which if it once hoist sail, and set off to sea, the passengers are for ever left hopeless on the shore. O how inexcusable are men trifling away their precious hours!

2. That the moment of death is of vast consequence, inasmuch as it is the concluding point of our working time, the time of our trial, immediately succeeded by an unalterable state in eternal happiness or misery. For as the tree then falls, it must lie for ever. If one prays, communicates, &c. wrong at a time, he may have access to mend it but once dying wrong, there is no helping of that.

3. Happy they who dispatch their work timely, while they are in the land of the living: for their work is done, before working time is over, Rev. xiv. 13. When they come to die, they have no more ado but to die, and that of itself is sufficient work to fill one's hand. 4. Sad is the case of those who misspend their time, whose life is at an end, before their great work for eternity is done. For their case is hopeless, since there is no doing of their great work then any

more.

USE 2. Of exhortation. What ye have to do, do quickly, without delay. And,

1. Do your salvation-work without delay, Phil. ii. 12. Ye are by nature lost sinners, but by grace ye may be saved. But none can expect to be brought into a state of salvation in a morning dream. The work of faith, repentance, regeneration, and mortification, is not easy. Give yourselves no rest, till once ye are brought into a state of peace with God, till ye have once shot the gulf as to condemnation, and your eternal happiness be secured. Then will ye live holily and happily; and come death when it will, your great work is done, ye are habitually prepared for it. If otherwise, death may take you unawares, and in a moment make you for ever miserable.

2 Do the work of your generation without delay. Consider what is the work of your station and relation, the work for God and the good of others that providence puts an opportunity in your hand to do: and do it quickly; for if ye delay it, the opportunity may be for ever taken out of your hand. Consider,

(1.) To put off your great work to another time yet to come, is inconsistent with a sincere purpose of setting about it, 1 Pet. 2. 3. Who having burning coals in his bosom, would put off throwing them out till a more convenient season, another hour, or another minute? He that is not fit to-day, will be less so to-morrow.

(2.) The longer ye delay, the harder will your work be, when it comes to the setting to. Sin is like a water, the farther from the head, the deeper, and the harder to get over. The longer ye con

tinue in sin, the heart grows harder, the understanding more blind, the will more perverse, and the affections more carnal.

(3.) Lastly, It is most foolish and unreasonable to delay. How can one delay a work till to-morrow, which must be done, else he is ruined for ever, when he is not sure of another hour? Jam. iv. 13. 14. "Go to now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy, and sell, and get gain whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow: for what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Remember what was said to the rich man, Luke xii. 20. "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?" I hope we are agreed about the necessity of your dispatching your great work: the only question is, When? God says, To-day. Reason says so too; for to-morrow is not yours. The conclusion then is, Do it immediately. Up then and be doing.

THE

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERS

OF

TRUE BELIEVERS.

X. IN RELATION TO THE HAPPY EFFECT OF CHRIST'S GOOD-WILL IN THE

Zaccheus, make haste, and come down: for to-day I must abide at thy house.

THOUGH Our sun of the gospel at this day is a winter sun, having light, but little heat, ye and we, ministers and people, must be doing. It is good to be in Christ's way: he loves to surprise sinners with a cast of free grace: whereof we have a notable instance in the text.

Christ passing through Jericho, and a great throng being about him, Zaccheus is taken with a mighty desire to see him: but being a little man, and our Saviour but of an ordinary stature, not like Saul, who, by the height of his stature overtopping all about him, might have been seen by a little man even in a crowd; (God shewed in Christ of how little value such things are,) he, to satisfy his curiosity, ran before, and gets up into a tree, to see what like a man he was. In his Bible, and in Christ's doctrine and miracles, he might have seen him by an eye of faith to be the Son of God and Saviour of the world: but he was spiritually blind. He had no particular business with him; he was healthy and wealthy, and felt no need of him; otherwise he would have cried to him, as the blind man did, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me, Luke xviii. 38. He only wanted a sight of a man so talked of.

This Sermon was preached at Ettrick, June 11, 1727, immediately before the administration of the Lord's supper.

