mains unsubdued. I love thee above all, though my thoughts and affections are scattered among other things, and never fixed upon thee. I love thee above all, though I prefer a thousand things to thee and thy interest." And will God, do you think, accept that as supreme love to him which will not pass current for common friendship among mortals? Is he capable of being imposed upon by such inconsistent pretensions? No: "be not deceived; God is not mocked." Draw the peremptory conclusion, without any hesitation, that the love of God does not dwell in you. And if this be the case, what do you think of it? What a soul have you within you, that cannot love God—that cannot love supreme excellence, and all-perfect beautythat cannot love the origin and author of all the excellence and beauty that you see scattered among the works of his hands-that cannot love your prime benefactor and gracious Redeemer-that cannot love him "in whom you live, and move, and have your being; in whose hand your breath is, and whose are all your ways," and who alone is the proper happiness for your immortal spirit-that can love a parent, a child, a friend, with all their infirmities about them, but cannot love God-that can love the world -that can love sensual and even guilty enjoyments, pleasures, riches, and honors, and yet cannot love God that can love every thing that is lovely but God, who is infi nitely lovely--that can love wisdom, justice, veracity, goodness, clemency in creatures, were they are attended with many imperfections, and yet cannot love God, where they all centre and shine in the highest perfection! If love be the fulfilling of the whole law, then the want of love must be the breach of the whole law. You break it all at one blow, and your life is but one continued, uniform, uninterrupted series of sinning. The want of love takes away all spirit and life from all your religious services, and diffuses a malignity through all you do. Without the love of God you may pray, you may receive the sacrament, you may perform the outward part of every duty of religion; you may be just and charitable, and do no man any harm; you may be sober and temperate; but without the love of God you cannot do one action that is truly and formally good and acceptable to God. Now I appeal to yourselves, is not this a very danger ous situation? While you are destitute of the love of God can you flatter yourselves that you are fit for heaven? What! fit for the region of love! fit to converse with a holy God, and live for ever in his presence? Fit to spend an eternity in his service! Can you be fit for these things while you have no love to him? Certainly not; you must perceive yourselves fit for destruction, and fit for nothing else. And now, what must you do, when this shocking conviction has forced itself upon you? Must you now give up all hopes? Must you now despair of ever having the love of God kindled in your hearts? Yes; you may, you must give up all hopes; you must despair, if you go on, as you have hitherto done, thoughtless, careless, and presumptuous in sin, and in the neglect of the means which God has appointed to implant and cherish this divine, heaven-born principle in your souls. This is the direct course towards remediless, everlasting despair. But if you now admit the conviction of your miserable condition; if you endeavor immediately to break off from sin, and from every thing that tends to harden you in it; if you turn your minds to serious meditation; if you prostrate yourselves as humble, earnest petitioners before God, and continue instant in prayer; if you use every other neans of grace ordained for this purpose; I say, if you take this course, there is hope-there is hope! There is as much hope for you as there once was for any one of that glorious company of saints, now in heaven, while they were as destitute of the love of God as any of you. And will you not take these pains to save your own souls from death? Many have taken more, to save the souls of others, and you have taken a great deal to obtain the transitory, perishing enjoyments of this life. And will you take no pains for your own immortal interests? O let me prevail, let even a stranger prevail upon you, to lay out your endeavors upon this grand concern. I must insist upon it, and can take no denial. This is not the peculiarity of a party I am urging upon you. Is it Presbyterianism, or new light, that tells you you cannot be saved without the love of God? Churchmen and dissenters, Protestants and Papists, nay, Jews, Mahometans, and pagans agree in this, that the love of God is essential to all true religion; and if you entertain hopes of heaven without it, the com mon sense of mankind is against you. Therefore, O seek to have the love of God shed abroad in your hearts. XXXIII. THE OBJECTS, GROUNDS, AND EVIDENCES OF THE HOPE OF "The wicked is driven away in his wickedness; but the righteous hath hope in his death."