If any of you, my aged brethren, have let this time pass away unregarded, you have loft your best time; and I deplore your lofs. But for heaven's fake, lose not what remains. Be humble for paft neglect, apply with diligence to the work, which you ought to have begun before. Death is advancing; it lingers not. Time is paffing; it flumbers not. It is high time to awake out of fleep. Wherefore, let me apply to you the words of the apoftle, " Awake, ye that fleep, and arife from the dead, and Chrift fhall give you light. And walk circumfpectly, not as fools, but as wife, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

MY AGED BRETHREN AND FRIENDS,

YOU will permit an aged man, like yourselves, to speak, this afternoon, a few words to you..... Or, if you please, he will in your hearing speak to himself.......Pertinent to our case, and worthy of our adoption, is the petition of the Psalmist in

PSALM lxxi. 9.

Caft me not off in the time of old age........ Forfake me not when my strength faileth.

THERE is little doubt, that David was

the author of this Pfalm. And from several expreffions in it we learn, that he wrote it in his old age. He prays in our text, "Caft me not off in the time of old age." And, in verse 18, "Now, when I am old and grey headed, forfake me not." But David, when he died, was but about feventy years old, and he probably wrote the Pfalm fome years before his death; perhaps in the time of

Abfalom's rebellion; for he speaks of " enemies, who then took counsel together, and laid wait for his life." And we find not that he was ever in this perilous and critical fituation after that rebellion. David, then, realized old age earlier than fome feem to do. He noticed its firft appearance; he brought it near in his meditations, before it had actually invaded him; or, at least, when he began to perceive its approach in the decline of his ftrength, and the increafe of his grey hairs. But many choose to view it as diftant-Grey hairs are here and there upon them, and they perceive it not." They enjoy, in a comfortable degree, the pleasures of life; and that evil day, in which there is no pleasure, they put far from them.

It would be wife for us to imitate David's example; to think of, and prepare for the evil day, before it comes; to fecure God's gracious prefence now; and in our daily prayers to ask, that " he would not caft us off in the time of old age, nor forfake us when our strength faileth."

The Pfalmift here reminds us, that old age is a time when strength faileth: and that at fuch a time God's prefence is of peculiar importance. I. Old age is a time when ftrength faileth.

There is then a fenfible decay of bodily ftrength. As we come into the world, fo we depart, impotent, feeble and helpless. From our infancy we gradually acquire ftrength, until we arrive to our full maturity. We then for a few years continue stationary, without fenfible change. After a little while we begin to feel, and are constrained to con. fefs an alteration in our ftate. Our limbs lofe their former activity; our customary labour becomes wearifome; pains invade our frame; our Deep, often interrupted, refreshes us less than

heretofore; our food is lefs guftful; our fight is bedimmed, and our ears are dull of hearing; "they that look out at the windows are darkened, and the daughters of mufic are low;" the pleasures of reading and conversation abate; our ancient companions have generally withdrawn to another world, and the few who are left are, like us, fhut up, that they cannot go forth. Hence focial visits are more unfrequent and less entertaining; and our condition grows more and more folitary and difconfolate.

With our bodily, our mental ftrength usually declines.

The faculty, which first appears to fail, is the memory. And its failure we firft obferve in the difficulty of recollecting little things, fuch as names and numbers. We then perceive it in our inability to retain things which are recent. What we early heard or read, abides with us; but later information is foon forgotten. Hence, in converfation, aged people often repeat the fame questions and relate the fame ftories; for they foon lofe the recollection of what has paffed. And hence perhaps, in part, is the impertinent garrulity, of which old age is accufed. You fee, then, my young friends, the importance of laying up a good store of useful knowledge in early life. What you acquire now, you may retain later acquifitions will be fmall and uncertain. Like riches, they will make themselves wings and fly away. In the decline of life you muft chiefly depend on the old stock; and happy, if you fhall have then a rich ftore to feed upon.

When memory fails, other faculties foon follow. The attention is with more difficulty fixed, and more easily diverted: the intellect is lefs acute in its difcernment, and the judgment more fallible in its decifions.

The judgment is the last faculty which the pride of age is willing to give up. Our forgetfulness we cannot but feel, and others cannot but obferve. But we choose to think our judgment remains folid and clear. We are never apt to diftruft our own opinions; for it is the nature of opinion to be fatisfied with itself. It is certain, however, that judgment muft fail in fome proportion to the failure of attention and recollection. We form a juft judgment by viewing and comparing the evidences and circumftances, which relate to the cafe in queftion. If then any material evidence, or circumftance escapes our notice, or flips from our memory, the judgment formed is uncertain, because we have but a partial view of the cafe. In all matters, where a right judgment depends on comparing feveral things, the failure of memory endangers the rectitude of the decifion.

When we perceive a decline of bodily and mental ftrength, fear and anxiety ufually increase. Difficulties once trifling now fwell to a terrifying magnitude, because we have not power to encounter them; want ftares upon us with frightful afpect, because we have not capacity to provide against it; the kind and patient attention of our friends we diftruft, because we know not how long we may be a burden to them, and we have nothing in our hands to remunerate them, except that property which they already anticipate as their own. "The grasshopper now becomes a burden; we rise up at the voice of the bird; we are afraid of that which is high, and fear is in the way."

This ftate of infirmity and anxiety, painful in itself, is rendered more fo by the recollection of what we once were, and by the anticipation of what we soon shall be.