disease or affliction have made you a long exile from the public worship of God, with what delight do you repair to his temple! With David you sing, "how amiable are thy tabernacles," as you come up from the solitude where you have panted and fainted for the courts of the Lord. Beautiful indeed to you are the feet of them that publish glad tidings, and the walls of Jerusalem and the gates of Zion you prefer above all the dwellings of Jacob.

In view of this subject I remark,

First, That truth is just as real and as certain as if we were not insensible to it.

If the principle of the discourse be correct, if our familiarity with religious truths has often a tendency to make us look coldly upon them, it must follow, that our degree of appreciation is no measure of their value. It is just as true, that God is everywhere about us, always mindful of our wants, though we never think of him. It is just as true, that Christ comes to us by the bright lessons of his example and the melting doctrines of his death, though we turn our backs alike on the manger and the cross. It is just as true, that we are pressing onward to eternity, though we grasp after present pleasure, and think not of the future. Truth is perfect and immutable amid all the weakness and changes of man. God is not indifferent when he finds his paternal love slighted and despised. Christ is not unaffected when we turn coldly away from his tender entreaties, though he come repeatedly with the expostulation, "How often would I-but ye would not." And destruction is sure to those who persevere in sin; though they go to their doom like a blind man hurrying to a precipice, or a drunkard dancing among pitfalls.

Secondly, The subject teaches us the imperfection of our present state, and the way to overcome it.

We are so debased by the power of sin, so groveling in our moral tastes, so limited in our views, so short-lived in our emotions, and so easily exhausted by their intensity, that the most

Truth seems

beautiful objects soon lose their beauty to us. to partake of the infirmities of our poor decaying bodies. But it is not so in heaven. There the soul never tires in the thought of God, however intimate may be his manifestations. There the secret of redemption is perfectly revealed, but it has an interest and a power ever fresh; and the choir of heaven never grow weary or stupid, as they cease not day or night their rapturous hallelujahs to the Lamb. The great reason is that there, love is more perfect. And those who on earth approach the nearest to the spirit of Heaven, who are most in love with the truth, are best able to break away from this dulness and indifference. Do you suppose that the true poet ever becomes indifferent to the beauties of nature because of their familiarity? No! he loves them so well, that they burst upon his vision with new glory every day. Suppose you that the mother of Jesus turned coldly away from him when he came to preach in the neighborhood of his home? Not so. Others despised him because they knew him so well; but she who knew him better than all, for the love that she bore him as her son and her Saviour, no doubt received him to her bosom with fresh tenderness, and pondered his sayings in her heart. And so the man who loves God as he should love him, can neither walk abroad nor look inward, without a delightful and perpetual consciousness of his presence and goodness. He to whom the Redeemer is indeed "the chief among ten thousands," never becomes wearied with the oft-heard name, or cold towards the everpresent brother. Rather pants he for a more intimate communion. The language of his soul is, " Make haste, my beloved and be thou like to a roe, or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices." "Even so, come Lord Jesus, come quickly." If the sinner would break away from the stupidity he feels in the midst of light, he must learn to love that light. If the Christian would wake from his lethargy and have an abiding sense of the reality and glory of truth, he

must cultivate a greater love for it; he must meditate upon it till he discovers new grace in its proportions, new life in its lineaments, new loveliness in its beauty-until it becomes in his soul that living principle, which is as exhaustless in its nature, as it is glorious in the action to which it prompts.

Thirdly, The subject teaches us that men, if saved at all, are saved not because they have been furnished with christian privileges, but because they have made a right use of them.

There are many who live, as if they imagined men could not go down to perdition from under the refining influences of the gospel. But to such the subject gives a fearful lesson of the tendency of these very influences if they are not rightly improved, to harden the heart and ripen it for destruction. If their doom be terrible who have provoked swift ruin upon themselves by heaven-daring crimes, how much more dreadful is the wo pronounced by our Saviour against such as having been "exalted to heaven are thrust down to hell." My fellow sinner, when you stand at the bar of judgment, and the books are opened, and the sentence is about to be pronounced against you, do not think of saying to the Judge, "I know thee well. I was a member of the community thou didst so often visit. Thou hast taught in our streets. From my earliest childhood I learned by heart the story of thy life and sufferings. And every sabbath, thy ambassadors warned me of judgment and eternity." Then shall the Judge answer and say, "Depart from me, I never knew you. The doctrines of my gospel fit not those for heaven, who know them so well, that they never feel them. Your voice would mingle feebly with the praises of the blood-bought band. If any sinner is to be pardoned at this the eleventh hour of the universe, let it rather be some poor soul who comes from the depths of ignorance and gloom, and who will know how to value the light and blessedness of heaven."

Finally, while this familiarity with religious truth may ren

der the impenitent on earth indifferent to its power, there is no reason to believe that familiarity with suffering will at all diminish the agony of their disembodied spirits. It is indeed the insufferable blaze of truth that constitutes the chief misery of the lost, but such as it sometimes for a moment bursts upon their distracted vision in this life, such will it be with ever increasing vividness and intensity when their souls break away from these imperfect frames. The naked spirit knows no reaction, and the sense of God's wrath never becomes old. My fellow-sinner, when you observe in this life, the nature of sickness and suffering to destroy their own power, when you see the diseased limb losing its sensitiveness, or the long prostrate invalid becoming reconciled to his lot, think not that it will be so with you. It is written upon your own immortal nature, as well as upon the pages of God's word, that “the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched."

NOTE.

The preceding discourse was the first which Mr. Homer wrote. It was preached at South Berwick, May 3, 1840; afterwards at Danvers, Mass.

SERMON II.

THE SAINTS IN HEAVEN SUPERIOR TO THE ANGELS.

KNOW YE NOT THAT WE SHALL JUDGE ANGELS?-1 Cor. 6: 3.

THESE words have sometimes been thought to indicate that the saints will share in the administration of the general judgment. Such an idea however is not authorized either by reason or revelation, and it is highly improbable that the redeemed will turn away from their own award of justice, to pass sentence on the angels who kept not their first estate." There is a mode of explaining the passage more consonant with the spirit and the idioms of scripture. The language of the bible often derives its significance from some single feature of analogy. The metaphors of animate and inanimate creation with regard to God and his people are not to be pushed to the extent of their literal meaning. When Jehovah is called a rock, or his people the sheep of his pasture, only a single view of their character and relation may be sented. And so is it in the terms derived from civil and ecclesiastical polity. It is not intended to describe an office precisely similar to that in church or state, but only a condition marked by some similar qualities. When Christians are spoken of as kings and priests, it is not meant that they wear a crown or minister at an altar; that they sway a sceptre, or intercede for the sins of the people, but rather that in heaven,

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