-Prov. xiv. 32. To creatures that are placed here a few years upon trial for an everlasting state, it is of the greatest importance how they make their departure hence. The gloomy hour of death is nature's last extremity; it stands in need of some effectual support, and that support can proceed from nothing then present, but only from reviews and prospects: from the review of past life, so spent as to answer the end of life, and from the prospect of a happy immortality to follow upon this last struggle. Now men will love the world according to their conduct in it, and be happy or miserable hereafter according to their improvement of the present state of trial. "The wicked is driven away in his wickedness," says the wisest of men, "but the righteous hath hope in his death." "The wicked is driven away in his wickedness"-he dies as he lived: he lived in wickedness, and in wickedness he dies. His wickedness remains with him, when his earthly enjoyments, his friends, and all created comforts leave him for ever. The guilt of his wickedness lies heavy upon him, like a mountain of lead, ready to sink him into the depth of misery. And the principles of wickedness which he indulged in his life still live within him, even in the agonies of death; nay, they now arrive at a dreadful im mortality, and produce an eternal hell in his breast. He leaves behind him not only all his earthly comforts, but all the little remains of goodness he seemed to have, while under the restraints of divine grace, and he carries nothing but his wickedness along with him. With this dreadful attendant he must pass to the tribunal of his Judge. Tó leave his earthly all behind him, and die in the agonies of dissolving nature-this is terrible. But to die in his wickedness-this is infinitely the most terrible of all! He once flattered himself, that though he lived in wickedness, he should not die in it. He adopted many resolutions to amend and forsake his wickedness, towards the close of life, or upon a death-bed. But how is he disappointed? After all his promising purposes and hopes, he died as he lived, in wickedness. This is generally the case of veterans in sin. They are resolving and re-resolving to reform all their lives, but after all they die the same. They purpose to prepare for death and eternity, but they have always some objections against the present time. They have always something else to do to-day, and therefore they put off this work till to-morrow-to-morrow comes, and instead of reforming, they die in their wickednessto-morrow comes and they are in hell. Oh! that the loiterers of this generation would take warning from the ruin of thousands of their unhappy ancestors who have perished by the dread experiment! Hearers, are not some of you in danger of splitting upon the same rock? Are not some of you conscious that if you should die this moment you would die in your wickedness? And yet you have very little fear of dying in this manner. No; you purpose yet to become good, and prepare for death before you die. So thousands purposed as strongly as you, who are now in hell. The time of repentance was still a hereafter to them, till it was irrecoverably past. They were snatched away unexpectedly by the sudden hand of death, and knew not where they were till they found themselves in eternity, and thus they had no time for this work; or their thoughts were so much engrossed with their pains that they had no composure for it; or they found their sins, by long indulgence, were become invincibly strong, their hearts judicially hardened, and all the influences of divine grace withdrawn, so that the work became impossible. thus they died in their sins. And "The wicked is driven away in his wickedness"-driven away in spite of all his reluctance. Let him cling to life never so fast, yet he must go. All his struggles are vain, and cannot add one moment to his days. Indeed, the wicked have so little taste for heaven, and are so much in love with this world, that if they leave it at all, they must be driven out of it-driven out of it whether they will or not. When they hope for heaven, they do in reality consider it but a shift or a refuge when they can no longer. live in this their favorite world. They do not at all desire it, in comparison with this world. But they must eventually let go their hold. They must be driven away, like chaff before the whirlwind--driven away into the regions of misery-into the regions of misery, I say; for certainly the happiness of heaven was never intended for such as are so disaffected to it, and that prefer this wretched world, with all its cares and sorrows, before heaven itself. This is the certain doom of the wicked; but who are they? Though the character be so common among us, yet there are few that will own it. It is an odious character, and therefore few will take it to themselves. But there is no room for flattery in the case, and, therefore, we must inquire who are the wicked? I answer, all that habitually indulge themselves in the practice of any known wickedness-all that neglect the God that made them, and the Saviour that bought them-all that live in the willful omission of the known duties of religion and moralityall that have never known by experience what it is to repent and believe; in a word, all that are in their natural state, and have never felt a change of spirit and practice, so great and important that it may be called, with propriety, a new birth, or a new creation-all such, without exception, are wicked. They are wicked in reality and in the sight of God, however righteous they may be in their own eyes, or however unblamably some of them may conduct themselves before men. And are there not some such in this assembly? Is this assembly so glorious and happy a rarity as not to have one wicked person in it? Alas! I am afraid the most generous charity cannot indulge such a hope. May you make an impartial inquiry into a matter so important! and if you find the character of the wicked yours, believe it, you must share in the dreadful doom of the wicked if you continue such. But I proceed to that part of my text, which I intend to make the principal subject of this discourse. "The righteous hath hope in his death." To have hope in death is to have hope in the most desperate extremity of human nature. Then the spirits flag and the heart sinks, and all the sanguine hopes of blooming health and prosperity |