thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and thy children shall come again from the land of the enemy." O ye Children! who are yet spared, and are now responsible for your conduct; let this comfort be put into our hearts with regard to you. Remember your Creator. Live and die in the Lord; and then, though we lose you for a moment, you shall be restored to us, equal to the angels, and be the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. And, you Parents! endeared by so much affection, and whose venerable looks remind us of separation; fear not to go in good time. We will rock the cradle of your age; and comfort you on the bed of languishing; and kiss your cold cheeks, and close your eyes, and lay you in the dust; but we shall see you again; and our heart shall rejoice, and our joy no one taketh from us.

-And let this animate you when looking towards your own grave. And surely some of you must be thinking of it. Your complaints, your infirmities, your years, must lead you to ask, How long have I to live? Well! if you are a Christian, you have every reason to think of it with resignation and pleasure. God says to you, as he did to Jacob trembling on the confines of Egypt, "Be not afraid to go down: I will go down with thee; and I will bring thee up again." He will watch over your sleeping dust, and he will bid it rise. If it be trying to part with your companion the body, remember it is only for a time; and it will be restored to you in the image of God's Son. Say then, "I am not following cunningly devised fables. I build upon a rock. It is true, sin takes away my health and breath, and lays my body down in the grave. But I hear him saying among the tombs, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die. At the "sound of this, I take courage and go forward. I am not stumbling over a precipice, uncertain where I shall fall, and not knowing that I shall ever rise. I descend into the grave by a gentle flight of steps, leaning on my Beloved and my Friend-I choose to die. It is thou, my God, my Saviour, who callest me; and I give up my life into thy hand, assuredly persuaded, that thou art able and willing and engaged to return it." This is not empty declamation. I have taken the very language from the lips of a dying saint-I stood by-and after she had surveyed her reduced and wrinkled hands and arms, she ended her

address, (and life too, a few moments after,) with the words of the sweet Psalmist in our British Israel:

"Oft have I heard thy threat'nings roar,
And oft endur'd the grief:

And when thy hand hath press'd me sore,
Thy grace was my relief.

By long experience I have known
Thy sov'reign pow'r to save;
At thy command I venture down
Securely to the grave.

When I lie buried deep in dust,
My flesh shall be thy care;

Those with'ring limbs with thee I trust,
To raise them strong and fair."

-But what is all this to some of you, my brethren? Let me speak freely; and do not consider me as your enemy, because I tell you the truth. Who of you have not frequently been at the grave of a neighbour, a friend, a relation? Sometimes you have been deeply impressed there. But how soon did the impression wear off; and you renewed your pursuit of the world, as eagerly as if you had never heard, never seen, never felt that all was vanity and vexation of spirit.

What do you think of your own grave? Perhaps the thought never enters your mind; or if it does, you deem it an impertinent and hateful intruder; and you drive it from you, as you would a serpent. Some of you have been led down very nearly to the grave, by perilous accident or disease. And how did it appear? Did it not seem an awful thing to enter an invisible and changeless state? Did you not turn your face to the wall and weep? If ever you prayed, was it not then? "O spare me a little, that I may recover strength, before I go hence and be no more. Where now are the confessions and vows of that hour? Perhaps the very scene is rendered disagreeable by your apostacy from your convictions-you endeavour to forget it-and you shun the Christian, and the Minister you called in, because they are now witnesses against you.

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Here is an awful case. And what can you do? If you wait, the grave is your house-and you know you must enter it. You may play the infidel: you may deny the truth of the Gospel; but it is useless to deny that you are

on the borders of the grave-you may reason about it; you may look up and curse God and your King. But you cannot escape. Perhaps you would be shocked to be unburied; but this is not likely to be your case. You may have a good grave—a much better grave than many of your neighbours; and it will afford your body ease; and in this sense, the clods of the valley will be sweet about you. But is there not a spirit in man? Where will your soul be while your body is resting in the grave? Yea, and how is the body to be disposed of at last?

