promise with sin, he is sure of being over-reached at last. He bargains for the reservation of some favourite appetite, and the indulgence of that appetite perpetuates his fellowship with iniquity. He artfully shades the distinctive boundaries of virtue and of vice, till he in the end confounds them; he learns to sophisticate, to juggle with his understanding; he endeavours to blunt the delicate apprehensions of conscience, to “put evil for good, and good for evil," till his moral sensibility and discrimination is entirely destroyed. How many an illustration to the melancholy progress of these delusions, will your own recollections suggest? how many a man whose early perceptions of vice were acute and accurate, now not only does evil, but is blind to the evil, and laying the flattering unction to his heart, that an exemption from grosser crimes will expiate his devotion to lesser ones? he lives, and, perhaps, will die in a perilous apathy to the wrath of God, on the children of disobedience! Hence does the drunkard not only continue, but glory in the vice, which incapacitates him alike for the pleasures of time and the happiness of eternity; hence does yonder profane swearer attest the name at which the angels tremble, to witness every trifling assertion, or perhaps to substantiate falsehood; hence does yonder adulterer remorselessly persevere in the sin that damns him; and hence does the covetous sinner make wealth his refuge, and gold the god of his idolatry. Remember, My Friends, the heavy penalty annexed to these things, and be ye not partakers of them. But if unhappily ye have already participated, if your heart has already been secretly enticed, and you have entered on a career of worldliness and sensuality, remember, that there is yet one asylum left to which you may turn and live. Your Saviour will yet receive, his Gospel will yet instruct you. It was to such as you that he was sent; it was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, that the Shepherd came,"Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinnerrs." Now you are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, but when you return to him, you will learn to detest every thing that sets enmity between you and God. You will learn that no riches, no acquirements, no honours, can compensate the wretch who has flung away salvation; for what will it profit a man, to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? SERMON XVIII. THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY. JOHN VIII. 10, 11. Vienas united himself up, and saw nowe hut the comun, le stad to her, Woman, where are those thine acensers? luck woman condemned thee? She stunt. No mun, Zuri Lui Jesus said, Neither do I catena tice: go, and sa u nere. Or all the questions proposed by the malicious Ingenuicy of the Scribes and Pharisees to our Saviour, in order to inveigle him into some breach of the av, or committal of his own spiritual authority, we meet with none more insidous and dangerous than that of which my text records the issue. A woman taken in the act of an offence of the highest social and moral turpitude, an offence which was regarded by the Jews with, if possible, more abhorrence than by us, is brought to the feet of Jesus, who is required to pronounce his sentence at once upon the crime and the criminal. It is arcely possible to conceive a dilemma of greater difficulty, than that in which he was thus placed by the artful malice of his inveterate enemies; should he, on the one hand, pronounce against the unhappy culprit that dreadful judgment which the law enjoined, namely, that she should be stoned to death, the Roman government which no longer permitted to the Jews such an extent of penal jurisdiction, would denounce him as a rebel unto Cæsar, and, on the other hand, should he acquit the sinner, and declare so flagitious a sin unworthy of the punishment which God's own voice had invoked upon it, these sage interpreters of the Jewish Scriptures would acquire something like a right to accuse him of an infraction of their law, and of lending his support and countenance to sanction a very atrocious iniquity. But that sublime and inimitable character, in which justice and mercy were so admirably blended, never broke forth with brighter lustre than from the clouds of difficulty, which rage and envy had raised to obscure it; "Jesus stooped down, and writing on the ground with his finger, looked as if he heard them not." This silence spoke more eloquently than words his contempt for their artifices, and his pity for the melancholy temper which suggested them; but the hard-hearted Pharisees continuing with a satanic spirit to press him on the subject, "he lifted up his eyes and said, Let him that is without sin among you throw the first stone! and SERMON XVIII. THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY. JOHN VIII. 10, 11. When Jesus had lifted himself up, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more. Or all the questions proposed by the malicious ingenuity of the Scribes and Pharisees to our Saviour, in order to inveigle him into some breach of the law, or committal of his own spiritual authority, we meet with none more insidious and dangerous than that of which my text records the issue. A woman taken in the act of an offence of the highest social and moral turpitude, an offence which was regarded by the Jews with, if possible, more abhorrence than by us, is brought to the feet of Jesus, who is required to pronounce his sentence at once upon the crime and the criminal. It is scarcely possible to conceive a dilemma of greater له |