because you were afraid of the ridicule of the world; and you, because you cherished some ruling, forbidden lust which neither the command of God, nor the love of Christ, nor the fear of hell would induce you to surrender. And then what a place would be heaven! What sympathy you would have with the redeemed! What communion of spirit with the martyrs! What fellowship with the Lord Jesus! What gratitude would you have to him for salvation! But, my hearers, do you believe that you are to be saved in that way?—I, for one, do not. These are not the reasons why men are to enter into heaven.

I wish to get, by this discourse, at least one idea before your minds. It is this. If you have a good reason now for not being a Christian, it will be good at the bar of God. If not good then and there, it is worth nothing now. If it will not be the ground of your admission into heaven, it is of no value. Will you risk your soul's salvation, then, on the reasons which now operate to prevent your becoming a Christian? A question than which none more important ever demanded your attention.

I close here. You see the conclusion to which we have come. If these reasons are not satisfactory; if none on which you rely are satisfactory, then you OUGHT to be a Christian.-To be a Christian. There is safety. There the mind finds rest. There, in the love of God, and in dependence on the Saviour, and in the hope of heaven, man feels that he does RIGHT. For that he needs no excuse; he desires no apology. He is conscious of no wrong-doing when he gives up his heart to God; he looks back with no self-reproaches for it when he contemplates it from the bed of death. The reasons which induce him to give himself to God are conclusive to his own mind; satisfactory to his friends; approved by his Judge. No man has, or ever has had remorse of conscience for being a Christian; no man has self-reproaches for it on a bed of death. The mind then is at rest; it is free from the anguish of remorse, from alarms. Who, then, to-day will seek that peace, and the smiles of an approving conscience, and of God?

SERMON VII.

THE MISERY OF FORSAKING GOD.

Jeremiah ii. 13. My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

THE text affirms that man is guilty of two evils. One is, that he has wandered away from God. The other is, that he has sought for happiness in objects which are incapable of affording it. There is the evil of guilt, and the evil of wretchedness; the evil of withholding the affections from the true source of blessedness, and the evil of fixing them on improper objects; the evil of going away from a fountain where happiness might be found, and the evil of attempting to find it in other objects as a compensation for that which is lost by forsaking God. Men have sought happiness by going away from God. They have been disappointed. They have not found it. That which they have found bears the same relation to true enjoyment which a cistern that is broken and leaky does to a running fountain. Such a cistern may have a great deal of beauty. It may be cut from the finest marble, and ornamented with all the skill of art. It may be placed in a beautiful grove, or it may occupy the splendid court of an oriental palace-but if it is cracked and broken, however much it may be admired, it fails in the design for which it was made, and for which a cistern is desirable.

Man has gone off from God, the great fountain of blessedness. He is a wanderer and an exile. He has substituted in the place of God that which is the fruit of his own invention, and thus far the history of this world is little else than an experiment to ascertain whether the soul can be satisfied without God, and whether the forms of amusement and business can be so modified and varied and refined that man can find in them the happiness which his immortal nature demands. It is a most inter

esting inquiry whether he has been successful in the pursuit, or whether it has been like forsaking a fountain bubbling in the desert for a splendid but broken cistern. To that enquiry I propose now to direct your attention. I shall confine my remarks to two points.

I.. What has man substituted in the place of God? and II. Has it answered the purpose, or has it been successful?

I. What has man substituted in the place of the happiness which might have been found in God?

The text says that he has forsaken God-the fountain of living waters. Let us dwell a moment on these words." Living waters." They are not dead and stagnant-but running-and imparting life. Nothing is more beautiful than a running stream. In the East the course of a stream through a desert can be traced afar by the trees, and shrubs, and flowers, and grass that spring up on its bank, and that are sustained by it in its coursea long waving line of green in the waste of sand. Where it winds along, that line of verdure winds along; where it expands into a lake that expands; where it dies away and is lost in the sand that disappears. So with the blessedness flowing from the living fountain of waters. Life, the true life in this world, can be traced by the flowing forth of those streams from God. Where those streams flow, health and happiness spring up; where they are unseen true happiness disappears, and the world is a desert."A fountain." God is a "fountain" of living waters he is the source whence all the streams of bliss take their rise. The fountain is ever fresh, ever pure, ever full. The streams of blessedness begin to flow there; and should that fountain cease, every stream would die away, and the whole world would be an arid waste.

