a close. And how terrible will it be, if that day should overtake us as a thief! Let us be wise: I beseech you all, by the tender mercies of God, to have compassion on your own souls, and to " work while it is day, knowing that the night cometh wherein no man can work."
1 Thess. v. 8. Let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breast-plate of faith and love ; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
THE exact season of the day of judgment is wisely hid from our eyes. If it were revealed to us, there is no reason to think that we should make a right improvement of that knowledge. The uncertainty of its arrival is far better calculated to excite our diligence in religious duties, because, while we are told that it will come as surely, as irresistibly, and as unexpectedly too, as a thief in the night, or as travail upon a woman with child, we see the necessity of continual watchfulness and preparation for it. The world at large indeed will rest in supineness and se- curity, in spite of every warning that is given them : but they who profess to fear God should manifest a different spirit, and, as persons apprised of their danger, should ever stand upon their guard. To this effect the Apostle exhorts us in the text ; in dis- coursing on which we shall consider,
I. The description given of believers —
The careless world are in a state of intellectual and moral darkness —
[The light of divine truth has not shined into their hearts, nor have the clouds of nature's darkness been dispelled. " They call evil good, and good evil ; and put darkness for light, and light for darkness*." Their lives too abound with
a Isai. v. 20.