complain of the fhortness of life, yet how many people feem quite overstocked with the days and hours of it, and are continually fending out into the highways and streets of the city, for guests to come and take it off their hands?- -If fome of the more distressful objects of this kind were to fit down and write a bill of their time, though partial as that of the unjuft fteward, when they found, in reality, that the whole fum of it, for many years, amounted to little more than this,that they had rose up to eat, to drink,to play,-and had laid down. again, merely because they were fit for nothing elfe: -when they looked back and beheld this fair space, capable of such heavenly improvements,-all fcrawled over and defaced with a fucceffion of fo many umeaning cyphers,good GOD!-how would they be ashamed and confounded at the account?

With what reflections will they be able to fupport themselves in the decline of a life fo miferably caft away,-should it happen, as it fometimes does-that they have stood idle even unto the eleventh hour?We have not always power, and are not always in a temper, to impofe upon ourselves. When the edge of appetite is worn down, and the fpirits of youthful days are cooled, which hurried us on in a circle of pleasure and impertinence, then reafon and reflection will have the weight which they deferve ;→→ afflictions, or the bed of ficknefs, will fupply the place of confcience ;--and, if they fhould fail,

old age will overtake us at last--and fhow us the paft purfuits of life,and force us to look upon. them in their true point of view.

If there is any

thing more to caft a cloud upon fo melancholy a profpect as this fhows us, it is furely the difficulty and hazard of having all the work of the day to perform in the last hour :-of making an atonement to GOD, when we have no facrifice to offer him, but the dregs and infirmities of those days, when we could have no pleasure in them.

How far GOD may be pleafed to accept fuch late and imperfect fevices, is beyond the intention of this difcourfe. Whatever ftrefs fome may lay upon it, a death bed repentance is but a weak and flender plank to trust our all upon.Such as it is; to that, and God's infinite mercies, we commit them, who will not employ that time and opportunity he has given, to provide a better security.

That we may all make a right use of the time allotted us.-GOD grant, through the merits of his Son Jefus Chrift. Amen.

SERMON XXXVIII.

On Enthusiasm.

ST. JOHN XV. 5.

For without me ye can do nothing.

OUR UR Saviour, in the former part of the verse, having told his disciples,That he was the vine, and that they were only branches :-intimating, in what a degree their good fruits, as well as the fuccefs of all their endeavours, were to depend upon his communications with them;- -he closes the illuftration with the inference from it, in the words of the text, -For without me, ye can do nothing. In the 11th chapter to the Romans, where the manner is explained, in which a Chriftian ftands by faith,-there is a like illustration made ufe of, and probably with an eye to this, where St. Paul inftructs us-that, a good man ftands as the branch of a wild olive does when it is grafted into a good olive tree;-and that is it flourishes, not through its own virtue, but in virtue of the root,-and fuch a root as is naturally not its own.

It is very remarkable in that paffage,that the

apostle calls a bad man a wild olive tree ;-not barely a branch (as in the other case), but a tree,which, having a root of its own, fupports itself, and stands in its own ftrength, and brings forth its own fruit. And fo does every bad man, in respect of the wild and four fruit of a vitious and corrupt heart. According to the refemblance,-if the apostle intended it, he is a tree,-has a root of his own,— and fruitfulness, such as it is, with a power to bring it forth without help. But in respect of religion, and the moral improvements of virtue and goodness,— the apostle calls us, and reafon tells us, we are no more than a branch; and all our fruitfulness, and all our fupport, depend fo much upon the influence and communications of GOD,-that without him we can do nothing,-as our Saviour declares in the text. There is scarce any point in our religion, wherein men have run into fuch violent extremes, as in the fenfes given to this, and fuch like declaratiens in Scripture, of our fufficiency being of GOD;fome understanding them fo, as to leave no meaning at all in them;-others,too much :

the

one interpreting the gifts and influences of the Spirit, fo as to destroy the truth of all fuch promises and declarations in the gofpel;-the other carrying their notions of them fo high, as to destroy the reason of the gofpel itself,and render the Chriftian religion, which confifts of fober and confiftent doctrines,the most intoxicated, the moft wild and unintelli gible inftitution, that ever was in the world.

This being premifed, I know not how I can more seasonably engage your attention this day, than by

fhort examination of each of these errors ;—————in doing which, as I shall take some pains to reduce both the extremes of them to reason, it will neceffarily lead me, at the same time, to mark the fafe and true doctrine of our church, concerning the promised influences and operations of the Spirit of GOD upon our hearts; which, however depreciated through the first mistake, or boafted of beyond measure through the second,muft, nevertheless, be fo limited and understood, as, on one hand, to make the gofpel of Chrift confiftent with itself, and, on the other, to make it confiftent with reason and common fense.

If we confider the many express declarations, wherein our Saviour tells his followers, before his crucifixion,-That GOD would fend his Spirit, the Comforter, amongst them, to fupply his place in their hearts and as in the text,-that without him they could do nothing if we conceive them as fpoken to his difciples with an immediate view to the emergencies they were under, from their natural incapacities of finishing the great work he had left them, and building upon that large foundation he had laid; without fome extraordinary help and guidance to carry them through, no one can difpute that evidence and confirmation which was afterwards given of its truth;—as our Lord's difciples were illiterate. men, confequently unskilled in the arts and acquired ways of perfuafion,-Unless this want had been fup- : plied,the firft obftacle to their labours must have been difcouraged and put an end to them for ever. As they had no language but their own, without