yourselves endued with any Christian disposition, which you do not perceive to be exemplified in your lives, and, more particularly, which you find to be contradicted by your practice, you must take the evidence of your conduct, and not of your hearts, for in that case they certainly deceive you; right principles, and wrong actions, never go together.

I have endeavoured to show you the importance of self-examination, and the way to perform this duty with success. May God dispose us all, frequently and honestly, to practice it, that we may know ourselves even as we are known by Him! May He enable us by his grace, to root out every evil disposition, and to cultivate every Christian virtue, that our hearts may be established in the faith, and our faith made manifest by all holy conversation and godliness, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

SERMON XIV.

THE ATTENTIVE HEARER.

ST. MATTHEW, XIII. 9.

Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

OUR blessed Saviour frequently employed this short, but emphatic, exhortation, when He would impress upon the minds of His audience the momentous truths of His religion, and He did so for this reason, because He well knew, that the most fruitful source of irreligion was, and always would be, the mere inattention, and thoughtlessness of mankind. He knew that many more would reject His Gospel for want of reflection, than in consequence of it; that the majority of men would be so taken up with present things, so distracted by the interests of this life, and the engagements of the passing hour, as to require the most earnest and forcible

appeals, to rouse them to any thing like consideration on the subject of a future state.

And does not our own experience of the world tell us that this is true? Do we not find that men for the most part need to be exhorted, and admonished to think of that, which, if treated according to its importance, should have been the uppermost thought in their minds? Do we not find that, of their own accord, they run after the merest trifles, and vanities, but that they must be stimulated and encouraged, and almost compelled, to turn their attention to that weighty business, which concerns them infinitely more than all other things besides? Nay, is it not an unhappy fact, that all the means, which are taken for this purpose, meet with but very moderate success? Is it not a fact, that multitudes, to whom exhortations of this sort are addressed, listen to them with the most stupid insensibility and indifference, as if they were in no wise interested about the matter? Do not numbers, to impress whom with some serious thoughts the greatest efforts are made, treat with levity the great truths of religion, and turn from questions about "life and immortality," Heaven and hell, a holy God, and sinful man, redemption by the Saviour, and sanctification by the Spirit, with as much unconcern as if they were the most insig

nificant speculations? Do they not hear of an everlasting state of happiness or misery with as little emotion, as if the discourse were about the happiness or misery of a single moment? Do they not receive continual warnings of their condition? Are they not exhorted to reflect on it day after day? Have they not the promises and threats of the Gospel incessantly sounding in their ears, and exposed before their eyes? And yet do they not endure all this with the most undisturbed composure, and as if such subjects were not worthy of a moment's thought?

Strange as this conduct is in itself, it appears still more strange, when we consider among what description of persons it is observed. It may be observed among persons, who call themselves Christians, who think that they have some title to be considered religious, and who would be much offended were they to be distinctly informed that they have none; among persons, who profess to have received, upon Divine authority, the assurance of a future life, and of the probationary nature of the present; among persons, who would think themselves wronged, were they suspected of questioning the truth of this most important information.

Were such a serious belief, as that which Christians hold, to carry some men beyond the

sober dictates of reason, were the prospect of a future life to cause in them almost a forgetfulness of the present, were they to express, by the most extravagant signs of joy or grief, the state of their hopes and fears, on the subject of eternity, it surely would be far from being wonderful. It cannot be thought surprising, if the mind is sometimes overpowered by the immense importance of such a theme; and though we condemn that wild enthusiasm, which does not submit to the controul of reason, and which proceeds, rather from warmth of feeling and imagination, than from soundness of judgment, yet there is no error, for which a more just apology can be offered; none, into which a sincerely pious mind is more liable to be betrayed; and none which is less discreditable, to one who makes any pretensions to a religious character. But what shall we say of those, whose conduct is the very reverse of this? whose minds are, not only not overwhelmed, but not affected in the slightest degree, by the awful doctrines of religion? What shall we say of men, who profess to be disciples of the Gospel, but yet, in their thoughts and lives, are as little guided by it, as if they had never heard of it, or as if it were a fable? What name shall we give to those, by whom its weighty truths are nominally received and credited, but in whom they excite no anxiety or interest?