different seasons of life alluded to? If so, you may be reminded, how the spring time of your life came with its warm affections, fresh hopes, and keen feelings-and it may have been with a parent's advices, and a parent's prayers, but that you did not "seek God early," did not "remember your Creator in the days of your youth," and soon the season passed, and you were not saved. Then came summer, the heyday of manhood, bringing more matured experience, a stronger mind, and riper judgment; but you sought the things of time alone, everything but the one thing needful : and so summer came and went, but you were not saved. The mellow harvest then arrived, when manhood exchanged the fading features of youth for the looks of old age, when you should have been gathering the good fruit from the seed sown in spring and matured in summer. And some fruit, perhaps, you did gather, the fruit of industry in the comforts of life, or the fruit of honourable dealing in the respect of the world, or the fruit of domestic happiness from domestic love; but not having sown to the Spirit, no spiritual fruit was gathered-and so the season passed, but you were not saved! And what! has

winter come? the winter of life, with its hoary locks and tottering steps, and body bent towards the open grave—and is it true of the old man, as it was of the young man, that he is not saved? If this season passes like the rest in vain-remember no spring time can return to you.

But it is possible that the words may refer to past seasons of grace. If so, how solemn the reflection, that peaceful sabbaths, holy sacraments, faithful preachings, and earnest prayers, serious advices and stirring warnings, social blessings without number, health of mind and body, friends, labours, days of enjoyment; and mingled with these, domestic afflictions, sick-beds, deaths, and burials, all sent to bring you to God, yet have all been sent to you in vain-for all have passed, and yet you are not saved! Add to all these the reflection, that while such seasons were passing, you were going farther from God, and becoming more sinful and more guilty, going farther from the only source of light and life, and slowly but surely becoming more dark and corrupt and you will not wonder that, in contemplating a state so bad, a condition so alarming, the prophet should exclaim,-"For the hurt of my

daughter I am hurt: I am black; astonishment hath taken hold of me."

This is the language of sorrow, the sorrow of one who knows the value of salvation, and the loss incurred by those who are not saved. It is the same kind of grief which filled the heart of St. Paul, when, speaking of the unbelief of his brethren, he said, "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart." It was this sorrow for lost souls, which made the Saviour weep over impenitent Jerusalem, saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not."

Let me now suppose, that even one reader secretly confesses that he has never had such a concern for his soul, as has led him once, in downright earnest, to a throne of grace, seeking salvation that he certainly lacks any Scripture evidence of being saved, while he possesses too much of the Scripture evidence of being "not saved;" moreover, that he knows and feels his state to be one of evil and of danger: then I ask such a one, "Why are you not saved?" Be it so,

that the summer is past, and that the harvest is ended that time has fled-life vanished as a vapour, and seasons of grace departed-leaving behind this sad result of "not saved." Be it so, that no language can picture the sin and loss of such a state ;—yet why is it not otherwise? Why is not the disease removed, and its awful consequences averted? What replies can you make to those questions? What reasons can be given for your continuing in your present state, rather than in seeking and obtaining the deliverance which you stand so much in need of?

Do you say, "My disease is incurable. It is inveterate. It cannot be healed." And what, let me ask, is that disease which the good physician, Jesus Christ, cannot cure? When He was on earth, He healed "all manner of diseases;" He made the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dumb speak, He even raised the dead. No one was dismissed by Him as incurable. These cures He effected, not merely to do good at the time, or to prove that He came from God, but also to teach the whole world in all ages, what he could do for the salvation of man; to assure us that He could save the soul, and make it see his glory, and

hear his voice, and speak his praise, and walk in the way of his commandments—yea, raise it from the very dead. Jesus also cast out demons. You remember, for instance, the case of the demoniac in the country of the Gadarenes, who lived in the tombs, and wandered naked among the mountains, wild, "night and day crying, and cutting himself with stones." No human hand could bind him, for he was possessed of demons. But Jesus cast them forth, though "they were legion;" and the poor man was found "in his right mind," sitting clothed at Christ's feet; and he who was a demoniac became a messenger from God, and told his unbelieving countrymen "the great things Jesus had done for him!" Such blessed miracles prove to us the comforting truth, that Jesus is more powerful than Satan. He was so then-is He not so now? "All power has been given to Him in heaven and earth.” -"Principalities and powers are made subject to Him." You cannot have a worse disease than those poor sinners in Judea had. Therefore, the Physician who was able to save them, is able to save you. I have heard of men who professed to cure with their medicines all diseases which afflict the body. Thousands believed them, and soon found that they be