shall not our trumpets be sounding too? His trumpets are in His ordinances; our trumpets are in our thanksgivings, we are so called upon: "With trumpets make a joyful noise before the Lord."

Such a blessed people should be a thankful people. But verily, our God will not look on us as a thankful people, if we are not also a fruitful people. A barren people; oh! what a fearful doom are they threatened with! what a fearful fate are they warned of! "It is nigh unto cursing." Sirs, be fruitful in every good work; fruitful and always abounding in the work of the Lord.

In the midst of these cares you will use all due means, that you may see no intermission of the joyful sound. You will provide seasonably for the succession that shall be needful, by all due cares about the means of education in our land, without which the land becomes a Scythian desert. But when you make this provision, oh! look up to the glorious Lord, that you may be blessed with truly silver trumpets; never have any but a man of worth; such as will be of good metal; and such as in the cause of God will always "lift up their voice like a trumpet."

But this is that which is most of all to be urged upon you. Hearken, hearken to the joyful sound. Hearken to it, and comply with it. The joyful sound is that "Let the wicked forsake his way, and return to the Lord, who will have mercy on him." Hearken to it, and with echoes of devotion reply, "My God, I return unto Thee!" The joyful sound is that: "Come to me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Hearken to it, and with echoes of devotion reply, "My Saviour, I come unto Thee!" That grace of God which bringeth salvation, has the joyful sound of the silver trumpets in it. Now, your echoes to the trumpet must be these: Lord, I desire, I resolve to lead a godly, a sober, a righteous life before Thee!

My friends, the last trumpet that is to sound at the appearance of the glorious Lord, who is to judge the world, will ere long summon you to give an account of your compliance with the silver trumpets of God. You that now hear the joyful sound of these trumpets, must ere long hear the awful sound of that amazing trumpet. A loud and a shrill trumpet will sound, "Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment." Oh! may our compliance with the joyful sound of the silver trumpets now be such that we may find mercy in that day. So comply with it now that the joyful sound of "Come ye blessed," may be heard by you in the day when "the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord."

DISCOURSE SIXTY-SEVENTH

JONATHAN EDWARDS.

THIS distinguished metaphysician and divine was born at Windsor, Connecticut, October 5, 1703. His father was a useful minister of the Gospel. His mother, to whom he owed so much for his early religious training, was a woman of great piety and remarkable intelligence. Her character has been thus sketched:-"Devotedly pious, consecrated to her work, and entering into all her husband's plans of usefulness, she was, at the same time, remarkably intellectual. Her concealed metaphysics broke out amid kitchen and parish duties; and even in her devotions she was a philosopher without knowing it. Inferior to her hus band in taste and years of life, she possessed a more stern and powerful intellect, fond of reasoning, of studying philosophy, and pondering the deepest problems of theology. Had Paul's prohibition been out of the way, she might have eclipsed her companion in the pulpit, and antici pated the fame of her immortal son."

While a boy, Edwards read Locke on the Understanding, and similar works, with a keen relish. He was graduated at Yale College before he was seventeen years of age. After preaching a few months in New York, he was appointed tutor at Yale College in 1724. Here he continued till 1726, when he was invited to preach in Northampton, Mass., where he was ordained, as colleague of his grandfather, Mr. Stoddard, in Feb. 1727. He continued in this place more than twenty-three years, and the Lord crowned his labors with abundant success. The "Great Awakening" commenced under his preaching.* From August, 1751, he was six years missionary to the Housatonic Indians, Stockbridge, Mass. During this time he produced some of his great works, which gave him a worldwide reputation. In 1758 he accepted the office of President of Princeton College, New Jersey; but he died from small-pox, by inoculation, March 22, 1758, only a few months after his appointment, aged fifty. four years. His last words were, "Trust in God, and ye need not fear."

It has been said of Edwards, that he would have been the greatest * See Sketch of American Pulpit.

of philosophers, if he had not been the greatest of divines. The secret of his intellectual strength lay in the faculty of abstraction; bestowed upon him, perhaps, in as great plenitude as upon any other man. It is not needful to speak of his many profound writings, which take rank among the very highest of uninspired productions.