The Lord Jesus will raise you, as well as his people; but his agency will have a very different principle. The resurrection of the godly will be performed by him, as their Lord and Redeemer, under the administration of grace; but the wicked will be raised by him as the Ruler and the Judge, under an administration of law; for they are under the law, and not under grace. They refused the ransom, and died in their guilt; and the grave received them as criminals in charge bound over to justice-for as many as are under the law, are under the curse; and as they live, and die, so they rise the same.

There is also a difference in the bodies revived. What the bodies of the righteous will be, you have heard: but they that sow to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption. The evils attached to your bodies will not be left in the grave, but will cleave to them for ever; and they will inherit the seeds of disease and the principles of deformity; and they will have the same raging appetites and passionsbut all unindulged.

The conditions following also differ. "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." "Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." Thus both the chief butler and chief baker were released at the same time, and from the same confinement-the one to be advanced, and the other to be executed. The grave, to the believe", is an avenue to heaven. It is the dress-chamber, in which the Church puts on her beautiful garments, to arise and meet the Lord in the air. But to others, it is the condemned cell in which the malefactor is lodged till he is led out to punishment.

That can hardly be called a deliverance, that releases a man from a bad condition and consigns him to a worse. It would be well if the bodies of the wicked could remain where by death they are deposited: but this is impossible. The bodies-those bodies which you have so indulged, so pampered, so adorned; the bodies which death delivers to the worms, the resurrection will deliver to the flames!

And where are you now? Take the hemp or the steel, and destroy yourself. Ah! this too is impossible. The soul is instantly before God. You have got rid only of one part of you. And even the part you have demolished, will be re-animated and rendered invulnerable-and you shall seek death, but shall not find it; and shall desire to die, but death shall flee from you.

Be

-But why do I thus address you? It is that, by awakening your consciences from a fatal security, I may in time dispose you to ask, "What must I do to be saved?" I am sure of this, that I would not have enlarged upon your awful condition had I not believed that there is hope in Israel concerning this thing; and that none of you are exIcluded from it unless those who exclude themselves. But so it is. The Saviour stands before you in all the combined forms of power and of pity. He is able-he is willing to save unto the uttermost. Seek him while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Wait for no qualifications to recommend you to his gracious notice. He requires none. If Paul and Silas were here, they would say, lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Plead not, as an objection, your unworthiness. This should only increase the earnestness of your application. Behold the number and the character of those who have obtained mercy. Read his word; and hear him not only allowing, but inviting and commanding you to approach, with the assurance, him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out." Obey his voice. Commit yourselves into his hands. And you shall never come into condemnation, but shall pass from death unto life. And though even then, if you wait, the grave is your house, it will only be a peaceful and temporary residence to sleep in: and you will finally enter another house, a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

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LECTURE XII.

THE CHRISTIAN, IN HEAVEN.

"Who hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel."-2 Tıм. i. 10.

DID the heathen then know nothing of life and immortality before? They had their schools and their philosophers. Some of them acquired great distinction and fame. Their sagacity and learning were deep and extensive. They were enriched by a long succession of preceding discoveries and improvements. In the various arts and sciences they much excelled; and he that would see a fine piece of statuary must fetch it from the ruins of Greece and Rome. But, as to the things of God, we are assured by one who was well qualified to judge, "They were vain in their imaginations: their foolish heart was darkened. And professing themselves wise, they became fools."

They had indeed their surmisings concerning a future state; they brought forward some strong probabilities in its favour; and, aided in their reasonings by hints of unacknowledged tradition, some fine and worthy sentiments escaped from them. But they never taught life and immortality as a doctrine; they never employed it as a principle and motive. They had no authority to publish it to others; and not one of them was sure of the thing in his own mind. And, as Paley well remarks, "Conjecture and opinion are not knowledge; and in religion, nothing more is known than is proved." Thus the world by wisdom knew not God; and if this was the case with the wise and the learned, what was it with the common people, with the old, with children, with the busy and engrossed, who could only eat their bread by the sweat of their brow? The Apostle, therefore, speaking of the Gentiles, says, they