amily interest, while the great interests of the kingdom of Christ
have been quite out of the question.

Now, therefore, they have to repent perhaps of the very things they
have been the most proud of. They have also to resist many sinful
habits which have become, as it were, a second nature; they have to
disentangle themselves from a multitude of irreligious connections,
whose opinions have hitherto ruled over them; they have to unteach
even their own children many a false principle which they had taught
them. With many a weary and painful step, they have to measure back
the whole ground which they have been treading; and they have to undo,
as it were, every thing which for fifty years they have been doing.
When more than half of life is over, they have to enter upon the work
which they were sent into the world to do; but at length they hire
themselves into the vineyard of Christ, and he receives them, though
it is the ninth hour: and now they husband well their time, and begin
to be fruitful in every good work; and whatever they do, they do all
to the glory of God: they perform what he commands, and simply because
he commands it: they become a part of the church of Christ, and are
numbered among the laborers in his vineyard.

But if the case of such as were last spoken of is affecting, what
shall be said of those _aged persons_ whom it still remains for us to
describe? Some there are--but, alas, it is to be feared, that it is
the case of very few--who even at seventy, or more than seventy years
old, repent, and become the servants of Christ When scarcely an hour
of life remains, when the evening is closing in, and the "night cometh
in which no man can work," then it pleases God to send his grace
possibly to a few of these also, and they go for the short hour that
remains into the same vineyard of Christ.

How mournful is the view which we have now to take of such an aged
sinner's condition. Here is a person, the whole term of whose earthly
existence, one poor uncertain hour excepted, has been spent in a
sinful course. How plain is it in his case, that there can be no such
thing as merit, and that if ever he is saved, it must be through the
mere mercy of God--a doctrine, indeed, which is equally true in the
case of all. Let us run over the woful tale of his wicked life, and
as before we thought fit to describe an eminent and distinguished
Christian, so now, by way of making the difference more particularly
striking,