As a preacher Edwards has been rarely if ever excelled since the days of the apostles. His manner was not oratorical, and his voice was feeble; but this was of little account, with so much directness and richness of thought, and such overwhelming power of argument, pressed home upon the conscience and the heart. In vain did any one attempt to escape from falling a prey under his mighty appeal. It was in the application of his subject that he specially excelled. The part of the sermon before this was only preparatory. Here was the stretching out of the arms of the discourse, to borrow a figure, upon the hearts and lives of his audience. "It was a kind of moral inquisition; and sinners were put upon argumentative racks, and beneath screws, and with an awful revolution of the great truth in hand, evenly and steadily screwed down and crushed."

The most celebrated sermon of Edwards is that which is here given; preached at Enfield, Connecticut, July 8, 1741. One said of it:—" I think a person of moral sensibility, alone at midnight, reading that awful discourse, would well-nigh go crazy. He would hear the judgment trump, and see the advancing heaven, and the day of doom would begin to mantle him with its shroud." This sermon gave a powerful impulse to the great revival then progressing. The most wonderful effect was produced upon the audience during its delivery. It is stated that the hearers groaned and shrieked convulsively; and their outcries of distress once drowned the preacher's voice, and compelled him to make a long pause. Some of the audience actually seized fast hold upon the pillars and braces of the meeting-house, as if that very moment their sliding feet were precipitating them into the gulf of ruin; and a fellow-clergyman, sitting at the time in the pulpit, cried out, "Mr. Edwards, Mr. Edwards! Is not God merciful too?"

SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD.

"Their foot shall slide in due time."-DEUT. xxxii. 35.

In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked, unbelieving Israelites, who were God's visible people, "and lived under means of grace; and who, notwithstanding all God's wonderful works that He had wrought toward that people, yet remained, as is expressed in the twenty-eighth verse, void of counsel, having no

understanding in them; and that, under all the cultivations of heaven, brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit; as in the twc verses next preceding the text.

The expression that I have chosen for my text, "Their foot shall slide in due time," seems to imply the following things, relating to the punishment and destruction that these wicked Israelites were exposed to:

1. That they were always exposed to destruction; as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall. This is implied in the manner of their destruction's coming upon them, being represented by their foot's sliding. The same is expressed in the seventy-third Psalm: "Surely Thou didst set them in slippery places; Thou castedst them down into destruction."

2. It implies that they were always exposed to sudden, unex pected destruction. As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he can not foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once, without wavering, which is also expressed in the seventy-third Psalm "Surely Thou didst set them in slippery places: Thou castedst them down into destruction: how are they brought into desolation as in a moment !"

3. Another thing implied is, that they are liable to fall of them. selves, without being thrown down by the hand of another; as he that stands or walks on slippery ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down.

4. That the reason why they are not fallen already, and do not fall now, is only that God's appointed time is not come. For it is said that when that due time or appointed time comes, "their feet shall slide." Then they shall be left to fall, as they are inclined by their own weight. God will not hold them up in these slippery places any longer, but will let them go; and then, at that very instant, they shall fall into destruction; as he that stands on such slippery, declining ground, on the edge of a pit, that he can not stand alone, when he is let go he immediately falls and is lost.

The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this:

There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God.

By the mere pleasure of God I mean His sovereign pleasure, His arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but God's mere will had

in the least degree or in any respect whatever any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment.

The truth of this observation may appear by the following considerations:

1. There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men's hands can not be strong when God rises up the strongest have no power to resist Him, nor can any deliver out of His hands.

He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but He can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of difficulty to subdue a rebel, that has found means to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the number of his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no fortress that is any defense against the power of God. Though hand join in hand, and vast multitudes of God's enemies combine and associate themselves, they are easily broken in pieces: they are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind; or large quantities of dry stubble before devouring flames. We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so it is easy for us to cut or sunder a slender thread that any thing hangs by; thus easy it is for God, when He pleases, to cast His enemies down to hell. What are we, that we should think to stand before Him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down!

2. They deserve to be cast into hell; so that Divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God's using His power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, "cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?" The sword of Divine justice is every moment brandished over their hands, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God's mere will that holds it back.

3. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They do not only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the sentence of the law of God-that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between Him and mankind-is gone out against them; and stands against them; so that they are bound over already to hell: "he that believeth not is condemned already;" so that every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is: "ye are from beneath;" and thither he is found; it is the place that justice, and God's word, and the sentence of His unchangeable law, assign to him.