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never have it in our power to fulfil. Too long have we already provoked Him; too long already has He been waiting for our return. Awake, then, my brethren, awake to righteousness and sin no Awake to-day; this very hour resolve in your minds not again to enter into temptation, and pray God to keep you stedfast in such resolution. Pray Him, to keep you from evil, to forgive you all that is past, to accept you in the name and for the sake of his beloved Son, and to give you grace that henceforth you may walk before Him in newness of living and truth.

But do I speak these words to those only, whose sins are manifest and open, and not rather to all? Surely to all. We have all need to awake, and call upon our God more earnestly and heartily, than hitherto we may have done. We have all need, because we have all slumbered and slept. True, that upon some, this sleep has fallen heavier than upon others; true, that the worldling and the man of pleasure have sunk deeper than others into spiritual insensibility and sloth, and so will have greater difficulty in arousing themselves; but not less true is it, that upon all, without distinction of class or occupation, there is (in a greater or less degree) the like spirit of heaviness, the like inclination, in the busy round of daily cares, to lose sight of heavenly things, and to neglect the interests of the soul.

I do not mean, my brethren, that we forget God as the wicked do altogether, or that we never pray to Him, never study his Holy Word, still less that we are wanting in due attention to the outward observances of religion; on the contrary, I would hope and believe that those who are so regular in their attendance upon God's public worship are not less mindful of Him in the retirement of their families at home but the question is not so much about the duties themselves, as about the manner and spirit in which they are performed. Have we a real pleasure in them? Are we the better for having practised them? Are our tempers softened and our hopes brightened? Is our love to God increased? Is our charity enlarged? Is our general conduct more and more influenced and harmonized by the lessons of the Gospel that we have so often read and heard? This, my brethren, is the true test of our condition; by this may we know whether we have life in our souls, whether or not we are exempt from the charge of spiritual heaviness. If our conscience acquit us, then, indeed, the warning of the text is not for us. But if it condemn us, if it be with you, as with myself,-if on impartial searching into our hearts, we are obliged to confess that we have not loved our God, nor obeyed the Gospel of his Son as truly and as devotedly as we ought, that our delight is not al

ways in Him, that we do not go into his courts with joy, nor fall down before Him to give Him thanks fervently, and out of a full heart, for the many blessings that we have received at His hands, -then can there be no doubt as to the application of the Apostle's words.

It is high time for us to awake out of sleep. It is high time to arouse our faint souls into a quicker and warmer life; to get rid of this lukewarm spirit, and to seek to be renewed in the frame and temper of our minds: it is high time, and delay may be as dangerous to us, as to those who are living more evidently without God in the world; "for,'' (as the Apostle adds,) now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."

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There is much force in these few words, applicable at all times, but more especially now, for this is, as you know, Advent Sunday, and Advent is the beginning of the Christian year; the beginning of that course of beautiful and scriptural instruction, by which our church directs her children's steps from year to year. At such a season we cannot shut out of our minds a sense of the rapid progress, with which our days are passing from us. We cannot but know and feel that we are so much nearer to our latter end--that our trial is shortening-that the evening is coming on. It seems but yesterday that I was speaking to you on this same

subject, and from this same place: so quick, so imperceptibly do we draw towards the grave. We may not, it is true, think much of the difference that a twelvemonth makes in ourselves or in our prospects. Yet, believe me, the difference is not small. Out of a span of three-score years and ten, one twelvemonth is no inconsiderable thing, and such a portion of our time is now and for ever past away. It is past from us and gathered up, and all the good and all the evil, that has been done in it, is registered above, to be brought against us at the great day of account.

This is indeed a grave consideration, and one suggestive of many serious thoughts, which I leave for your own meditation. Enough to observe its bearing upon the subject now before us, that is, to heighten and enforce the authority of the warning in the text. If life be shorter, and judgment nearer, then are we doubly sure that it is high time to awake out of sleep. In the eloquent language of the Apostle in which he follows up his admonition, "The night is far spent"—the night of this evil world" the day is at hand"-the day of eternal light. "Let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness," and let us put on the armour of light," the breastplate of faith and love, and for our helmet the hope of salvation." "Let us not sleep

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as do others," but let us watch an

sober."

Above all, let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ; let us study to be conformed as much as may be to His holy likeness. Let us clothe ourselves with His righteousness as with a garment, and as all must who take Him for their example and their rule, "let us not make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof."

Little Hadham, 1846.

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