is death his wages, but death is the end of the path, in * Oh, wicked man, thou shalt which he is now travelling.

surely die." * As muhteousness teadeth to life, so he that pursueth evil, pursuera (* to his own death." As I live." saith the Lord I have no please in the death of the wicked, but that the wiexed tum from his way and live. Tar ye, tum ye, in your evil ways: for why will ve die ?" Why this affecting expostulation. this earnest, entreaty. if it were not a principle, as immovably fixed, as is the throne of the Eternal that if the sinner turu not, he must and will die? Die not merely the leath of the body— this he would not avid by turning-from this repentance would not save him-but that second death beyond the grave, the ever-enduring death of the soul.

It is true, that Jesus Christ has died a propitiation for our sins:" and the promise is sure, that the penitent shall be forgiven. the believer shall be saved. God hath told us. that he wonid have all men come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved:" and all are most urgently invited to turn and live. But how shall he be redeemed from the curse of the law, who does not receive Christ, and secure, upon the terms proposed. forgiveness through his blood? What other name is given among men. whereby they may be saved? The blessings of salvation are not promised to all indiscriminately. How can they be saved from sin, who persist in the love and practice of sin? To the unbelieving and disobedient, Christ himself, is a "stone of stumbling and a rock of offence." Vengeance will come upon them for not obeying the Gospel. Simply to neglect so great salvation" certain

ruin.

Let us all be persuaded to lay these things to heart. We all have been the abject slaves of sin; and if not made free by the regenerating Spirit. we are in bondage still. Bondage indeed it is. The way of transgressors is hard ;” and it leads on to death. No one ever hardened himself against God and prospered. Against this glorious Being we have rebelled; by serving sin we have waged war with God. Persevering in this warfare, our recompense will be death: not the dissolution of the body, not the extinction of being, but that final separation from all that is holy and blessed; that hopeless abandonment to all that is evil and tormenting: that unutterable anguish of a mind in perpetual conflict with itself and with God, which constitute most truly the death of the soul; a death to be endured, not for a few years, not for a single century, not for thousands of ages, but for eternity. How long does a single night appear, which is spent in constant, excruciating pain. Minutes seem hours, and hours ages. Think of the situation of him who is languishing under an incurable disease, occasioned by his own folly, tortured with incessant agony, and hopeless of

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relief. Behold him suffering, day after day, the tortures of aching body and an upbraiding conscience. Hear him Cry out in the morning, would God it were evening; and In the evening, would God it were morning. When I lie down I say, when shall I rise and the night be gone; and I am full of tossings to and fro until the dawning of the day. The arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit. The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me." To spend one's life, to linger fifty, seventy, or eighty years in such misery, how insupportable the idea! What if life were lengthened to the age of the Antediluvians. How terrible to pass a thousand years in constant suffering, like that of the living body in the midst of burning flame! But what are a thousand years in comparison with eternity? Infinitely less than a drop in the ocean.

Needless alarm, causeless disquietude, I have no wish to produce. But I do beseech you to consider, what God has been pleased to reveal of the future and eternal condition of impenitent men. If you saw a fellow creature, carelessly slumbering on the brink of a precipice, would you not endeavor to save him? If your neighbor's house were on fire, and he were in imminent dange of being consumed, would you not sound the alarm? And shall not he, who beholds the sinner slumbering on the verge of perdition, warn him of his danger? Shall he be censured for preaching terror, and for attempting unduly to move the passions of his hearers, who tells them, in the language of inspiration, the end of these things is death, they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever?

If, unpardoned sin will be punished with eternal death, it is the extreme of presumptuous folly to delay repentance. The pleasures of sin are but for a season; the pains resulting from it will never cease. But they who believing in Christ take up their cross and follow him, though in this world they may have tribulation, will not be left comfortless, and in the world to come will inherit life everlasting.

Ye, who love not the Lord Jesus Christ, and are not careful to obey his commands, the day is at hand, when the King will come in his glory, and will reward every man according to his works." Will it then give you pleasure, that you have spent the season of your probation in minding earthly things, and slighting the Friend who died to redeem you? At present you may believe, that your sins are few and of small magnitude; and that if you maintain a fair reputation among men, it is not indispensable, that you should walk humbly with God, set your affections on things above, and live the life of faith in a crucified risen Redeemer.

