servants of corruption and sensuality: those members, which were before the instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, are now made the instruments of righteousness unto God; and, by the help and power of that spirit which he always gives to those that humbly ask him, we shall be able to wield these stubborn and rebellious members, the former instruments of sin and corruption, in the living service of our Redeemer. It is as if we had stormed the camp of the enemy,-had seized his weapons and his armour, and had turned them against himself.

Choose, then, which master you will serveMammon or God. Choose, then, which wages you will receive-Death or Immortality: and recollect that you can no more serve both these, than you can receive the wages of both; and that the service of God and of Mammon are as inconsistent as the death and immortality that are their natural consequences. Think, before you decide, which master loves you most; think which would sacrifice most for you.Think what price the cold and ungenerous world would give to redeem you from a single pang of body or mind; and think with what

Z

kind and devoted prodigality your blessed Redeemer paid down himself-his body, and his meek and holy spirit, for your everlasting welfare.

Finally it may be useful to reflect that the happiness of the next world will consist in glorifying God in our body, and in our spirit, and in enjoying the delights of his everlasting presence. We can conceive no other: so that it might be well, even on this account alone, to cultivate a disposition that is to constitute our happiness to all eternity: for even if our wild hopes of attaining heaven without glorifying him upon earth were fulfilled,-after all, what would it come to? The last trumpet would summon us to glorify him in our body and in our spirit for ever and ever!

SERMON VIII.

COLOSSIANS, iii. 3.

Set your affections on things above; not on things on

the earth.

To go to heaven when we die seems to be the grand wish that we form to ourselves whenever we happen to fall into a serious mood of thinking, or begin to grow melancholy at the prospect of death. To go to heaven,-and then it would appear that nothing more was wanting to complete our happiness.

And yet there is one very simple question, that is quite surprising we so seldom think of asking; and that is,-" What kind of place we "should find it if we went there?" That heaven is a scene of unbounded happiness and everlasting delight there is no doubt whatever; but should we find it so, is quite another question. We know that a deaf man might be surrounded with the sweetest music and the most enchanting harmony, and to him it would be all dead silence; and a beautiful portrait or

a lovely landscape would be nothing but darkness to a blind man's eye.

But to come still nearer to the point; we know that the same company that would be enjoyed by a man of one description would be actually insupportable to another; and that there are many situations in which one man would find himself perfectly happy, that would make another utterly miserable. Now, to decide the question at once, only conceive for a moment that every man was allowed to choose for himself in this particular, and that heaven was to be just what every man pleases; and what would be the result? Only look back upon your life, and observe the scenes in which you felt yourself most at home-the things in which your soul has most delighted-where your heart was most interested and engaged; and that would be your heaven. Fix your eye upon those scenes of your keenest enjoymentmark them well, dwell upon the circumstances by which they were characterised,-and you have the kind of heaven that you would choose. "Where your treasure is, there would your "heart be also."

With some men heaven would be--what

we will not dare to name: we must draw a curtain over it;-we might mistake it for a scene that bears another name. With others, it would be the sumptuous board and the splendid establishment. With others, it would be the reward of ambition, and the shout of popular applause. With others, a round of the amusements that fill up the vacancies of human life. And, in general, it would probably be just such a place as this earth,-only with a certain number of comforts and advantages superadded, and a certain number of dangers and inconveniences removed.

: Now, is it not probable that to such men as these heaven would be a state either of languor or of misery? Heaven is not a theatre, that shifts the scene to suit itself to every foolish fancy and every silly humour of the spectators. It has, indeed, its fulness of joy and its pleasures for evermore: but the question is, have we the power and the relish to enjoy them? We will suppose, for a moment, that our hope of going to heaven is, some way or other, fulfilled, and that (God knows how) we have passed the fearful account that we shall have to render,-of sins committed, of duties neglected, of bless