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there, even amiable and excellent in their daily walk of life, honest and upright too in their intercourse with one another, who yet remain in contented indifference as to the real condition of their souls; who have no acquaintance with God, no fellowship with the Spirit of Holiness, no joy in the knowledge of their Redeemer; in short, no pleasure or real comfort in their religion.

And if the man of business may be said to sleep. how much more may the man of pleasure. The man of business is not wholly without excuse: he can plead the necessity of work; he may say that unless he work, he will not have to eat; and to a certain point his work itself, and the zeal with which he sets about it, is to be commended; for it is a religious act, and in doing it, he is doing his duty in that state of life to which God hath called him; his error lies in doing it with an eye singly to his interest in this world, and not with an eye to God's service, and to that world which is to come hereafter.

But the man of pleasure, the man who lives but to gratify every present wish, every foremost desire of the heart, whose time is taken up with devising and enjoying nothing better than amusement, whose aim appears to be to get as much delight as he can out of the few short years of this earthly existence, has not even this cloak for his folly; he cannot say that

his pleasure is his business, that he has nothing given him on this earth to do; for, my brethren, we have all, whatever be our station in life, we have all some work to perform. God never made any man to be idle. He never breathed the breath of an immortal soul into a mortal body only for that body's delight, independent of all higher considerations. No, for His pleasure, not for our own, were we created, and so marvellously made, "That (as the Apostle tells us,) we should live not unto ourselves, but unto God." This is a truth that lies at the surface of all religious knowledge. No man can read his Bible, and not see that a Christian is called upon, in every part of it, to work, to endure, to suffer, and to struggle; but never allowed to indulge in slothfulness and ease. And, therefore, if with such knowledge a man ventures on a life of pleasure, he does it at a fearful risk to his true happiness. He runs hazard of becoming an alien, a stranger to God, of having his eyes sealed up as to the future, so as to be unable to see even a little way into the days that are before him. And when this shall have happened unto him, when this spiritual blindness shall have fallen upon his heart, who will he have to blame but himself and his pursuit of those very vanities which ail experience, no less than all scripture, proves to have an invariable tendency towards so disastrous a result?

Would that all who are tempted to a life of selfish indulgence, would call to mind what has been written for their warning in the Gospel, the fate of Dives the rich man in the parable. He dreamt that this world was the better portion, and so his chief care was to taste of worldly pleasures and worldly happiness to the full;" he was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day;" but when his dream came to an end, when he had slept his sleep, terrible indeed was the awakening,-" In hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments."

Again, there is another class of men, who may be said to sleep even more deeply, more hopelessly, than either of the two kinds of character we have reviewed. These are they who sleep the sleep of sin; by which I mean all who have allowed themselves so long in wickedness, that their consciences have become seared, and cease to trouble and alarm them. The inveterate drunkard, the open profligate, the habitual liar, are amongst the chief examples of this kind, for they who do such things, in the face of God's strict sentence of condemnation, must surely be far gone in that dangerous forgetfulness of His almighty power, and perpetual presence, which has been already described as the sleep or numbness of the soul.

In cases like these, (and they are by no means un

frequent,) lies the main difficulty of a Christian Teacher's office. He sees the danger, and it is his duty to warn those who have incurred it; it is a duty, for neglecting which he must answer to his God. He knows too that unless they be brought out of their peril, they must perish. But then he also from sad experience knows, that the warning will oftentimes be spoken in vain; that it will fall on dead ears, and leave no impression on the heart. Must he then despair? Must the minister of the Gospel give up the attempt altogether, and leave those souls to sink into perdition without an effort to awaken them?

God forbid that he should do this! while there is life there is hope, and, therefore, in spite of former failures, and most unfavourable appearances, still will he continue to sound the cry of alarm, still deliver his message, (the message of the Almighty,) and beseech" the wicked man to turn away from his wickedness," and not die in his sins. Still will he reason with him of "righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come;" not indeed with the words of man's wisdom, not in reliance on any powers of his own, but in the words that Holy Scripture puts into his lips, and in reliance upon that Spirit of power and of grace, which alone can bring home to the sinner's heart a true sense of his danger, and make him anxious to recover himself out of the

snare of the tempter, and flee in haste from the wrath to come.

To such characters as these, to men who are conscious of having slumbered in the lap of sin, long revelled in drunkenness and sensual practices, (if there be any now present,) let me address the words once addressed to Jonah: "What meanest thou, 0 sleeper? Arise, and call upon thy God," if so be that God will think upon you that ye perish not. Arise, while yet you may, and go unto your Heavenly Father, whose care and love you have rejected, whose laws you have broken, whose blessed Son you have set at naught by your evil deeds. Go unto Him and say, in all the earnestness of true sorrow, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." Make your prayer to God in an accep→ table time, while as yet you may be heard, while as yet your condemnation is kept back, while as yet the day of salvation remaineth. But do not venture to delay, no, not for an instant. If for once the voice of conscience has made itself heard within, be careful not to stifle it, by returning to your old sins. Do not say with the sluggard, "Yet a little more sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep," a little more indulgence in our favourite vices, a little longer continuance in folly. No; to do this, is to trifle with God-to put Him off with faint promises of repentance, which we may

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