DELIVERED ON BOARD THE PACKET SHIP VICTORIA, CAPT. MORGAN, AT SEA, JULY, 1845.

BY REV. HORACE BUSHNELL, D. D.*

PASTOR OF THE NORTH CHURCH, HARTFORD, CT.

GENESIS i. 10.-" And God called the dry land Earth: and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: And God saw that it was good.

NOT a few have wondered why God, in creating a world for the habitation of man, should have chosen to hide three-fourths of its surface under a waste of waters. Doubtless it had been as easy for him to have made it a good round ball of meadow and ploughland. The field where leviathan plays might as well have been given to the reaper: the fickle domain of waters might as well have been erected into a firm continent of land, and covered with flourishing and populous empires. Why, then, asks the inquisitive thought of man, why so great waste in the works of God? why has He ordained these great oceans, and set the habitable parts of the world thus islanded between them? why spread out these vast regions of waste, to suppress the fruitfulness and stint the populousness of his realm ?

That He has done it we know. We also know his opinion of the arrangement-God saw that it was good. This should be enough to check all presumptuous judgments and over curious questions: God has done it, and in His view it is good.

Still, if our object be not to judge God, but to instruct ourselves, the whole field is open, and we may inquire at pleasure. And now that we are out upon this field of waters, cut off from the society of man, and from all the works of God, save the waters themselves, it cannot be inappropriate to inquire, What is the meaning

•Having been requested, in the absence of the Author, to superintend the printing of this Discourse, I venture to promise the reader no ordinary gratification and delight; and to express my admiration that a performance so full of thought, and life, and beauty, should have been thrown off, at the moment, on shipboard. THO. H. SKINNER.

and use of the sea? for what benificent end or object may we sup pose the Almighty Creator to have ordained its existence?

Were this question put by the natural philosopher, he would proceed at once to show that the sea tempers the climate of the land, making the heat less intense and the cold less rigorous; that the sea is a great store-house of provisions in itself, and also of waters for the land, without which even that were unfruitful; and many other things of a like nature, all of which may be true, and yet it cannot be said, with any confidence, that God could not have tempered the climate of the land as well, and made it as fruitful, without the sea.

It is only when we look at the moral uses of the world, its uses in the discipline of mind and character, where the free will of man, if it is to be preserved in its freedom, requires that God should condescend to particular means and expedients-it is only here that we seem to grasp those imperative and momentous reasons which can be said, with most confidence, to have determined God's arrangement in the matter we are considering. Indeed, there is a kind of impropriety in considering physical ends or causes as being, in any case, the final causes of God's works; for to God there is, in strict reason, no final cause but virtue or moral good. To this all things are subordinate; for this all things are done. When we say that the world was made for the habitation of man, we do not mean, if we rightly understand ourselves, that it is made to contain as many men as possible, in as much of plenty and ease as possible. In that case, most manifestly, God should have made as many acres of good productive land as possible; nay, He should have made the earth as large as possible. Having it for his problem to raise the most numerous possible herd of men, He has only to enlarge his pasture. For the same reason, too, there should be no rigors of heat or of frost, no deserts, whether of sand or snow, no tempests, no fruitless seasons. Most manifestly the world is made to be the habitation of man, in some other and far different sense. Rather is it built to bless him as a moral creature, so ordered and fitted up that it shall most powerfully conduce to make him truly a man, a creature of intelligence, society, love and duty. Having this for his design, He has rather sought to limit than to extend the number of our race; for a school of virtue, you will observe, may be too large, as well as too easy, for the benefit of the pupil. Therefore, He gives us a small globe to inhabit, narrows down our field still farther by rigors of perpetual frost, and barren mountains, and oceans of water-all that He may bring us into compass and compression, and set us under the holy discipline of danger, toil and hardship; for these are the best, the only sufficient instruments of knowledge and character. To such a being as man, virtue can only be a conquest.

Prepared by views like these, let us go on to ask, What are the