the truth! If you are seeking and expecting to be happy now, and to be blessed hereafter, and at the same time doing as the world does, and loving sin, and hungering and thirsting after the deeds of the flesh; then let me tell you that happiness will never be your's until an entirely new course is steered. You know that hitherto you have never found this happiness, and as the Lord liveth you will never find it in this direction. "There is no peace saith my God to the wicked. But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest." Isaiah lvii. 20, 21. You cannot be blessed or happy until you become what the Lord would have you to be. You cannot be blessed or happy until the Lord loves you; and until you have repented of, and forsaken old sinful courses, your your iniquitous hungerings and thirstings, and have fled to Christ Jesus for pardon for the past, and grace for the future, until this has taken place the Lord will not love you as his children. Begin then to pray for these feelings, convictions, and

old

desires mentioned in the text;

and may the Lord hear and answer your prayers,

for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

"On thee, O God of purity,

I wait for cleansing grace;
None without holiness shall see
The glories of thy face.

"In souls unholy and unclean,
Thou never canst delight;

Nor shall they, if unsav'd from sin,
Appear before thy sight.

"But as for me, with humble fear,
I will approach thy gate,
Though most unworthy to draw near,

Or in thy courts to wait.

"I trust in thine unbounded grace,
Which is so freely giv'n,

And worship in thy holy place,
And lift my soul to heav'n.

"Lead me in all thy righteous ways,
Nor suffer me to slide;
Point out the path before my
My God, be thou my guide!

"O may I ne'er to evil yield,

Defended from above,

face,

And kept and cover'd with the shield
Of thine almighty love."

SERMON XIX.

THE ADVANTAGE OF HEARKENING UNTO THE
LORD'S COMMANDMENTS.

ISAIAH XLVIII. 18.

“O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea."

At the time the Lord sent the warnings, instructions, expostulations and promises to the children of Israel which are contained in this chapter, that unhappy and ungrateful people were in captivity, and of course, in much trouble. But in the text, and the verse that follows it, the Lord assures them that it was entirely by their own sin that they had brought themselves into captivity; and not that he had pleasure in punishing. Nay, he declares that had they only acted according to his Word, they would have experienced deliverance from their pre

sent sorrows and sufferings, and have enjoyed increasing and continued blessings. "Their peace would have been as a river, and their righteousness as the waves of the sea."

We will now leave the matter, as it concerned the Israelites, and see what instruction, warning and application it holds out to us. And here let it be observed, that the whole subject is to be more especially directed to those seamen who have been in the habit of worshipping under the Bethel flag, and in other means of grace now happily to be found afloat and on shore; such as no seaman ever enjoyed until of late years. Wonderful have been the gracious ways of the Lord in making known the knowledge of the gospel to seamen within the last thirty years. The writer of this discourse can look back to the time when there was no such thing seen, or heard, or thought of, as preaching and prayermeetings on board of merchant vessels; no such thing as religious services on the river Thames, or in any port in the

kingdom. Those who were then afloat were, almost to a man, totally ignorant of, and unconcerned about the way of salvation; and, indeed, about every thing that concerned their everlasting peace. Seamen lived and died like creatures that had no souls to be lost or saved. Now, through the abundant grace and mercy of God, many teachers and preachers of salvation are going to and fro among our tens of thousands of mariners, and religious, gospel knowledge is increased; and many are truly brought to Christ by conviction of sin, and conversion to righteousness, and saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But while many now are happy and growing Christians, enjoying religion in their own souls, and recommending it to others by words and truly christian practice; there are others among them, as is the case in every denomination of professors on shore, who neither enjoy the gospel in themselves, nor recommend it to others by their practice; but who are rather a stumblingblock to those around them, while they