My proposition is, that men have forsaken that everliving fountain. I do not now speak merely of the idolatrous world-of man who there has forsaken God, and who bows down to shapeless blocks. I speak of man as man-in whatever form the departure may appear; and I rather wish to show how the human heart has gone off from God so that we may feel it of ourselves, than to turn your thoughts to far-distant idolaters and philosophers. I could illustrate it of the ancient Hebrews,

the Hindoo, the Chinese, the Tartar, the African, the New Zealander; I could illustrate it by the opinions and feelings of the ancient philosopher; but I have a more striking and more interesting source of illustration here— in our own families-and our own hearts-and the illustration will be confined mainly to ourselves,

It can be scarcely necessary to go into an extended statement of what man has substituted in the place of the happiness which he is unwilling to seek in his Maker, or which is the same thing in the hopes and consolations of religion. A very brief enumeration is all that the time will admit, and is all that is demanded in order to a proper understanding of our subject.

A part have sought it in philosophy. They have retreated from the bustle and the turmoil of life. They have sought enjoyment in calm contemplation on the relations of things, and on the abstract questions of philosophic inquiry. They have sought to raise themselves above suffering by rendering the mind insensible to the common ills of life, and they attempt to separate themselves from the common herd of mortals by their insensibility to the woes which affect the mass of mankind. They are the stoics of all ages-who whether in the costume and pride of the ancient Grecian philosophers; or in the Buddhism of China and India; or in the monkish system of the middle ages; or in the occasional victim of this wretched insanity who retires to caverns and rocks in modern times; or in the cool contemplative philosopher who lives but to speculate, or to laugh at the follies of mankind, have sought for happiness in the same way by supposing that it consisted in insensibility to suffering, and in that pride which looks with disdain on the mass of mankind.

A part, men of leisure and of taste, fly to the academic grove, and look for happiness there. They go up the sides of Parnassus, and drink from the Castalian fount, and court the society of the Muses. Their enjoyment, and their solace, is in the pursuit of elegant literature. Their time is spent in belles-lettres-in the records of historic truth, or in the world of poetry and of fiction. Our land furnishes as yet less of this than countries where men are favored with more hereditary wealth, and more

"learned leisure;" but there are not a few who have such leisure, and not a few, it is to be feared, who substitute such sources of happiness in the place of that which is derived from the fountain of living waters. As wealth increases; and as leisure is multiplied, the desire for this species of happiness will increase-increase not as it ought to in connexion with religion, and with the cultivation of the graces of a renovated spirit, but as the substitute FOR religion, and as in fact the excluder of God from the soul. From the cares and troubles of life. they will flee to these calm retreats as a refuge, and seek there to forget their sorrows, and to escape from the dreadful apprehension of death and the judgment.

Another, and a much larger portion, have substituted the pursuit of wealth in place of religion, and their happiness is there. This has become almost the universal passion of civilized man. Yet it is not happiness so much sought in the pursuit of wealth itself, as in something beyond. The cultivator of elegant literature seeks his enjoyment in the pursuit itself, and tastes the bliss which he seeks as he goes on the journey of life; the man seeking wealth expects his happiness not in the pursuit, but in that which wealth will procure. He looks on to the old age of elegant retirement and leisure which is before him; he sees in vision the comforts which he will be able to draw around him in the splendid mansion, and grounds, and in the abundance which his old age will enjoy. He crosses the ocean, and spends the vigor of his days in Calcutta or in Canton, not because he has pleasure in a voyage at sea; or in the long exile from home; or in the society in a distant land; or in the burning heats of a tropical sun, but because he has fixed his eye on the comforts which amassed wealth will spread around him when he shall return.

A large portion, perhaps nearly as large a portion as can afford the means-and many of those who cannotseek for happiness in the brilliant world of songs and dances; in the splendid circles where God is forgotten, and where prayer is unknown. For that they live; and the pleasure which is sought there is made a substitute for that which might be, and which should be sought in God. No one can deny that vast talent is often exhibited