in pleasure, and abuse the mercy which waits to be gracious, and spend the few moments left in merriment and ́lasciviousness? It was a singular custom among the ancients, to introduce a skeleton at their feasts. Christian writers have mistaken the design; they have supposed it was intended to check the excesses of the banquet, by keeping before the eyes of the revellers that ghastly monitor. In fact, however, the object was the very reverse of this. That hideous representative of the grave was placed amid their festive boards, to remind the carousers that life is short, and to exhort them to live and be merry while they could. That strange guest was brought there to stimulate the epicurean zeal of the bacchanalians, by repeating silently, but most emphatically, the proverb mentioned by the Apostle, "Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." I have already said, my friends, that the gospel is no foe to any pleasure which is innocent, and I wish you to enjoy all such pleasures. But, if I could, I would place before you such a grim and gaunt emblem of death, whenever and wherever you are tempted to dally with sin, and tamper with damnation. I would introduce a skeleton there, and keep it before your vision, and compel you to look at it. Not, however, that you might draw any such insane conclusion as that just mentioned, but that you might be made wiser, that your passions might be rebuked, and your hearts be chastened and purified by very different reflections. To-morrow I die; I know it, I feel it. Can I banish the thought of that decisive moment, and say, like the fool in the parable, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, eat, drink, and be merry ?" The culprit for whom the scaffold is erected, and who is only respited for an hour that he may seek the clemency of an outraged government, can he despise this patience, and pamper his lusts, and riot in cards and dancing, while the executioner is thundering at the door of his cell? To-morrow I die; and after death will be the judgment. I cannot drown a voice which incessantly cries in my ears, “Rejoice, O young man, in thy. youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Shall I forget this judgment? Can I mock at this dread tribunal, and spend my days in sins which must exasperate that awful sentence which shall shatter the air around me and shatter all my soul," Depart accursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels ?" Lastly, to-morrow I die; and death, what will death do? Death will draw the curtain, and bear me into eternity, and fix my destiny there forever. My soul shall then shoot the gulf, and mingle with angels or devils, and take its part, either in the rapturous hallelujahs around the throne, or in the weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Can I forget this, and live as if there were no eternity, no God, no heaven, no hell? and throw the reins upon the necks of my passions that they may precipitate me into the gulfs of perdition, the abysses of fire? Can I "live in pleasure on the earth and be wanton ?" Can I "live in pleasure and be dead while I live ?" dead to all purity and peace, dead to every sense of my true dignity, and glory and happiness? dead, sepulchred in the senses now, and hastening to the second death, the deathless death, ever-during pain, remorse and despair? Oh, my dear hearer, especially you who are “in life's young morning march," I implore you, I conjure you, let not this doom be yours. "Flee youthful lusts," "flee from the wrath to come." Any loss but the loss of your soul; any mortal thing rather than that. Come the reverses which shall break off all your schemes, and strip you of all you possess, steeping you to the lips in poverty; come the sickness which shall stretch you hopelessly on the bed of pain and languishing; come the blow which shall shiver all your hopes, and heap desolation upon your hearth; come the storm which shall sweep every star from out your sky-come any or all of these, rather than the "pleasures of sin for a season," and the anguish, and remorse, and punishment of sin for eternity. When we call upon you to abandon sinful pleasures, what do we require? Is it that you renounce all real enjoyment, and live in isolation and sadness? Far from it. God would not blot spring out of the year, nor youth out of life, nor mirth and joy out of youth. There is not a pleasure which your own reason sanctions, which is not left you; and, believe it, or rather taste and know it for yourself, religion has joys, the memory of which is far sweeter than all the joys of earth. And what if there be self-denials and sacrifices; they are but "for a season." Soon the conflicts and toils of the Christian will be over; and then he shall be ushered into that presence where there is fulness of joy," and pass to that "right hand," where there "are pleasures"-not of sin but of holiness-not for a season, but "forevermore." "While we "DUM VIVIMUS, VIVAMUS." live, let us live." Such was the motto of the Epicureans; and, for my part, not only am I no enemy to your true happiness, but I wish every one in this house to become an Epicurean, and to adopt this motto as his own; to say, "While I live, I will live"-live truly-live as I ought to live-live not making life a carnival of debasing sensuality, but live by finding in Jesus and his service that peace and joy which the world cannot even comprehend. "Live while you live, the epicure would say, SERMON VII. THE SYMPATHIZING HIGH PRIEST. "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."—HEBREWS, iv. 15, 16. "SOMEBODY hath touched me, for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me," you remember the occasion upon which Jesus uttered these words. Whatever be their primary meaning, they have a deep and wide significancy; they apply to every case in which human sorrow or suffering reaches the sympathies of our nature. Somebody then touches us, and a benignant virtue goes out of our hearts, just as tears come from our eyes—we know not how, nor can we help it. And this influence of sympathy has this peculiarity, that it can only be exerted when it is reciprocal. Even in inanimate nature it is a law, that substances which cannot be attracted have no power to attract other substances. In the moral economy of the world we see the same principle. If you could find a man wholly incapable of sympathy, you would have a being who can excite no sympathy. And exactly in proportion to a man's coldness and |