Christ coming to the place makes a halt, for there was the time and place for the dawning of everlasting love on Zaccheus. And,

1. He gives him a look, and fixes his eyes on him; a sign that he had a serious purpose about him. Such a look set Peter's heart amelting; and there is no reason to doubt but this place surprised Zaccheus, made his heart move out of its place, and set it a-trembling, not knowing but instantly he might make him drop down dead off the tree before the multitude, considering how severely God threatened gazing at mount Sinai, and how dear it cost those of Bethshemesh for looking into the ark.

2. He gives him a word, a word of grace, no less surprising than the look, which instantly changed and transported his trembling heart, "Zaccheus, make haste, and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house."" That it was such a word, a savingly-effectual call to him, joyfully closed with by faith, ver. 6. appears from (1.) The visible effect of it in true repentance, ver. 8. "Behold, Lord, (says he,) the half of my goods I give to the poor: and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold." (2.) The testimony of Christ as to his faith, ver. 9. "And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is the son of Abraham." Say not, that there is nothing here but about coming down from a tree; for Christ's word is like himself, that has a glory in it not to be perceived but by the spiritual eye. So it is with the word of the gospel to this day; they whose eyes are opened, and hearts touched with it, see a glory and feel a power in it that is hid to all the multitude beside. Wherefore the sense of these words was a compound one, made up of an external part, lying open to the view of the whole multitude that heard them, and an internal part, mystical and secret, and clear to Zaccheus, however hid from others. They are like Jonathan's crying after the lad, Make speed, haste, stay not. Of whom it is said, And Jonathan's lad gathered up the arrows, and came to his master. But the lad knew not any thing: only Jonathan and David knew the matter, 1 Sam. xx. 38, 39. In the words then,

1. There is an open display of the grace and good-will of a Saviour to Zaccheus in particular, proposed to him to be believed and credited. And it consists of two parts.

(1.) Christ's readiness and willingnesss to meet with him, to receive and be received by him: so the grace of union with Christ was proposed to him. This was couched in these words, Zaccheus come down, as if he had said, "Zaccheus, come away to me, I wait you here to receive and be received by you. There is a thronging about me, but whatever is of them, I have a particular good-will to you."

(2.) Christ's inviting himself to Zaccheus' house, and so a desire and design of communion with him, though he was a sinner, such a sinner as many in that multitude would abhor being his guest. But he shows a good-will to him, to come over all that, to entertain and be entertained by him.

2. There is a peremptory call to him to embrace this grace and goodwill, proposed to him to be complied with, Zaccheus, make haste, come down, viz. to me. And here there is,

(1.) How it was to be embraced, viz. by Zaccheus's coming to Christ. A bodily motion was in this case necessary, but the spiritual motion of the soul by faith was the great thing aimed at. Believing the grace and good-will of Christ displayed to him in Christ's word of grace, he is required to betake himself to it, by trusting on it for his salvation, as heaven's security granted him, and claiming and using it as his own, in all the effects thereof in communion with him whose grace it is.

2. The manner of the coming required. [1.] It is a coming down. Zaccheus was sitting on high, and looking down on Christ, when Christ began with him. So is every sinner before the good work is begun on them. But the word of power calls them down from their heights; and coming to Christ is coming down from them. Humiliation of soul is twisted with true faith, and runs through the whole of it. [2.] A speedy coming down, Make haste, &c. "Haste as if the tree were breaking and falling with your weight, and you could not sit safe there one moment longer." Whatever off-puts the sinner makes as to coming to Christ, while the heart is not touched with the power of grace, as soon as efficacious grace touches it, the sinner can no longer resist, but comes to Christ like a sandy brae sliding down in a break.

The doctrine I observe from the words is,

DOCT. When Christ and the sinner have the happy meeting for union and communion. Christ gives the sinner a word of grace, that discovers a good-will in him to the sinner in particular, and hales the sinner down from his heights away to the Lord Jesus. Thus the happy meeting is brought about.

In handling this doctrine, I shall consider,

I. The Lord's discovering a good-will to the sinner by a word of grace.

II. The Lord's haling down the sinner from his heights to himself by his word of grace.

III. Apply in an use of exhortation.

I. I am to consider the Lord's discovering a good-will to the sinner by a word of grace. This ye may take up in these five things.