Turn ye, therefore, to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope. Let this gracious proclamation be ever sounding in your ears. Consider it as immediately addressed to you, as if there were not another sinner in the world, but yourselves. You are, as it were, "shut up unto the faith." In our national troubles, God has cut us off from all human dependencies. We look on this side, and on that, but refuge fails us. No one can we call to in our distress to assist us. All stand aloof from us; or, what is worse, still treacherously watch for our halting. I say, God seems to have brought us into such a situation, that we may be constrained to look upward. Every other way of escaping the ruin which threatens us is shut up, that we may be obliged to take refuge in his merciful bosom. So it is with you, who now labour, and are heavy laden with sin. You are terrified with a bitter sense of God's wrath, and conscious of having de served it; miserable now, yet dreading what is infinitely worse; and conscious of having merited all the misery to which you are exposed. You are willing to flee from the wrath to come, and yet know not what path to pursue; and it seems to you, that nothing remains, but a certain fearful looking for of wrath, and fiery indignation. If, at this critical moment, Christ be presented to you as a strong hold, can you refuse to turn to him for safety? You are convinced, that there is no other way of escaping the damnation of hell; and is not this alone a sufficient inducement? O, turn to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope. You have the greatest encouragement to do it: for he has said, "Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out." If, from a persuasion of

your own need of him, and of his sufficiency to supply your wants, you put your trust in him, he will be a Saviour to you. It was never known that a returning people were destroyed. "At what instant," says God, "I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it, if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." So it is with. respect to our spiritual concerns. "At what instant," says God, "I shall speak against any particular sinner, that the measure of his iniquities is almost full, and that I will speedily cut him down, and cast him into the lake that burns with fire and brimstone; if the wicked will forsake his way, and the unrigh teous man his thoughts, and return unto me, I will have mercy upon him; yea, I will abundantly pardon." I repeat it, therefore, and wish that you could take the comfort which this consideration affords. If the Lord has been pleased so to open your eyes, and touch and turn your hearts, as that you perceive and feel your misery and danger; if sin, all sin, those sins which you once loved as your life, be now bitter and loathsome: if you wish to be delivered from the power and practice of them, as vehemently as from their pollution and penalty; if you begin to perceive your need of Christ, and perpetually cry out, like persons in an agony, Lord, help me; Lord, save me, I perish; Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy upon me:" you have unspeakable reason to be thankful. Be your distress what it will, you are prisoners of hope. Deliverance is near: Therefore

wait on the Lord, and be of good courage, for he shall strengthen thy heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.

But I have scarcely time left for a word, or two, to those happy and highly-favoured persons who have entered this strong hold.'

Be often, then, looking back to your former imprisonment. Paul did not think himself above it. "For we ourselves also," says he, "were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another." "Time was," may you say, "when I was led captive by Satan at his will: when no sooner did a temptation present itself, than I was ready to comply; when, if conscience disturbed me, I quickly lulled it asleep again, and went on as regularly in sin as before. What a sad time was that! I am ashamed to look back upon it. How many years did I live in this disgraceful and miserable condition! A rebel against God, an enemy to Christ, glorying in my shame, and hastening to destruction. Whenever I feel myself tempted to pride, it is but to look back to the rock from which I was hewn, and to the hole of the pit from which I was taken: and there is enough to humble and confound me at once."

Let me exhort you to adore the grace that provided such a strong hold, and brought you into it. He knew that you would meet with powerful enemies, and therefore he provided a mighty Redeemer. Bless him for that, and especially thank him for inclining and enabling you to take refuge in him. You know how backward you were to go to him at first. You

remember how many invitations you refused; and how obstinately you persisted in trusting in those refuges which would certainly have proved your destruction. You recollect how, at last, free and omnipotent Grace helped you to get over every objection, and made you willing in the day of his power, Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous; and again, I say, rejoice.

Finally, beware of dishonouring this strong hold. This is done when men think it a confinement, and are uneasy under its restraints. A restraint it is: and to graceless minds it would be certainly painful. But it is not, Christians, it cannot surely be, unpleasant to you. It restrains from nothing, but what is dishonourable to God, and hurtful to yourselves. It will not allow you to run with others to the same excess of riot; and will not permit you to be lovers of profit or pleasure, more than lovers of God. It will not suffer you to be conformed to the world in its sins or its vanities; and certainly you do not think this to be an abridgment of your liberty; I am sure that you dishonour Christ, if you do. Beware, too, of giving way to unbelieving fears and anxieties. Should Satan rage, and the world frown, and look a little more fiercely than is usual; if you presently give yourselves up for lost, and conclude that nothing, nothing can save you, you forget, and shamefully dishonour, your refuge. Instead of indulging gloomy apprehensions, rather say with the Psalmist, "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he

that keepeth thee will not slumber; he that keepeth Israel, will not slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out, and thy coming in, from this time forth, even for evermore."