In the first place, you should cherish the remembrance of these things by BELIEVING the gospel which he preached. There are some of you, my beloved friends, whose minds I fear still need to be stirred up to the remembrance of the things that belong to your peace. The endeavours of your departed minister, diligent, and impressive, and persevering, as they were, have failed to awaken in your hearts the feelings of penitence and faith. Some of you have, perhaps, for many years, sat under the sound of that gospel which during every year has been to you “the savour of death unto death.” Throughout the whole course of his ministry you are the persons who occasioned his keenest anxieties and his bitterest disappointments; for so far as you were concerned he seemed to labour in vain, and to spend his strength for nought. Yet he warned, and exhorted, and admonished you to the last; and it should be to you, day and night, an awful and awakening remembrance, that the very last text from which he preached, {21} was the subject of a sermon emphatically addressed to you; for its language was, “NOTWITHSTANDING I HAVE SPOKEN UNTO YOU, RISING EARLY AND SPEAKING, YET YE WOULD NOT HEARKEN UNTO ME.” And these words, the last which he addressed to you on earth, were, perhaps, the first which he repeated concerning you at the bar of God. Ah! my brethren, were it possible for any thought to disturb his peaceful breast in heaven, it would be the recollection of the state of guilt and impenitence in which he has left you on earth—it would be the thought that now perhaps you and he are separated for ever. And shall this be the case? Can any of you—can you, my dear young friends, bear the thought that you may have bidden an eternal farewell to your faithful and paternal minister? Will you, who have procrastinated till his death, not have these things in your remembrance now, after his decease? When there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, shall he never be told that angels are rejoicing over you? And will you not from this time, and from the grave of your deceased instructor cry unto God, “My Father, thou art the guide of my youth?” My dear brethren, whether you be young or old, “behold now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation.” To-morrow may be too late for ever; and if you delay, the remembrance of these things may be stirred up in your minds by the worm that dieth not, and by the fire that never shall be quenched. But if you wish to have these things in your remembrance now, go, by faith and prayer, to that Redeemer, whose gospel and whose minister you have hitherto neglected. Go to him with all the guilt and condemnation which that neglect has contracted. Go, as the prodigal went, with the feeling of penitence in your heart, and the confession of penitence on your lip—and whilst you are yet afar off, he will behold you with compassion, and run, and fall on your neck, and embrace you, and exclaim, “This my