eternity? How will they appear to you in that solemn hour which is approaching, when you must bid adieu to earthly things, and go to meet the decisions of a righteous tribunal? Ah, brethren! we may make light of declension now, and think coldness in prayer and formality in God's service small matters. But eternity will show them in a very different light; and if they are found upon us as we draw near to that unseen world, hope will depart, and shivering despair seize upon our souls unmeet to appear before God.

4. Eternity realised would make us anxious to prepare others, as well as ourselves, to meet its awful scenes in peace. Ho wis it with persons who feel that they are about to leave the world and go into eternily? They are anxious to improve their last moments, and last remains of strength in speaking to their friends on the great subject of religion, in warning them of the danger of delay, and in exhorting them to live near God, if they would die in hope and have peace in their latter end. Just so should we feel and converse, if we were suitably impressed with the powers of the world to come, and realised how soon we and all around us shall die and be in eternity. We should not only be quickened in preparation for so solemn a change ourselves, but we should feel an interest in the spiritual welfare of others, and do all in our power to bring them to Christ and salvation. It would be impossible for us to journey on with fellow travellers to eternity without speaking to them of the way and of the end, and striving by our prayers, our counsels and our efforts to turn their feet from the road of death into the path of life and heaven. And engaging in this work in the tenderness and earnestness of spirit, which a realizing sense of eternity would inspire, a peculiar power would attend our endeavors; we should have a divine skill in reaching the heart and conscience, and many, who are now perishing in sin, would be awakened to consider their ways and turn to the Lord. But we lose sight of eternity or throw its scenes far into the future, and so feel but little the power of its motives, and do but little to prepare either ourselves or others for the inevitable destiny. And even what we do attempt in this way fails, much of it, entirely, of effect, because it is done without any suitable impression of the powers of the world to come. I add,

5. Eternity realised habitually would make us useful and happy; calm and submissive under the trials of life, knowing them to be but for a moment; diligent and active to do the whole will of God, peaceful in our death, and blessed forever in the presence of our Savior. We should feel that we are strangers and pilgrims on earth, having here no continuing city, but seeking one to come. We should look upon the world as a traveller in a strange land does upon the place where he lodges for a night. Instead of stopping on our way to amuse ourselves with toys and trifles, we should make everything subservient to speed us on our journey. Our hearts would be on our home; and thither we should be pressing forward with eager step, cheered with the hope of there ending

our cares and toils, and of receiving the joyful welcome of kindred. and friends, and of our blessed Savior himself, to the everlasting joys of his kingdom.

And when the end of our course should draw near, far from being unwelcome to us, we should hail it with joy; have a desire to part and be with Christ, as the Apostle had; rise above every fear of death and go to dwell eternally in the presence of God and the Lamb.

Let us then, my friends, strive to realise eternity, how near, how certain it is; how awful, how glorious its scenes; awful indeed to the wicked, and finally impenitent; but glorious, inconceivably glorious to all who love God, and faithfully serve him in this state of probation. Let the commencement of a new year remind us how rapidly life is passing away, and how soon all the years and days we have to spend in this world will be gone. Many who were with us at the commencement of the year just closed, are now in eternity. Ere the present year shall end, many of us who are now alive and in health will sicken and die, and be gathered with the great congregation of the departed in the eternal state. O that we may all be prepared for this great and decisive change.

If to any present these shall seem gloomy thoughts, let me say the reality far surpasses the representations that have now been made. Let me say, too, that the time is at hand when every impenitent sinner will be amazed at his present indifference to the great concerns of the soul. God and the judgment, death and eternity, heaven and hell-these are not matters to be trifled with. However little thought of now, they will soon be present, and every soul will feel them in all their amazing weight and solemnity. O when the inevitable summons shall come; when it shall be, that probation is ended, and the sinner's doom sealed for eternity what a change will it meke in the feelings and views of some whom I am now addressing? It is easy now to dismiss these thoughts as gloomy. But when Justice shall take the work of retribution in hand, these thoughts, now so easily put away, will be so pressed upon the soul, that it will never be able to dismiss or turn away from them; no, never, for a long eternity. The present world will then have retired forever from our view. Time will have numbered its last hour. The all decisive change of death will have passed upon you; the vast world to which you are going will have opened its boundless scenes and you will be fixed, every one, in a state of happiness or misery which is never to end. O what a prospect is this? How wise, how important that you prepare for what is before you? I close with propounding a single question, and I pray God to dispose you, each one, to answer it as you will wish you had on the great day of account: Is it not better to remember these things on earth, than in hell; before your Savior, than before your judge; in the day of grace than in the day of retribution?

'BY REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D. D.

OF NEW YORK.

PROBATIONARY DISCIPLINE.

LUKE xiii, 6, 9. He ispake also this parable: "A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the man of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I came seeking fruit on this fig tree, and found none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering, said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year, also, till I shall dig about it and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then, after that, thou shalt cut it down."

THIS beautiful parable illustrates in the most striking manner, the dealings of God with his rebellious creatures. The wide world is his vineyard; its inhabitants are the trees that he has planted for eternity. Those that bring forth fruit in its season are called "trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that he might be glorified," and shall flourish in immortal beauty in the Paradise of life. He seeks fruit from all, and uses a thousand merciful expedients to produce it; and for its production there is an allotted period, in the infinite goodness of good; a period in which His mercy waits upon the sinner, while yet the opportunity of repentance and pardon is afforded, and the blessed Spirit of God is ready to sanctify the soul.

