because they cannot see or feel these blessed truths; but in candour and sincerity they think them wild fancies, eccentric notions, dangerous delusions. And thus while the open offender sins against his conscience, and carries about him a monitor, who, though unheeded, warns him; the lukewarm rejects the Gospel with the full sanction of his own judgment. The one disobeys his director, but may, at some happier moment, follow him. The other has seduced, or rather bewildered, his guide, and now goes after a blind leader of the blind. How awful is this state! If the light that is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness! Nor will it avail in extenuation to say, no man can be blamed for acting and thinking as his convictions lead. Perhaps the heaviest charges against the reprobate at the day of final reckoning will be, that they have perverted their moral sense, that they have abused their conscience, that they were capable of thinking as they did. "There is a way," says Solomon, "which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."

Guarded by discretion and by worldly prudence, the lukewarm shun those snares, and escape those miseries, which nevertheless often arrest us in a course of sin, and call the peni

strong temptation, and carried headlong by tempestuous passion-Suppose him, I say, in this mad career of vice, to lose all sober calculation, to sacrifice fortune, prospects, health and every thing; and in this state of desperation, to shun the presence of that friend whose goodness he had abused, to grow weary of your expostulations, and at last burdened by obligation, stung and goaded by a sense of his own ingratitude, to assume the posture of stern hostility and defiance.

Suppose the other, whose deliverance you had thus dearly purchased, to take an opposite direction on the wide field of life; and by enutious management, and prudent calculations of his own interest, to gain a fair character, and to reap all the fruits of established reputation. After a long interval, suppose that you, his friend in need, his succourer in distress, call at the door of this respected per

You anticipate that emotion of soul, that fnemy of feeling, which such a meeting might indeed well produce. But no-you find someHang it once that checks these forward beatings of the heart.

Rcures believe it;

You look around, and can but still all bespeaks that you are received with cool civility, and formal distance, You hardly trust your senses, when you see no gratitude in those eyes, from which

you had once wiped off the tears--when you ascertain, beyond the semblance of doubt, that your kindness is just remembered, but without one tender feeling of it; that so much acknowledgment will be given, and no more; that you may save yourself the pains of further explanation, that the heart is steeled and the mind made up.

Now, my brethren, which of these would you rank the lowest? Is it the frenzied wretch who renounces reason, sense, and interest, and flings them all to the winds of heaven? Or is it not rather the prudent manager, who feels his own heart at ease while his benefactor's heart is wounded; who, in a word, can talk of conscience in any other matter, while the heavy charge is still unanswered, of having wronged and injured his friend and his deliverer? No-in spite of all his popularity, you would know a secret of that man, which would blight and blacken every action of his life.— He might appear virtuous to others, but you would know that he was incapable of virtue: you would know that he had a bad heart, and from a bad heart no real good can flow.

Such is the illustration I submit to you; and it will, I think, explain why it is, that in the eyes of God, the vilest sinner may often be less hateful than the wise and prudent of this

Tird. They are a mateři a tie andest benefacur. Ze nest ræerms of all trends But, ry, the feeger made if jaseness and legmeracy belongs act a the conscious wretch * Ke Lighted from his presence, but t 3d man xic. in settled principle, withhelds the fitness of his heart im God, who makes a calm and dellene istribution, gives pan to the world, and presents the impicas cffering of the rest to heaven.

But besides the guilt of such a state, the means of recovery from it are peculiarly diffcult. The man who lives in open sin, cannot mistake the nature of his conduct: he cannot commit marder, or adultery, without knowing that he is a transgressor of the law. But these outward and positive commands the lukewarm do not transgress. Against that law, whose seat and sanctions are in the soul, they do indeed sin with a high hand. But the danger is, that they can do this without knowing it. The spirituality of God's law is veiled from their eyes. All beyond the forms of religion, they soberly consider as enthusiasm. Talk to them of faith, as that by which the mind holds converse with the eternal and unseen world-talk to them of the love of God, as a principle of the purest happiness, as heaven already opened in the soul -and they do not heave a sigh,

because they cannot see or feel these blessed truths; but in candour and sincerity they think them wild fancies, eccentric notions, dangerous delusions. And thus while the open offender sins against his conscience, and carries about him a monitor, who, though unheeded, warns him; the lukewarm rejects the Gospel with the full sanction of his own judgment. The one disobeys his director, but may, at some happier moment, follow him. The other has seduced, or rather bewildered, his guide, and now goes after a blind leader of the blind. How awful is this state! If the light that is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness! Nor will it avail in extenuation to say, no man can be blamed for acting and thinking as his convictions lead. Perhaps the heaviest charges against the reprobate at the day of final reckoning will be, that they have perverted their moral sense, that they have abused their conscience, that they were capable of thinking as they did. "There is a way," says Solomon, "which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."

Guarded by discretion and by worldly prudence, the lukewarm shun those snares, and escape those miseries, which nevertheless often arrest us in a course of sin, and call the peni