ment also, when all our prayers, and all our remorse will not change the solemn account.

The tremendous sum of our unworthiness is not to be just glanced at and forgotten. It cannot, and as God lives, it will not be forgotten, though we should continue to practise, to the end of a long life, this same formality. The sins of this year are added to the last, as those of the last were to those of the preceding. What then is the state of our religious condition? You, who have lived twenty, thirty, forty years, and more in this world of God's, who have been supported by him every moment, who have nothing which you have not received from him, nothing for which you must not account before his presence hereafter, think, I beseech you, of the folly and danger of longer neglecting to acknowledge him, to pray to him, to fear him, to serve him with all the powers which he has given you. If you have never seriously thought of this, think of it now. The ground on which you stand is treacherous; it may in an instant yield and plunge you into an abyss of irrecoverable sorrow. Choose you this day whom you will serve, and presume not that God's mercy will draw out to an indefinite length, your quivering thread of life. You that have thought the wonderful gift of his Son Jesus, unworthy of your attention, let not the new year begin without finding you approaching this merciful Saviour. And when he was a great way off his father saw him, and had compassion on him.'

Those of you, who, with a sincere faith in the gospel of Jesus, and with a general conviction of your duty to live to his honor, have discovered this year great defects in your services, and who feel oppressed with a sense of the little progress you have made, come, and let us now determine with full purpose of heart, on what!-Ah! the vast field of duty is so immense! and yet if God be for us who can defeat us? Let us resolve then upon a more faithful cultivation of our minds, more serious reading and less amusement, more thought and less vanity, more serious inquiry after truth and less vain speculation. Let us sacredly, unreservedly, and in opposition to all the sneers of the profligate part of the world, resolve before God to devote this holy time to the instruction of our families, and of ourselves too, if we have not yet begun it. Let no plea of business or of pleasure prevent this employment of our Sundays' leisure. Mark out for yourselves, and for your children, a course of religious instruction, and in the fear and love of God, commence the great duty of prayer, and persevere in it to the end.

Determine that you will this year look around you to discover where you may retrench your unprofitable expenses upon mere vanities and pleasures. Let not the means of doing good accumulate upon you, only to increase the weight of your condemnation, as if you were enriched only to swell an enormous treasure, or to fill a greater space in the eyes of an envious world. Be con

tinually on your guard against that hardness of heart, which constant attention to the secular employments of life is sure to produce. Look out for objects of bounty and for channels of beneficence. Never imagine that you have done your duty while there is a single want of body or mind to which you can have access, unrelieved. Resolve to relinquish at once any habits in your domestic or public life, of which your conscience gives you a doubt of the innocence. Break off with all the prudence in your power any ensnaring connexions, any unworthy and dangerous friendships. Let not a false shame prevent you for a single day, from giving up any modes of life, which, however popular or reputable, are inconsistent with the life of a serious Christian. Decidedly and instantly oppose any private practices which are not perfectly reconcilable with the laws of God, and with domestic peace and purity; and take your firm stand against the introduction of any public amusements by which the order and good habits of society may be unhappily affected.

Let not the old excuses be again brought forward to justify you in the neglect of institutions which you acknowledge to be useful, and which you believe to be the command of God. Reform whatever there is to be reformed in your attendance on public worship, and in your observance of the exercises of religion.

Let us begin the year with an humble and penitent acknowledgment of our sins, defects, and

degeneracies, and pray to God for pardon. Let us set out, with confidence in his aid, upon a new career of more effective obedience. We cannot, it is true, resolve upon everything at once, our deficiencies and sins are too numerous to be reformed by one act of solemn determination; but we can all fix upon some portion of character and conduct, and thither bend our resolution; and at least we can all resolve to relinquish any evil habit which we are conscious of indulging. Though it is dangerous to promise much that we will do, we can all determine before God and our hearts, what we will abandon.

But, my friends, what have I been recommending! Resolutions for another year, for the rest of life, when it may be, that some of us shall not see another day; many of us, not another year! I wonder at the temerity, the confidence of man! Spare us, good Lord! Cut us not off in the midst of our days. Give us another year that we may repent and serve thee better.

SERMON XX.

SOURCES OF THE COMMON MISAPPREHENSIONS OF GOD.

PSALMS, L. 21.

THOU THOUGH TEST THAT I WAS ALTOGETHER SUCH AN ONE AS

THYSELF.

any way

distinct from

RELIGION, as far as it is in morals, has reference to God. If there were no God at the head of the universe, there could be no religion, because it is implied in every definition which can be given of a religious man, that his conduct is governed by his sense of God's approbation. Of course, as far as the characters of men differ who believe in the existence of such a supreme being, the different ideas which they entertain of this being must lie at the root of the diversities in their characters. Hence, if you follow men up to their most secret persuasions, you will find that their notions of God's character are variously modified. If we all conceived of it exactly alike, it would be impossible that such varieties should exist in our speculations and practice. It becomes, therefore, to every man, a subject of im