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cles O Lord of hosts. My soul longeth, yea even fainteth, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God."

But I will not believe that you are dead to the strangers sufferings. I blend therefore the interests of Pagans with the interest of your kindred. I add together their miseries, and by the vastness of the amount implore your assistance.

In advocating such a cause, the cause of humanity, the cause of Emmanuel, you will pardon my importunity. What am I saying? Would to God I were capable of being as importunate as the cause I advocate demands. O that I could infuse into my words the ardor which I feel. But I cannot. Ah ye wretched aliens from the commonwealth of Israel; ye strangers from the covenants of promise, who have no hope and are without God in the world, my heart melts within me at the recol. lection of your danger, and my mind fills with mo tives to charity too big for utterance.

Brethren, have you sufficiently considered the duration of eternity? have you duly appreciated the value of the soul? if not, pause,In the name of God, I adjure you, pause, and reflect on both, before you bring your offerings to the altar. The narrow isthmus which intervenes between you and the world of spirits, is already sinking: presently death will have swallowed it up for ever! Let your thoughts carry you beyond it; lose yourselves in the immensity of those ages which have

no end.-Ages which the soul inherits, and dur ing which its powers encrease, its capacity of hap piness and misery expands, and expands, and expands, till, (overwhelming thought,) it is capable of enjoying the joys, or of suffering the miseries of a world.

Such souls those probationers possess, in whose behalf I now address you. To that eternity, with which your minds are filled, they are hastening. Before they launch into it, look up to heaven, and see the preparations grace is making, and the glory to which grace is waiting to receive them; the crown of life-the presence of God in which there is fullness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore.

Before they launch into it, look down to hell, and see the punishments with which justice threatens them; take one deep and solemn view of that fire, which is never quenched, and of that worm, in the midst of it, which never dies! Ah me, what a spectacle of woe! venting unavailing cries to a devouring flame, and pouring out vain complaints to an unpitying dungeon; which, when the sufferer asks, How long? echoes back, ETERNITY. Ages heaped on ages intervene ; again the sufferer asks, How long? and again is echoed back Eternity!

Before they launch into it, go to Calvary, approachthe cross, listen to the groans, and fill your minds with the idea of the great Emmanuel agonizing on it.

Then estimate the value of those souls by the grandeur of the victim slain for their redemption, and having made the estimation, and before you leave the cross, say, will you suffer them to perish through neglect.

Perhaps, by our charities this evening, we shall reclaim some profligate-perhaps we may convert one Pagan, and should we one, (my heart burns within me while I make the supposition,) who among us will begrudge the pittance he has given ? Let me indulge the thought—a convert made by the charities of this evening -no matter whether an

Albion, an Ethiopian, or an Indian-no matter from what ancestry descended, in what rites instructed, or by what principles of vice corrupted; and tell me, O believer, what will your emotions be, when entering the world of spirits, and opening your eyes on the redeemed of all nations, you shall see among them, one soul whom your charity hath saved? What will your emotions be, when that soul, first of all, shall fly to your embrace, and welcome your arrival? What, when conducting you to the throne of eternal majesty, and in the presence of that Divinity, which sits upon it, he shall say, "To this man, under thee great Emman uel, am I indebted for this crown of life, which glitters on my head, and this palm of victory, which blossoms in my hand." Moment of unutterable extacy! Angels, could Angels covet, might emulate your bliss, and sigh to become partakers in

it.

But great as the joy of this moment is, it is not greater than will be the glory which follows it. To the man who had saved the life of a Roman citizen, was presented the civic crown, the highest of earthly honors: but of what insignia shall he be accounted worthy, who has saved a soul from death, and restored a citizen to heaven? I cannot answer this interrogation! and I exult at the idea that I cannot; because my inability to give an answer, results from the sublimity of those symbols in which. the answer is contained.

But I will not confine my hopes to a single individual. Our charity may do more, it may reclaim many profligates; it may convert many Pagans; these may reclaim and convert others, and these again, in their turn, may continue to reclaim and to convert and thus the benevolence of a single Christian assembly, collected from different denominations, but actuated by the spirit of their common Master, may be extended to distant countries, and operate benignly on succeeding generations, till the kingdom of Christ shall

come.

This kingdom, Christians, is at hand, let us anticipate its glory; let us fill our minds with ideas of its duration and extent; let us endeavour to hasten its approach; let us invite by our charities and our prayers, the Savior from the skies; let us show that we are willing to receive him on the earth, and, placing on his altar the humble means which we are able to furnish, for advancing his interest,

with one general burst of passion, that shall fill the heavens, and reach the place where His Glory dwelleth, let us say, "Come Lord Jesus, come quickly.". I pause, not because the subject is exhausted, for it expands, and expands, as I contemplate it--not because I fear that an auditory of Christians can already be weary of such a contemplation; but the delightful duty of charity remains to be performed, and I pause that I may give place to the performance of it.

Brethren, the vast objects which the plan of redeeming love contemplates, are now before you, and you are about to contribute to carry that plan into further execution. Before you cast your gifts into the treasury, permit me to propose a single interrogatory: It is not whether the objects be important? your hearts testify that they are so. Neither is it, how much you now feel as if you could afford to give? but how much, at the day of judgment, standing at the bar of Jesus, eternity spread ⚫ut before you, the grandeur of the world perished, and not a vestige of all that you once possessed, except the charities you may have laid up in heaven, remaining-then when the loans made unto the poor, for which God became responsible, are repaying-when the poor widow, approaching, receives for her two mites, infinite remuneration, and to the disciple, who gave but a cup of water, because he had no more to give, is awarded an inheritance among the saints-then, when looking back in thought on this evening, which furnished

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