will you have to answer for in the day of decision: you, who have been blessed with minds susceptible of information of the most valuable description, but who live and die ignorant of the knowledge most of all important. But happy for those who shall have brought every talent as an offering to the altar of religion.

3. The means of religious information heighten the responsibility of those who are blessed with them. A sinner, enjoying the light of the Gospel, sins against the strong conviction of his own mind; against the authority of the divine law, most clearly interpreted; against the high and interesting prospect of eternity, continually presented to his mind in the institutions of religion; and against the majesty and justice of God, armed to enforce his law. What account shall he render to God, who has resisted the counsels of divine wisdom, and the invitations of divine mercy proposed in the Gospel; and, in addition to this, has abused the divine mercy, illustriously displayed to the world in the cross of the Redeemer? But happy will it be for the man, who, when called to answer at the bar of God, shall have improved the ordinances and instructions of the Gospel to their intended use. His five talents, thus improved, shall have gained five other talents, and he shall be made ruler over ten cities.

4. Property is a talent conferred by the Almighty, and in this life we sustain the character of stewards. If it hath pleased the Almighty to put it in the power of some men to enjoy the common blessings of existence with greater dignity than others, by crowning

them with affluence, or raising them to honourable stations; are not their vices marked with a guilt proportioned to their misimproved advantages? What, then, shall the man say for himself at the bar of God, who has degraded his property to the ignoble purpose of gratifying his passions, and raising him above the control of the laws of God; of fostering a spirit of pride and insolence to mankind, and unthankfulness to God, as if what he enjoyed, belonged to him by an independent possession? Have we not reason to believe, that these vain reptiles, who thus pervert the unmerited bounty of Heaven, shall have their talent taken from them, while they shall be cast into unquenchable fire?

Happy for those, who, instead of wasting their Lord's goods, shall have traded on them to advantage. Verily he will make them rulers over his house.

The solemnities of that awful day call for serious forethought. When we anticipate an interview with a superior, we are apt to endeavour to realize the approaching scene. But what scene can require such serious forethought as this of which we have been speaking? Should it take place immediately, are we prepared to give a joyful account, either of our time, intellectual faculties, means of religious instruction, or property. The consequences of not being ready will be truly awful. O that God may help you to think of it in time!

SERMON XV.

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Colossians iii. 1, 2, 3, 4.

in God.

IN the 12th verse of the preceding chapter the apostle had told the Colossians, that they had been typically buried with Christ in baptism, and raised with him from the dead to spiritual life here, as the pledge of a future resurrection to life eternal. Every man who believes the Christian religion, and receives baptism as a token or proof of his belief, is thereby bound to a life of righteousness. For, saith the apostle in his epistle to the Romans, "know ye not that so many of us as were baptised into Christ, were baptised into his death?" As Jesus Christ, in his crucifixion, died completely, so that no spark of the natural or animal life remained; so, infers the apostle, those who profess his religion should be so completely separated from the principles and practice

of sin, that they have no more connexion with it, nor any more influence from it, than a dead man has with, or from, his departed spirit. On the principles the apostle laid down, he engrafts two very weighty exhortations. Relative to the boasted dictates of pagan and Jewish philosophy, which by baptism they had renounced for the faith of the Gospel, he thus bespeaks them: "Beware lest any spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after, the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ;" having reference, no doubt to the shadows and ceremonies of the Jewish religion, which, when opposed to the substance and sublime instruction to be received in the school of Christ, were but as elements or lessons for children. Relative to the holy life suitable to those who professed the Christian faith, he gives the practical exhortation in the two first verses of the text, If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth; which he enforces by two arguments, taken, the one from their profession, the other from their hopes; For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

In order that these words may be made useful to us, we shall take the occasion they offer to speak

I. Of the principle.

II. Of the practice; and,

III. Of the end of real religion, according to the Gospel state.

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Before entering on this, we shall give, by way of preliminary, a brief and scriptural view of the natural state of man. The state of nature is fully represented in the Epistle to the Ephesians, "This, therefore, I say, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them." Among whom also, we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others;"" and were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise." Now this is called a state of death: " and you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins."

While men are thus dead to God, they live only to sin and unrighteousness, and therefore sin is said "to reign in them, and have dominion over them." In this state of corruption, the natural passions and affections are but the instruments or members of sin. Now as the body, together with the soul, which is the active principle of life, constitute the man, so, by an easy metaphor, the appetites and affections (which compose the body of sin, being under its complete control,) are in Scripture called "the old man;" the only man which lives before regeneration by Christ Jesus.