The truths taught in this parable are of infinite importance; the nature of our situation as probationers for eternity; the nature and purpose of God's discipline in regard to us; and the consequences of abusing that discipline, or of neglecting it and suffering it to be wasted, are all brought to view. Let us dwell for the moment upon each of these topics; and may the Spirit of God bless this parable for our souls.

I. First, then, we inhabit a world of probation. The three score years and ten that we spend here are only the narrow portal to an existence of endless duration, endless retribution. We are constantly forgetful of this truth, constantly unmindful of the solemn warning of that word probation, with reference to our future state. We are on trial for the destinies of eternity. This is what gives to time all its value. Why is a year to us of such amazing importance? It is because we are immortal, because eternity is before us, because the years of our existence are never to find an end. A year is valuable, not because earthly interests and worldly transactions are involved in its flight; not because

power and riches may be lost or won, empires founded or overturned, cities enriched or laid in ruins; but because business is transacting for Eternity, because the interests of Eternity are crowded into moments, because every one's character for Eternity is forming, and every one's work for Eternity accomplishing, and every one's doom deciding, in this fleeting transitory span of time. Time with us is precious, because we are to live when time shall be no longer, because on every moment that passes, the destiny of immortal beings hangs suspended. Every thing we do, think, say, goes to make up the account we are to render at the bar of judgment; and all the discipline, to which we are subject as moral beings in this world, bears upon our Eternal destiny. Time with us is precious, because it is the season of hope. What we sow here, we reap hereafter, and if we please, we may sow the seeds of everlasting blessedness.

We are all living for Eternity. You have sometimes heard the careless and thoughtless, the men of the world and the votaries of pleasure, designated as those who are not living for Eternity. But they are living for Eternity, and that too with a dreadful energy, and in a dreadful sense. There is not a human being who is not every day, every hour, living for Eternity. The merchant in his counting-room, the mechanic in his work-shop, the seaman on the ocean, the husbandman on the land, the miser and the spendthrift, the laboring man and the indolent, the physician, the lawyer, and the clergyman, the man of poverty and the man of wealth, the thoughtful and the thoughtless, the pious and profane, the praying man, the scoffer, and the atheist, all, all live for Eternity. None can avoid it, no occupation can prevent it, no power of thoughtlessness can throw off the dread responsibility. The christian and the impenitent, the converted and the unconverted, are living equally for Eternity; but there is this vast difference: the christian is conscious of it, and takes care how he lives; and watches for the strait and narrow way that leads to eternal blessedness; the impenitent man is unconscious of it, and in reckless, voluntary blindness, rushes to eternal ruin. Such is our probationary state, so brief, so solemn.

II. In the second place, the nature and purpose of God's discipline in regard to us are presented in this parable. In this brief period of preparation for eternity, God is at work as well as we. Brief as it is, it is enough for us to work in, enough for God to work in. With him, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. So they are with us, with respect to our own immortality, and our work for the world to come. Enough for God to display the exhaustless riches of His grace and expedients of His wisdom in our moral discipline; enough for us, through a wise improvement of His mercy, to work out our own salvation, or through a vile and brutish neglect and abuse of that mercy, to make sure our everlasting perdition.

In this period, God is working, never wearied, for our good.

This is the nature and purpose of all his discipline in regard to us. He is ever seeking to bring his creatures to repentance, and to make them partakers of his own holiness. From the store-house of infinite wisdom and infinite love, he pours upon them influences of goodness, and surrounds them with circumstances adapted to aid those influences, to produce the fruit he loves to behold. With the efforts of his grace he combines the wise expedients of his providence, and all he does is for the improvement of their character, to make them holy, and therefore happy. He is "long-suffering toward us not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." Behold what amazing resources He displays, and with what unsearchable riches of grace, and of patience, He lavishes his gifts. Influences richer than the Universe, he pours upon us. Exertions of wisdom and love, matured in His councils from Eternity, and executed for us in the fulness of time, He brings in all their redeeming and renovating energy, to bear upon our fallen state. Motives of power to allure the minds of loftiest archangels he sets before us. Truths of glorious and awful import he reveals to our minds. He sends the spirit of God to bring into near view the forgotten realities of Eternity, and almost lifts the veil that separates the future world from mortal sight. By the power of that Divine Agent the conscience within us is roused to execute its work, and the Law on Sinai is proclaimed in our ears, and we are made to know its dreadful sentence, and to feel that under its condemnation we are hastening to the judgment. By day and by night God is striving with us to arrest us in our downward course, and to turn our feet from the way of death. "In a dream, in the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon man, in slumbering upon the bed, then he openeth the ears of man, and sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man."

By the power of the same Divine Agent, the scenes and agony in the garden of Gethsemane, the mysterious glories a Savior's dying love upon Calvary, and the melting entreaties of that love in the offer of pardoning mercy, and the invitation to everlasting life, are ever before us. The book itself, that contains these wonders, these soul-arresting mysteries of moral grandeur, is ever in our eye, attracting our notice, forced on our attention, quoted for our good, referred to in all pages, an inmate of all families. Its teachings are with us in all places of our education, and the very institutions of society reflect its influences. Its voices of warning are echoed from a thousand sources, and its solemn and affectionate spirit has been breathed into a thousand familiar volumes. Its own expostulations, above all, are of such amazing earnestness and power that no reflecting mind can withstand them, none can remain utterly insensible in the midst of them. Its light flashes like a flaming sword across the path to hell, as though it would bar all access to the world of wo, and its pleading remonstrance never ceases ringing in our ears, Turn ye, turn ye for why will ye die?