You, Solomon my son, know the God of your father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind; for Yahweh searches all hearts, and understands all the imaginations of the thoughts: if you seek him, he will be found of you; but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.
 Every place is consecrated where there is a true heart. In that seat you may seek and find him. Standing there, up in that corner of the gallery, your soul may find her God. In Cheapside, walking in the busiest street, or at the plough-tail amidst the field, let thy soul but cry, "Jesus, pity a sinner" let thy heart trust in that Jesus no place is wanted any place sufficeth. Raise not that excuse.  "I have not the time," says another. Not the time! What time, pray, does it require? But if it did require it, oh! man, art thou mad to say, "I have no time"? Ye have time enough to dress your body; you stay for that other pin, and that other ribbon, and that adornment of your person. Not time to put on the robe of righteousness! You have time to feed your bodies, to sit down to your meals. Not time to eat the bread of heaven! Time to cast up your accounts to see how your business stands, and not time to see to your soul's affairs! Oh! sirs, be ashamed to make such an excuse. I charge you, give not sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids till you are saved. A man wakes up in the night, and finds his house is on fire. There is a noise in the street. The fireman is calling to him. The ladder is at the window. "I have not time," says he, "to go down the ladder and escape. I have little enough time for rest, and I must have my sleep while I can." The man is mad, sir, and so is every man who says, "I have not time to seek my God." Perhaps, however, you speak the truth, for ere the next word leaves my lips you may fall down a corpse. God sometimes makes our base excuses turn into solemn truth. Oh! while you have time, use it. "Escape for your life; look not behind thee"; stay not, but hasten till you find the Saviour, and never think of resting till Christ is yours. Another reason that some bring is one which occurs to them as if it were very satisfactory, and that is,  "I cannot. No man can come, except he be drawn, and I cannot." Yes, but you may put a truth into such a shape that it is a lie. Will you let me put that into the right shape? Every time when a sinner cannot, the real reason is that he will not. All the cannots in the Bible about spiritual inability are tantamount to will nots. But when you say, "I cannot repent," you mean, "I will not I will not seek, I will not believe." Now put it honestly to your own soul, for that is what you mean, for if you would you could. If the will were conquered, the power would be sure to come with it, but the first difficulty is, "You will not"; and this is it, you will not seek eternal life; you will not escape from hell; you will not have heaven; you will not be reconciled to God; you will not come into Christ that you might have Christ. You make it as an objection, but I charge it upon you as a crime, a crime which aggravates all the rest, and is in itself a greater crime, perhaps, than all the rest put together. Ye will not come. "Do you want to come?" "Yes, but there is much I cannot do." "Aye! but there is means provided to help you." God the Holy Spirit helps you, yea, works mightily in you. Have you never heard of that negro servant who was sent by his master on an errand? He did not particularly like to go there. He was sent with a letter. He was back in a short time; and his master said, "Sam, you have not gone with that letter." "No, massa." "Why not?" "Massa couldn't expect Sam to do impossibilities." "What impossibilities, sir?" "I went on as far as I could massa came to river couldn't swim across river very wide river couldn't swim across it." "But there is a ferry-boat." "Ferry-boat t'other side, massa ferry-boat t'other side." "Did you call to the ferry-boat, sir?" "No, massa; didn't." "Oh! you rascal," said he; "That is no excuse at all. Why didn't you call for the ferry-boat? Why didn't you call for it?" Now if that negro had only just said, "Boat, ahoy there!" the ferry-boat would have come to him, and all would have been well. It was an idle thing to say, "I cannot." It was true, but it was false. So when I come to a point where there is something in the matter of my being saved which I cannot do, yet if I pray the Holy Spirit to work in me that I cannot work in myself, he will do it. Jesus Christ will give me "true belief and true repentance every grace that brings me nigh." I have only to ask for all that I want, and I shall have it. It is idle for me to say, "I cannot do it." Nobody asked you to. Christ will give it to you; only do stand and call call mightily, and cry with all your soul until the blessing be come. But now I must close. I want to offer just a few sentences only. IV. A STIMULANT, to lead you to seek him who will be found of you. And the first is,  "Is it not our duty to God that we should seek him?" With some persons this reflection may be important. You remember the Countess of Huntingdon, one of the most remarkably gracious women that every lived a mother in Israel. Her conversion was to a great degree caused by this: she was a blithe and worldly lady of noble rank, excellent and amiable, and all that, but she had no thought of the things of God. She was at a ball, and the amusements of the evening were engrossing all attention, and suddenly the answer to the first question of the assembly's catechism, which she appears to have learnt when she was a child, came forcibly into her mind, "The chief end of man is to glorify God, and enjoy him for ever." She thought to herself, "Why, here am I, a butterfly among a lot of butterflies. All our chief end is to enjoy ourselves, to spend the evening merrily and make ourselves agreeable, and so on." She went away smitten in her soul with that thought, "The end that God made me for I am not answering." Now there are some minds that have sufficient in them to think of such a thing as that, and I shall leave that to fall into some honest, and good ground. Perhaps some young man will say, "Well, after all, I am not serving my Creator as I should." You remember the conversion of Colonel Gardiner. He had lived a wild soldier's life, and he had appointed that very night of his conversion to perpetuate a gross sin. He was waiting an hour before he went to his appointment, and he thought he saw, I think upon the wall, the Saviour on the cross, and underneath the representation of the Crucified he read these words: 