every moment farther from God and nearer eternal misery. Now, in such a desperate condition, can you delay to leave all your sins and apply to Jesus? Can you spend one moment without beseeching him to grant you true repentance and his Holy Spirit? Can you think any terms too hard to be complied with in order to obtain an interest in the blood of the covenant, a happy passage into eternity, and an inheritance among the saints in light? O do not say that this doctrine is too severe. Do not go away from this place of worship, as some of our Lord's disciples did from him, complaining, "This is a hard saying, who can bear it?" Ah! will not that saying, "Depart from me, ye cursed," be much harder to hear, and everlasting burnings much harder to bear? And do you think that life is so long, and so sure, as to be depended upon with safety? or that your strength or health will screen you from the wrath of God in your unawakened state? O, you are mistaken; death, by grasping your mortal body, before you are aware, may plunge you in an instant where there is no place for repentance, mercy, and salvation. Hang no longer in suspense, then; if the world and the devil, the prince of the world, be gods, follow them; but if Jehovah, if Jesus Christ is the Lord, "deny yourselves, and sin not;" according to his command, "take up your cross daily and follow him," till you overtake him, and he blesses you with the pardon of all your sins, and a new heart. Seek him till you find him in your souls; walk with him till you cleave to him, till you can say with the true spouse of Christ, "My beloved is mine, and I am has;" till you abide in him as a branch in the vine, and are enabled "to

bear much fruit," even all the fruits of "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost."

This is the kingdom of grace within us, through which we shall in fallibly enter into that of glory through Jesus Christ our Lord.

SERMON IV.-Awake, thou that sleepest.

"Awake, thou that sleepest!" Eph. v, 14.

I DESCRIBED, in my last discourse, the state of an unconverted man, called, in Scripture, "a natural man;" or, in other words, the state of one who neither loves nor fears God; who, hanging over everlasting destruction only by the thread of life, lives unconcerned, being buried in worldly cares or pleasures, and bound down in his spiritual grave by stupidity, presumption, and sin; who fondly thinks that he shall go to heaven without becoming a new creature, and in that hope securely sleeps on upon the very brink of eternal ruin; fancying, perhaps, that the false peace which he enjoys is "the peace of God which passes all understanding." And I proved, that if his false peace be not broken, if he be not awakened out of that deep spiritual sleep he is in; if he be not convinced that he is in a state of condemnation, and cannot escape the second death, unless Christ causes him to pass from darkness to light, he has not the least ground to hope that the curse, which follows every natural man, shall not overtake and sink him into hell in the day of judg ment. Now the next thing we must do is to consider how he may be awakened into a real desire to "work his salvation out with fear and trembling." It is not in his power, brethren, or in that of any man living, to do that work of himself; here must the omnipotence of God begin to interpose, the Spirit of Jesus must make the wound as well as bind it up, for he is alone the "author and finisher of our salvation." It is true, he has various ways of calling a sinner, and of crying to him, while he hides himself behind the trees of his performances, and the pitiful fig leaves of his own righteousness, “Adam [natural man] where art thou?" But he alone can speak to the heart, and make the outward call effectual. Nothing but the convincing Spirit of God can force a stupid sinner to exclaim, in the anguish of his soul, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' Nevertheless, it is highly necessary for us to know by what means the Spirit of God usually thus awakes drowsy sinners, that if we have been such, we may humble ourselves for having hardened our hearts against those means to this day, and pay them a due regard for the future. I shall therefore, first, consider what they are, and then conclude by exhorting you not to resist or abuse them any more.

Though the ways in which God awakens sinners are very numerous, yet they can be distinguished in general into extraordinary and ordinary

ones.

A man may be awakened in an extraordinary way by an unexpected and terrifying sight, as was St. Paul on his journey to Damascus; by a gracious thought darted into his heart on a sudden: thus was St. Peter stopped in the full career of his sin by a look from Christ, which con

