continued dispersion. Gratitude for the gift of a Saviour through the line of Abraham, and for the Holy Scriptures through Jewish Apostles, should urge us to make exertions for their rescue from the thraldom of unbelief. They would join us in adoring the Saviour, and rejoice with us in the covenants of promise, and we could feel pleasure forever, in having contributed to rescue them from the dominions of death.

Happily the time has come, when they begin to doubt whether they may not look for their Shiloh till their eyes consume away in their holes, unless they build their hopes of eternal life on him who has come. Numbers of them have made their escape from death, and others are inquiring with a candour and a docility, as new as it is interesting, "Where is the angel of the covenant?"

FINALLY, may we not fear, that if we reject the Saviour, there may be found in our families a race of unbelievers, that may go, generation after generation, down to the blackness of darkness forever. How can we know that some families that we can name, in whom we see not a believer from age to age, have inherited from some ungodly ancestor, a ruin like that which fell upon the family of Israel. Poverty, and crime, and degradation, are the prominent features of their condition. Ah, let us beware, lest our children's children shall be telling the world some hundred years hence, the tale of our unbelief and impenitence.

SERMON LIII.

THE WISE MAN WISE FOR FUTURITY.

Deuteronomy, xxxii. 29.

O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end.

MOSES had been speaking of the kindness of God to his people. He found them in a desert land, and in a waste howling wilderness. He led them about, he instructed them, he kept them as the apple of his eye. By a spirit of prophecy he looked forward, and saw them enter in triumph the land of promise, there to eat of the increase of the field, to suck honey out of the rock, and drink the pure blood of the grape. And here he would gladly have limited his prophetic view, and would have died believing that the people he loved, would remain the heirs of that goodly land till the consummation of all things, and be to the latest ages the chosen inheritance of heaven. But the same prophetic Spirit which had made him acquainted with one future page of their history, penetrated the tracts of time, that stretched still beyond, and unfolded to his inspired vision, a page still beyond, darkened and dismal with crimes and punishments. Here he paused to lament, that they would so sin against their own souls, that they would not feel in time that they had to deal with a jealous God, who

would not give his glory to another, and in the language of the text pours out the honest and tender feelings of his heart, "O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end." This would avert the doom I foresee, and secure them a perpetual title to the fields of promise.

But the text will bear a more extended application. It is as true of us all as it was of Israel, that we contemplate too little the scenes of futurity, and fasten the eye too exclusively on the life that now is. This world is too much our home; its cares occupy too exclusively our attention; and its treasures claim too high a place among the instruments of our joy. We are pilgrims at the best, who have here no abiding city, but seek one to come, whose builder and maker is God. That man is a beggar and a wretch, who extends not his views to another life, and has no prospects of enjoyment in a better world. The concerns of this life are too small to engross the energies of an immortal mind. When I feel myself allured by its charms, and when I see so many of my poor dying neighbours engrossed exclusively in these sublunary scenes, I feel that we have a mean and poor employment. And I have chosen this text, rather than many a one, which, on some accounts, would have been more appropriate, because I wish to warn myself, and the neighbourhood in which I live, and the people to whom I minister, and every stranger who may be present, that this world is not our home, nor our rest, that there awaits us a dying bed, and a lonely grave, and perhaps a sudden transit into the presence of the holy and heart-searching God. We are forming a character for another state, and have forgotten our only errand into life, if any other cares crowd us so closely, or engross us so exclusively, as the one care of adorning the

soul for its speedy appearance at the banquet of the Lamb. This is the concern that should direct our dreams, wake our slumbers, bring us early to our knees, and go with us and keep its hold upon our thoughts, our affections, and our lips, through all the hours of light, through the social converse of our evenings, and the sacred worship of our Sabbaths. Why can we not move about among the cares of this life, and still keep firmly our hold upon a better.

If we think often of death we shall die no sooner, and if we often talk of the life to come, we shall be called none the sooner to part with the life that now is. If we mingle the cares of another world with those of the present, we need not neglect to make all necessary provision for the body. Nor need these thoughts and cares embitter our present enjoyments. Who has heaven's permission to be happy but the believer, the man whose heavenly mind can see a substance, and taste a sweetness in the things unseen, who can even here inhale a fragrance from the flowers of paradise, and realize ́a treasure deposited where moth and rust cannot corrupt, and where thieves cannot break through and steal! Tell me not of men being happy whose all is in the present life, and who are tormented if they chance to think of death; it is all false. They may be stupid, and so is a worm, but who ever dreamed that a thoughtless man was happy? He may be free from sensible misery, snd so is the ox, but one who claims that he is a man, and glories in being capable of thought, is not happy when he does not think. Cast forward the eye of faith and read the future pages of your history, and if you cannot read them and still be happy, then I would bid joy adieu for ever. Think of a death-bed, of the shroud you shall wear, the coffin that shall house the grave

you,

you shall occupy, the procession that shall escort you to the bleak and cheerless cemetery, the vacuum that shall be seen in your dwelling, the widow that shall weep for you, and the children that shall bury their best hopes in your sepulchre, and return to weep over their untimely orphanage :-think, too, where you shall then be, in what world, in what society, how employed-and if you cannot think it all over and be happy, your condition is most pitiable. What! do you boast of having the powers of thought, and dare not think! Glad that you are not a thoughtless beast, and yet must become thoughtless as a beast, or be miserable! Then your fancied distinctions are all a dream, and can do you no honour. My intention is to turn your minds upon the scene of death, and by this means to try your religion, and my own. If we can converse with the scenes of death and be happy, it will be one small evidence in our favour. True wis

dom will lead us to consider our latter end. I shall notice some circumstances of our latter end which it becomes us to consider, and then show that to consider these things is to act wisely.

I am to notice some circumstances of our latter end, which it becomes us to consider.

I. Death will part asunder the body and the soul. They are dear and affectionate companions, and are to each other a source of pleasure and of pain. There is between them an indescribable power of endearing sympathy. But in death they part. The body, cold and inanimate, is thrown upon the care of men, while the spirit returns to God who gave it. What remains with us is the merest clay, while that which we loved and caressed is gone. That lifeless body is not the son, the husband, the father, the neighbour, and the friend, we loved. But it is all that we could ever see or touch, while