your lips will quiver, and your tongue will falter, when you say to him, " Remember your "Creator in the days of your youth." And yet, are we to say that there is no hope for such a man? God forbid. If there were no hope for those who have forgotten their Creator, which of us could lift his eyes to heaven? You, and all the world, and he who warns you of its consequences, every day and every hour, have forgotten their Creator. We have used the awful blessings that he has bestowed upon us, for our sport and amusement, and forgotten from whom they come; and we have rushed into the dangers and temptations of life, with nothing to guide us but the impulses of our own guilty nature, or the opinion of a world that has drawn its principles from its practice, instead of forming its practice upon its principles. Those who feel this in the depth of their hearts, and the awful state to which it has brought them, will know how to value the great and glorious atonement that has been made for them upon the cross. It will be music to their ears to be told, that to those who have forgotten their Creator, it is yet said, Remember your Redeemer, and live. Open wide your memory

and your heart to this blessed Redeemer, and let the King of Glory come in. Just think,whom will you remember instead of him? Who is there that shall fill his place, and sit upon the throne of your memory, that will return you faithfully love for love-thought for thought? Will the object that is dearest to you upon earth? The heart of that being may be now cold and faithless; that heart will certainly be one day cold and mouldering in the grave, and all the profusion of memory that you lavish upon that barren spot, will never make one fresh thought, or one genial recollection spring from the ashes that you loved, to reward your fond and hopeless prodigality. But there is not one pure thought, one holy recollection that struggles to rise to that gracious Being, that shall be allowed to fall to the ground, but shall be kindly received, and richly repaid; and he will return it from on high with a rain of blessings upon your head. Go, and remember Him who thought of you before you had the power of thinking either of him or of yourself,making you young and lusty as an eagle, and only" a little lower than the angels,-crown

ing you with majesty and honour;"-who

remembered you when you had forgotten him and yourself, and all that became a creature whom his Creator had marked out for immor

tality; who remembered you when he bowed tality;-who his head upon the cross; and who is ready to recognise you before his Father and the holy angels-even before the Creator whom you had forgotten. Go, and think of him-for at this instant he is thinking of every one of you!

SERMON II.

HEBREWS, xii. 1.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

WE all profess a firm belief in the truths which God has been pleased to declare. Now the Scriptures contain certain threats and certain promises;-threats of vengeance and punishment to every soul that sinneth; promises of mercy and immortality to all that fly to the refuge appointed in a Redeemer; and therefore, when we declare that we believe in God's word, we at the same time profess a firm faith in the reality of these threats and these promises, and in the certainty that, sooner or later, they will be carried into execution.

And perhaps nothing could shock or affront us more, than that any man should venture to hint a suspicion of the soundness of our faith, or insinuate that we doubted the truth of these things. However, there are so many men of all kinds, of all characters, of all descriptions,

who declare that they have this faith; men who perhaps never spent one serious and solemn hour, in the course of their lives, in the consideration of these things, which they profess to believe; men who live just as they would if they never believed them,-that there is some reason to fear that some fatal mistake exists among mankind upon this point; and we shall do well to look to ourselves, and examine whether all is as safe as we could wish, and whether we do really and truly believe the things that the word of God contains.

Now the word of God itself supplies us with an excellent method of considering this subject; and it is the more satisfactory, because it is one which our own common sense seems to acknowledge at once; "Faith is the substance "of things hoped for, the evidence of things "not seen." It is to us instead of sight, it is as if we had seen the things that we believe, and is therefore to produce the same effect. This is a principle to which our common sense subscribes; for if we were to assure any man that a certain fact existed, and require him to act as he certainly would if he had seen it himself, what reason could he give for refusing? None,

R