y founded him, and caused him to retire and weep bitterly; by some extraordinary Providence, as the jailer at Philippi, who, feeling the prison a tremble, came himself trembling, and, falling down before Paul and Silas, cried out, "What must I do to be saved?" Or, as some who, hearing of the dreadful earthquake which destroyed Lisbon, November 1, 1735, and buried alive, in a heap of ruins, so many thousands, who, ten minutes before, thought themselves as safe as we do now, were immediately brought to consider, and say, "Were God to lay his hand upon me in the same manner now, should I be ready for death and judgment?" And the Spirit of God, improving their fear, impressed on their hearts a lively sense of the necessity of their "preparing to meet their God," and "giv. ing all diligence to make their calling and election sure." Some have been awakened in an uncommon manner, by receiving an unexpected Batoken of God's goodness and patience, by restoring them from a desperate fit of illness, or by wonderfully preserving them in some imminent danger. For though such mercies are generally overlooked and forgotten, yet one, perhaps, in a thousand, remembers them for good, and spends to the glory of God the life which his long suffering remarkably preserved. A few more have been awakened by feeling, when retired from the noise of the world, I know not what uneasiness and trouble of mind, whereby, perceiving that nothing had yet filled the boundless capacity of their minds, or satisfied their desires, and that the world could never make them happy, they were brought to conclude that they wanted Christ; and that nothing but the enjoyment of the favour and love of God could give them that peace and comfort which the world neither knows nor enjoys. Some again have been struck with a deep sense of their danger, and a true desire "to flee from the wrath to come," by reading something striking concerning the state of their souls in a book of devotion, or by opening the Bible on some threatening of the law, as, "Cursed

is he that doth not persevere in all the things that are written in the book of the law to do them;" or some condition of the Gospel, as, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God;" which being applied to their hearts by the power of God, did not suffer them to rest till they rested in Christ.

These, and many more, are the extraordinary ways in which sinners may be, and sometimes are, awakened out of their spiritual sleep, and made to consider their latter end; but we may very well look on them as miracles of grace, which we have little room to expect God will work on our behalf; especially as his ordinary method is to work in a more common way; by affliction, by Christian conversation, and by the preaching of his word.

Blessed be the mercy of God, many are those who can say with Da vid, "It was good for me to be afflicted." The loss of a husband, wife, parent, child, has engaged some to make their peace with God, that they might live and die in his favour, and meet their departed friends at his night hand. Some unexpected and grievous calamity has opened the eyes of others to see their sinfulness and guilt, and give glory to God by confessing it. Thus Manasses, that monster of wickedness, who had filled Jerusalem with blood, when he was stripped of his royal robes, and carried away into captivity, cried out, under a load of chains and sin, "Spare me, spare me, O Lord," till God answered in mercy, and made

him as great a monument of repentance as he had been before of sin and iniquity. In the like manner proud Nebuchadnezzar, when he was reduced to the condition of a beast, and wandered in the fields forsaken of all, was brought at last to a true contrition and humiliation before the God of heaven and earth, and began to worship him in spirit and in truth, issuing a decree that every knee should bow before him in all his dominions. Such is the power of afflictions to bring a fallen man to the knowledge of himself, and make him perceive his want of the favour and love of God.

The New Testament also affords us several instances of the truth of this observation. There the prodigal son, when reduced to so wretched a state as to have no clothing but rags, and no food but the husks intended for the swine, bethinks himself of returning to his father, with a penitent confession of his sin and folly, and an humble request for pardon and acceptance, not indeed to be treated as a son, but as a hired servant. Poor Lazarus, when the dogs licked his sores, and when he sees that no relief is to be expected at the hands of man, secures a place in Abraham's bosom, and thinks of feeding on God by faith, since he cannot feed on the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table. Thus the man, also, sick of the palsy, gets himself carried to Jesus, and hears those words, "Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee," which he would not have heard had he not been afflicted with sickness. And the woman, who had spent all her substance upon physicians, presses at last after our Saviour, touches him, and is healed both in soul and body, rejoicing that her faith had made her whole. Thus some of you, I hope, finding that you had nothing but troubles, sorrows, disappointments, sickness, hard labour, and poverty for your portion here, may at last have thought of securing the better part with Mary, that better part never to be taken from you. For why should an afflicted soul choose to have tribulation here, and the everlasting miseries of hell hereafter? Why should the poor refuse to be rich in grace? Why should he, who gets by the sweat of his brow the clothes he has upon his back, reject the robe of Christ's righteousness? Why should he, that eats the bread of labour and afflietion, refuse to eat the food of angels, the bread that comes down from heaven? And yet, (O amazing reflection! O killing thought!) perhaps some of you that are poor, are even poorer in grace than in silver and gold. Perhaps, notwithstanding the mercy of God that has placed you in a state where every thing invites you to make God your friend and to take Christ for your portion, you are as attached to this world as if you had great possessions in it, and have not yet seriously endeavoured to fix your hearts where true joys and lasting riches are to be found. But if this be the case, blessed be the mercy of God, you are still poor and afflicted; there is then still some hope that you will consider, and that your heavenly Father will not give over striking you with the rod of his judgment, till you awake and give him all you have to give, and all he asks of you, your heart.

But if afflictions are such unspeakable blessings, let us stop a little, brethren, to pity the rich, the healthy, the young, with whom all things go according to their desires in the world, and who, because they want nothing for the body, do not feel the want of Christ for their souls. Sad, sad beyond expression, is your state, whatever vou may think of it.