your

you be in death! how life! how triumphant in your transcendently blessed through all the ages of eternity! "O that you were wise, that you understood this, that you would consider your latter end!"

As for you, brethren, who see one half of your days run out already, and yet are tempted by the corruption of the world, and your hearts, to mind nothing but the affairs of this life, you need, above all, to consider your latter end. Alas! you are too apt to forget that the better half of your days is gone, and gone for ever. Look back these thirty or forty years that you have lived. How short! It is a vapour which the wind has carried away. O, consider, that in thirty or forty years more, if you live so long, the whole of your days will look like the same dream; and learn, by what is past, to redeem what is to come.

But above all, forget not that eternity is at the end of your half-spent life. Eternity, that sea, without either bottom or shore, in which a thousand years are swallowed up as a drop of rain in the ocean. Eternity, to which you hurry as fast as the wings of time can carry you. And what have you done for eternity? I do not ask, what have you done for time? The rivers of sweat that daily water your face in providing for flesh and blood, save you the trouble of an answer. Nor are you to be blamed for caring for the body, if you do it always in subordination to the concerns of your soul. But what have you done for eternity? Have you so much as shed one tear for the forgiveness of your manifold sins? Have you spent one hour in secret to entreat the Lord to prepare you for eternity? Or do you say by your lives, if not with your mouths, "There is time enough to think of that?" Ah! if this is your case, we pray in your behalf, "O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!"

Here I would also address myself to those whose grey hairs are ready to descend with you into the grave at the first touch of sickness. I would ask you if you have been wise, and if your souls are as ripe for heaven as your bodies for the ground. But if your broken constitution, and the

infirmities of old age, have not yet been able to awake you into a constant preparation for your latter end, what reason is there to expect that words will do it? But I would hope better things of you: I would hope that you have long ago devoted your lives to the Lord; and stand now waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom, and ready for the marriage-feast. Nevertheless, if among you there is a grey-headed sinner, let us with double fervour say over him, "O that he were wise! O that he would understand this! O that he would consider his latter end!"

To conclude.

Let not the god of this Consider, ere it be too eternity at thy feet.

Whosoever thou art, O sinner, whether young or old, rich or poor, in the name of the Lord, I call upon thee to awake unto wisdom. world blind thine eyes any longer. late. See death behind thee, and Renounce trifles. Set aside the anxious cares of the world. Give up unlawful pleasures. Leave nothing untried to make thy calling and election sure. For, in the scenes of futurity which shall soon be displayed in thy sight, there is no room for alteration; all is steadfast, unmovable, beyond the grave. Whether we are, then, seated on a throne, or stretched on a rack, a seal will be set to our condition by the hand of everlasting mercy or inflexible justice.

Now, then, that the present hour is still in thy power, use it to the best advantage. Throw thyself into the arms of a merciful Redeemer, and beseech him to prepare thee a place in his everlasting habitations, and to fit thee for the company of God and his angels. Fear not, if thou art sincere, far from casting thee away, he waits to be gracious, and to seal to thy heart by his Spirit the remission of thy sins; for "with the Lord there is forgiveness, that he may be feared." Come, then, wash thyself by faith in the blood of the Lamb, "the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world." And when thou art made clean, “go and sin no more."

I repeat it once more, Tarry not. Eternity is at stake. God in the twinkling of an eye may take away the breath The next hour sickness may

that is in thy nostrils.

impair thy reason, and deprive thee of all power to think or pray. The next day the Lord Jesus may come to judgment, and the trump of God may sound, to put an end to time and repentance. If not, the messenger of the Lord, which day and night advances towards thee,—death, will most certainly do it ere long; and what will become of thee, if thou art found in thy blood, in thy sins, unpardoned, unconverted? What horror! But I choose to draw a curtain over the deplorable spectacle, and hope none of us will harden his heart against the prayer of Moses, and might not I say, against the tears of the Lord Jesus? O let us remember him, as he considered the sinners of Jerusalem a few days before his death! He wept over them, says the gospel, and cried out, like Moses, "O that they would know in this their day the things that belong to their peace!" Let not those precious tears of the Son of God, let not the sacred streams that flowed from his hands, his feet, his heart, flow unregarded and despised by us. From this day let us all be wise unto salvation. And when the wicked shall be destroyed with an everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power; when they shall call upon the hills to fall on them, and the mountains to cover them from the wrath of an offended God; in the inexpressible enjoyment of endless bliss we shall ascribe grace, mercy, and love to him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb; which may God grant for Jesus Christ's sake: to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one eternal God, be ascribed all majesty and dominion, from this time forth for ever.

SERMON VII.

From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.-John vi. 66-68.

IN opening these words, I shall endeavour, first, to show what offended so much many of our Lord's disciples, that they walked no more with him. Secondly, I shall prove from St. Peter's words, by the grace of the Lord, that as out of Christ there is nothing but eternal death for sinners, so in Christ there is eternal life for the chief of sinners that come to him. I shall then take occasion to make some practical reflections upon those two heads, by way of application. And may the Lord Jesus so shine upon our understandings by the striking light of his truth, and so prepare our hearts by the softening power of his grace, that we may all join Peter in his glorious confession of faith: "To whom shall we go, O Lord? thou hast the words of eternal life;" and we believe, and are sure, that "thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," who openest the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

I. I shall endeavour to show what offended so much many of our Lord's disciples, that they went back, and walked no more with him.

The sermons which our blessed Lord preached were plain, though deep; sharp as a razor, though smooth as oil; and the effect was the conversion or the confounding of his hearers. True doctrine will always cause a division between the chaff and the wheat of a congregation: it sifts the worldlings, puts the formalists at a stand, and makes the pharisees and sadducees, the secret and open infidels in all ages, to exclaim against the severity and depth of gospel truths; so that some, unable to bear it, run away from the disagreeable sound, as many of our Lord's disciples did; or, if they come

again, it is to seek an occasion against the preacher, and, if possible, to catch him in his words, as the pharisees, sadducees, and lawyers tried to do by our Lord himself.

Now, if the eternal Wisdom, the lowly, meek Lamb of God, who knew how to suit his discourses to the capacity and wants of his followers, could not declare the counsel of God without exasperating many of his hearers, how can it be expected that we, who have hardly one ray of the wisdom of the Sun of Righteousness, should preach the same gospel without any of the same inconveniences? Do not, then, conclude, my brethren, that ministers are false teachers, because many rise up against them, and walk no more with them; and that a doctrine is contrary to truth, because it is hard to flesh and blood, and is exploded by the generality of the hearers. In so doing, you would condemn Jesus Christ himself, to say nothing of his apostles, whose plain ministry met every where with the greatest opposition. And as for you, my brethren, whose hearts speak still the language of the prejudiced hearers of the gospel in the days of our Lord; you who often say or think, "This is a hard saying, who can bear it?" consider that, as the heart of man is the same in all ages, so is also the gospel: the same cause will produce the same effect in England as well as in Judea; search therefore your hearts, search the scriptures, and you will find that the opposition which plain gospel truths meet in you is not owing so much to the uncouthness or harshness of the preacher as you think, as to a secret aversion which you have to the cross and the gospel of Christ.

St. John, in the chapter out of which the text is taken, gives us a particular account of the sermon which caused the disciples of our Lord to murmur and depart from him. It is a close and deep one indeed, and contains many things which are foolishness to the natural man, though they are the wisdom of God to every awakened sinner. First in the 27th verse, "Labour not for the meat which perisheth," says our Saviour, "but for that which endureth to everlasting life." This was more than the