servants, and therefore, the beloved friends of Christ yet you cannot be such, if you live in the neglect of any one part of your duty. Will you not, then, resolve to leave nothing undone, to do whatever you can think of, to make yourselves acceptable to God, through the merits and sufferings of Christ? will you not be ashamed, any longer to invent excuses for neglecting any of your duties, and especially that one which ought to be so delightful to you, and which is so full of comfort, if properly performed? God grant that the longer we live, the more we may all desire and endeavour to do whatsoever He has commanded us! we shall then be friends of Christ: His blessing will be on us, His grace will strengthen us, His Holy Spirit will comfort us, His precious death will save us. We shall be friends of Christ: and whatever may befal us here on earth, in that better world, which we are permitted to look forward to, we shall reap the fruit of our labours, the eternal recompense of reward prepared for all whom Jesus loves.

Let us, then, again I say it, make ourselves the friends of Christ, by doing whatsoever He commands us. We shall then have strength in our temptations, hope in our afflictions, comfort in our griefs, happiness as long as we live, peace when we come to die; and He who now watches over us, and sees the humble endeavours of all who try to serve Him, and condescends to call us friends, will in the day of His glory, shew us what a friend we have found one who can deliver us from the just punishment of our numberless sins, and take us to eternal happiness, with Himself in heaven. Amen!

SERMON XII.

2 PETER iii. 11, 12.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be, in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

THIS world, in which God has placed us to work out the eternal salvation of our souls, was once, for the wickedness of man, destroyed.

We read in the book of Genesis, that God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made man upon the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord said, I will

destroy man whom I have created, from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them.

So great, so monstrous were the sins and offences of unthankful men, that God, whose mercy is over all His works, repented, and was grieved that He had ever made them, and had no other way left to shew His just and righteous anger, but to cover them, and every thing else that He had made, in one common destruction. God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth: and God said, the end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. So the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the

earth, and every man; all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. Thus did the just vengeance of Almighty God fall upon mankind, and, for their sins, upon the whole created world.

But in the midst of all this fearful destruction, this tremendous display of the power of an angry God, this terrible wreck and ruin of the things which He had made, there was one man, one happy man, who found grace in the eyes of the Lord: Noah, who had lived in righteousness, and had kept himself unspotted from the world, Noah, who was a just man and perfect, and had walked all his life with God. He was preserved, and, for his sake, the mercy of God was shewn also to his wife, to his three sons and their wives. These all were kept in the ark from destruction in the midst of the great water floods, and whilst all men else perished for their wickedness, they were saved.

How happy, how blessed beyond the power of words to express, was the condition of this righteous man; thus in the midst of all the guilt and vileness which disgraced the world, to be found in favour