the agony of the Saviour, to mock his Maker on his throne, and to scoff at the God who keeps him out of hell! Do I address such an one? Let me tell you, there is neither wisdom, nor wit, nor talent in this. It secures the approbation of no one whose good opinion is of value. It will secure not your own approbation when you die. It will plant daggers in your dying pillow. Let me remind you that life is not lengthened out by a jeer; that the shades of the chilly night roll on towards you while you laugh; that to ridicule religion alleviates none of the agonies of dying and the terrors of the judgment seat, and that the flames of hell are not made a thing of nought by a jibe. Let me tell you, in the spirit of my text-that serious, sober, humble, prayerful enquiry on the subject of religion, will conduct to the favor of God and to heaven;-any other spirit leads down to the dark shades of eternal death! Do you then say to me, 'Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?' I reply, the morning cometh to the church redeemed ;-the glad morning of deliverance to the afflicted Christian, and the morning of the resurrection and of eternal glory to all who bear the image and the name of the Son of God:-and also night cometh to the scoffing sinner-the chilly night of death-the night of wo eternal to all who deride, despise, or neglect religion. If ye will enquire further, it may be done. Even now return to the Lord with a humble, penitent, and believing heart, and he will be found of you; and to our God, and he will abundantly pardon. Isa. Iv. 7.

SERMON XXIII.

THE HARVEST PAST.

Jeremiah viii. 20. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

MAN is placed upon the earth that he may prepare for eternity. His errand in this world is not to gain its wealth, to secure its honors, or to taste its pleasures. He has time enough to prepare well for a boundless existence, but he has none to lose; he may make each hour send an influence ever onward into the interminable duration before him, but if it is suffered to pass by unimproved it cannot be recalled; he may make the whole of life a probation, but he can convert no part of eternity into a preparation for what is beyond. As a season of preparation for eternity, life may be regarded as sustaining the same relation which spring and summer do to the harvest. There is a time to plow and sow, and there is an appropriate time for the harvest, and if these are neglected, a gloomy winter sets in when there can be no sowing, and when it will be too late to secure a harvest. There are favorable seasons in life to secure salvation. They are, one after another, fast passing away. When gone they cannot be recalled; and the favorable influence which might have been secured to bear on our future being is gone forever. We can no more recall it than the farmer can command the sun of spring-time to rise again, or the showers and dews of summer to come down in the dreary winter. The opportunity of salvation will have passed away forever.

These truths I wish now to illustrate, by employing the text with the same design with which it was first used in reference to the Jews. There was a time when they might have obtained the favor of God; a time, when, if they had listened to his voice by the prophets,

their temple, and city, and nation might have been spared. But it was now too late. That time had passed away, and could not be recalled. The forbearance of God was exhausted, and their beautiful house of worship, their city, and their land were to be given up to destruction.

In illustrating the subject before us, I shall submit to you a series of propositions which will at once command your assent, and which, I trust, will lead to the conclusion to which I desire to conduct you, that no time is to be lost in securing the salvation of the soul.

I. Life is made up of a series of probations. Its various parts are favorable periods for affecting the future. The present may be so used as to be of advantage to us hereafter. From the present we may send an influence forward that shall meet us in time to come, and that shall be worth to us there more than all which it cost us.

These various modes of expressing the thought mean substantially the same thing, and are repeated only that there may be no possibility of misunderstanding the import of the proposition. A few illustrations will make this general truth plain.

(1.) Life is a probation in regard to the friendship and favor of our fellow-men. We do not at once step into their confidence without a trial. There is no original presumption in regard to our character, our learning, our talents, our capacity for business, which will secure us the confidence of others without trial. There may be no presumption against us except that which always exists in relation to the depraved tendencies of a fallen nature, but there is none in our favor which can be used as capital with which to claim their confidence. Even when there are all the advantages of birth, and blood; of hereditary honor, patriotism, or talent, the world demands of us evidence that we are worthy of its confidence before that confidence is bestowed. The favors which it has to confer, are reserved for those who shall evince in suitable circumstances that they are worthy of the trust, and that they have endowments which will fit them for the performance of the duties to be discharged. It is in this way only that we can secure a reputation for commercial integrity or professional ability; that we can

gain an office in the state that may be of value to us, or the friendship of the wise and good; or that we can lay the foundation for lasting usefulness or fame. Many a man thus toils through a long and weary life to secure by his good conduct something which his fellow-men have to bestow in the shape of honor or office, content at last, if even when gray hairs are thick upon him, he may lay his hand on the prize which has glittered before him in all the journey of life.

(2.) Especially is this true of the young. Of no young man is it presumed that he is qualified for office, or business, or friendship, until he has given evidence of such qualification. I have found in my own experience, and as far as my observation has extended, have seen that the world is kindly disposed toward young men, and that there are no interests so dear that men are not willing to commit them to their hands when they are satisfied that they are qualified to defend them, and to transmit them to future times. All the blood-bought blessings of liberty; all the endowments of colleges and schools; all the offices of the state, and all the interests of religion and benevolence, they are willing to entrust to the young as soon as they have evidence that those interests will be safe in their hands; and then, those who have bled, and toiled, and labored hardest for these things, and who have prized them most, will lie calmly down and die! But they demand evidence that the young are qualified for the trust before it is committed to their hands; nor will the chairs of the presidents and professors in our seminaries of learning; nor the seats of senators or judges; nor the pulpits or the executive offices of the land, be confided to the young until by their lives they have convinced those who hold them at their disposal that they are worthy of the great and momentous trust.

(3.) The study of a profession, or apprenticeship, is such a probation. It is just a trial to determine whether the young man will be worthy of the confidence which he desires, and it will decide the amount of honor or success which the world will give him. The world is keen-eyed in regard to this; much more so than most young men are aware. There is an eye of public vigilance on every young man from which he cannot escape: The world

watches his movements; learns his character; marks his defects; records and remembers his virtues. There is an arrangement in the course of events that will determine his future life in accordance with the character which he has formed, and from which he cannot escape. There is an unseen, but withering influence that attends a young man that is idle, dissipated, or unprincipled, that will go with him, like an evil genius, to distant climes; that will cross oceans with him, and start up to meet him in polar snows or on barren sands; that will stand in his way every where, and that he cannot escape. And there is a happy influence, of more value than the fabled genius of Socrates, which will go with every young man, who, by industry and early virtue, has shown himself worthy the confidence of mankind, and which will attend him around the world.

(4.) The whole of this probation for the future often depends on some single action that shall determine the character, and that shall send an influence ever onward. Every thing seems to be concentrated on a single point. A right or a wrong decision then settles every thing. The moment when in the battle at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington could say, "This will do," decided the fate of the battle, and of kingdoms. A wrong movement just at that point might have changed the condition of the world for centuries. In every man's life there are such periods; and probably in the lives of most men their future course is more certainly determined by one such far-reaching and central decision, than by many actions in other circumstances. They are those moments when honor, wealth, usefulness, health, and salvation seem all to depend on a single resolution. It seems to be a small matter for a young man to deliberate whether he shall or shall not partake of a social glass of intoxicating drink with a friend; and yet on the result of such a deliberation has depended the whole career of many a man. So it may

seem a small matter for him to visit a gambling-room, or a theatre once; or to form a friendship with some well-introduced and genteel looking stranger; and yet the whole of his future destiny may depend on the decision of that moment. The reason is this. It is the crisis of the life. It settles a principle. It determines