died for us, then were we all dead; and he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them, and rose again."

If you reject this sacrifice, then no price has been paid for you, or it has been paid in vain; you do not acknowledge it; you must save yourself, without hoping that one single drop of your Redeemer's blood shall fall upon your soul, to render it fit to stand before the holiness of God. If your heart sinks, and your soul shudders at such a thought, then recollect, that if Christ died for you, then were you dead,-dead in trespasses and sins,-in bondage to corruption, and the servant of those masters whose wages is death; and recollect that the very purpose for which he died, and without which you disappoint the glorious salvation that he has wrought for you, is, "that henceforth you should not live unto yourselves, but unto him who died for you and rose again." We must die with him if we hope to live with him; we must enter into his service, and become his disciples by glorifying him in the body and the spirit, which he has redeemed; and then can we look with pure and lowly hope for the forgiveness of our past wanderings, and of the numberless transgressions of which we are guilty, even after we have surrendered ourselves to his good guidance: then can we look for support in the thousand falterings which we shall make in our journey, when we faintly attempt to tread in his gracious and sainted footsteps.

He has purchased your thoughts; for he has offered to make you the temple of his Holy Spirit, who will purify you from sin, and fill you with righteousness and true holiness, and who will give you strength in all your trials, and consolation under all the cares of the world, the infirmities of your nature, and the sinkings of your hearts.

He has purchased the words of your mouth; for he has given you an example that ye should follow him, "who when he was reviled, reviled not again, and in

whose mouth was found no guile ;" and who out of the good treasure of his heart, brought forth good things.

He has purchased your bodies; those sinful bodies, which were once the masters of our souls, by whose means we often become the servants of corruption and sensuality those members, which were before the instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, are now made the instruments of righteousness unto God; and, by the help and power of that spirit which he always gives to those that humbly ask him, we shall be able to wield these stubborn and rebellious members, the former instruments of sin and corruption, in the living service of our Redeemer. It is as if we had stormed the camp of the enemy,—had seized his weapons and his armour, and had turned them against himself.

Choose, then, which master you will serve- -Mammon or God. Choose, then, which wages you will receive Death or Immortality and recollect that you can no more serve both these, than you can receive the wages of both; and that the service of God and of Mammon are as inconsistent as the death and immortality that are their natural consequences. Think, before you decide, which master loves you most; think which would sacrifice most for you.-Think what price the cold and ungenerous world would give to redeem you from a single pang of body or mind; and think with what kind and devoted prodigality your blessed Redeemer paid down himself-his body, and his meek and holy spirit, for your everlasting welfare.

Finally it may be useful to reflect that the happiness of the next world will consist in glorifying God in our body, and in our spirit, and in enjoying the delights of his everlasting presence. We can conceive no

other; so that it might be well, even on this account alone, to cultivate a disposition that is to constitute our happiness to all eternity: for even if our wild hopes of attaining heaven without glorifying him upon earth were fulfilled,—after all, what would it come to? The last trumpet would summon us to glorify him in our body and in our spirit for ever and ever!

SERMON VIII.

COLOSSIANS, iii. 3.

Set your affections on things above; not on things on the earth.

To go to heaven when we die seems to be the grand wish that we form to ourselves whenever we happen to fall into a serious mood of thinking, or begin to grow melancholy at the prospect of death. To go to heaven, -and then it would appear that nothing more was wanting to complete our happiness.

And yet there is one very simple question, that is quite surprising we so seldom think of asking; and that is," What kind of place we should find it if we went there?" That heaven is a scene of unbounded happiness and everlasting delight there is no doubt whatever; but should we find it so, is quite another question. We know that a deaf man might be surrounded with the sweetest music and the most enchanting harmony, and to him it would be all dead silence; and a beautiful portrait or a lovely landscape would be nothing but darkness to a blind man's eye.

But to come still nearer to the point; we know that the same company that would be enjoyed by a man of one description would be actually insupportable to another; and that there are many situations in which one man would find himself perfectly happy, that would make another utterly miserable. Now, to decide the

question at once, only conceive for a moment that every man was allowed to choose for himself in this particular, and that heaven was to be just what every man pleases; and what would be the result? Only look back upon your life, and observe the scenes in which you felt yourself most at home-the things in which your soul has most delighted-where your heart was most interested and engaged; and that would be your heaven. Fix your eye upon those scenes of your keenest enjoyment-mark them well, dwell upon the circumstances by which they were characterised,—and you have the kind of heaven that you would choose. "Where your treasure is, there would your heart be also."

With some men heaven would be-what we will not dare to name: we must draw a curtain over it ;-we might mistake it for a scene that bears another name. With others, it would be the sumptuous board and the splendid establishment. With others, it would be the reward of ambition, and the shout of popular applause. With others, a round of the amusements that fill up the vacancies of human life. And, in general, it would probably be just such a place as this earth,-only with a certain number of comforts and advantages superadded, and a certain number of dangers and inconveniences removed.

Now, is it not probable that to such men as these, heaven would be a state either of languor or of misery? "Heaven is not a theatre, that shifts the scene to suit itself to every foolish fancy and every silly humour of the spectators. It has, indeed, its fulness of joy and its pleasures for evermore: but the question is, have we the power and the relish to enjoy them? We will suppose, for a moment, that our hope of going to heaven is, some way or other, fulfilled, and that (God knows how) we have passed the fearful account that we shall have to render,-of sins committed, of duties neglected, of blessings abused, of time squandered away. will suppose that we have found our way into that

heaven that is the object of our hopes :—what have we to promise ourselves? We know at least what we shall not find there; we know that "naked as we came into this world, naked shall we go out of it ;" that the body which held us and the earth together is laid in the dust from which it was taken; the bond that united us to this lower world is snapped, and the channel through which we communicated with it withdrawn; and this busy stage, upon which our affections have been running to and fro, seeking rest and finding none, is at once concealed from our view, and becomes to us a dead blank. Alas! alas! what object shall we fasten upon to fill up the dreary vacancy which was once occupied by our busy pursuits and our dear pleasures upon earth? For the gold and the silver are gone, and the pipe, and the viol, and the tabret, have died away in silence. What shall we seize upon to employ our minds, or to interest our hearts, or to excite our desires, or to fill up our conversation? Alas! where is the buying and the selling, the bustle of business, or the enthusiasm of enterprise, that supplied us at once with our cares and our hopes? Where is the flowing goblet, and the wild and wanton merriment that used to set the table in a roar? Alas! alas! what shall we do for the delightful trifles by which we contrived, while we were upon the earth, to get rid of time, and forget that it was rolling over our heads? What shall we do for those wild pursuits by which we made ourselves mad for a time, and hunted eternity out of our minds? What shall we do for conversation; upon what subjects shall we converse? And then-to go on in this way for ever! and for ever! and for ever! We cannot sit thus dreaming through eternity. If this be Heaven, would to God he had left us still upon our beloved earth! Wherefore have ye brought us out of Egypt, where we ate and drank and were merry, and have left us here to perish in the wilderness? Better would it have been for us to have still our interchanges of hope and fear, of pleasure and pain, of repose and fatigue, of joy and