Be you-nay more, it will save you. persuaded, ye who have hitherto neglected it, be persuaded to make the experiment. Ere long you may wish to do it, but will not have the opportunity. This foundation is laid in Zion, in the Church of God. To rest upon it, you must become believers in Christ. To become believers, you must be made new creatures in Christ Jesus. Do you not see the necessity of this? Sin hath blinded your eyes. Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. Your danger is not the less for your insensibility. You are dying mortals, hastening to the grave, and after death is judgment. Before God's bar you must appear; and how can you bear to think of appearing without being prepared to give to him an account of your stewardship? In your present state you are sinners; as such you must be rejected, if you do not become saints. You may dream of heaven in store for you, though you walk as you please; but remember it has been told you, you will be fearfully disappointed. In the blackness of darkness you will for ever bewail your sad mistake and awful folly. The heaven which the Bible reveals is accessible only to regenerated, sanctified sinners. Of any other heaven, as a place of real happiness, we have no knowledge. Christ alone has brought life and immortality to light. They who reject him must reject a future state, for they have no ground to believe in it, save unsatisfactory arguments. They who believe in it, and yet disbelieve in Christ, are chargeable with infatuation. How sad the reflection, that thousands are careless and secure, though they have no interest in the salvation of God! Oh! that the voice of mercy, like the voice of the archangel and the trump of God on the day of judgment, reached these dead, and awoke them to life. Be alarmed by your danger, and constrained by the goodness of God, to betake yourselves to Christ. Build your hopes of happiness in both worlds on him. Be not gainsaying, but believe. Look to the cross of Christ, and be ye saved; for he who hung there died for the redemption of sinners like you. His grace is sufficient, and will not be withheld if you ask for it in sincerity, and seek it with perseverGod grant you his blessing, for the sake of his dear Son. AMEN. ance. SERMON XIII. THE DUTY OF AMERICA IN THE HOSEA V. 14. VI. Ì—3. I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face in their affliction they will seek me early. Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us; in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to u Preached during the late war with Great Britain, Jan. 12, 1815, on a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, recommended by the President of the United States of America. know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth. EVENTS such as those which have occurred during the last twenty years, in the civilized world; events unparalleled in the history of former times, confounding the calculations of the wisest and most profound statesmen, and baffling the researches, again and again repeated, of the best qualified student of prophecy; events involving in them social, political, and religious interests of the utmost importance to men; events, whose final issues are not yet developed, but trembling in the balance of fearful ominous uncertainty-such events, we might naturally suppose, would have produced corresponding moral fruits among the vast multitude concerned in them, either as agents or witnesses. On an attentive examination of this multitude, we find that they are divided into the two great classes of the thoughtless and the desponding. The former regard these events in no other light than they have been accustomed to regard other events. Some times they are startled by the suddenness of an event, or its uncommon magnitude; but they very soon relapse into their habit of indifference. They love not to think seriously and soberly on any subject, much less upon one which in its nature is calculated to destroy their ignoble repose. I call it ignoble, because it is a repose merely of an animal nature, which dishonours both the understanding and the heart of a man. The other class view these events through the medium of their fears, and thus being unable to exercise their judgments, sit down under the influence of a depression of spirits, giving up all for lost, and saying there is no hope. Their despondence is as unmanly as the thoughtlessness of the others is stupid. Both are chargeable with practical atheism: the because they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hand; the other, because they do not confide in the wisdom and rectitude of the divine government, as displayed in these events, and refuse to be comforted by the word of his grace, assuring them that the Lord reigneth. Neither of these classes have therefore brought forth such fruits as the events to one, |