That reason, faith, and conscience, constitute an equality among men, which no factitious circumstances can destroy; that as on them, as well as on the haughtiest potentates on earth, the doom of death was denounced, so to them, as well as to their worldly superiors, are promulgated the tidings of a joyful resurrection; and that when coronets and mitres shall have mouldered in the dust, and every temporal distinction shall be swept away, the prince and beggar shall appear on equal terms before that bar, where vice and infidelity shall shrink appalled, and virtue and religion receive their heritage of joy, which shall endure for ever.

SERMON XVI.

ON THE HOSTILITY OF SENSUALITY TO RELIGION.

1 PETER II. 11.

Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul.

THE life which Christianity prescribes is rather a life of seriousness than a life of sorrow, a life of which sobriety and moderation are characteristic virtues, and which implies no other mortifications than those which are necessary to the attainment of ultimate happiness. In consonance to this doctrine, the Apostle, in the text submitted to you, entreats his converted brethren to refrain from many pleasures to which they had been long addicted, and he accompanies his admonition with such a gentle but convincing reason for giving it, as would leave no doubt on the minds of his correspondents as to the moral propriety and necessity of obedience. His argument against a life of sinful voluptuousness rests upon two immutable truths; 1st, upon the transitoriness of the state in which we exist;

and, secondly, upon the danger of such a life to the better and immortal part of us. "I beseech

uas strangers and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul."

My Brethren, it is a true and most important fact, that the brief and fleeting part, which we sustain in this world, is not the whole drama of existence. The stage on which we act is itself composed of perishable materials, of sufficient strength and durability for the temporary purpose for which it was created, and destined at its appointed hour to be destroyed, and then with time itself to be no longer. But whatever may be the period of duration allowed to this great fabric of the Almighty's hand; whether its supreme Creator chooses to extend it for millions of years, or suddenly to put an end to its existence, we know that we who tread it are but strangers and pilgrims, whose stay is limited, whose removal is certain, and who are then to be summoned to a blessed or accursed immortality.

We know that by our conduct here, our future destiny is to be decided; that as sojourners in the land we are so to behave ourselves as to obtain a more excellent inheritance beyond it; and that according to that behaviour, when we rise again, we shall rise to the felicities of heaven, or to the condemnation of hell. There is no question, that if this truth could obtain a secure and permanent lodgment in the human heart;

if the consideration of the transitoriness of time, and the duration of eternity, were brought to bear upon the general conduct of life, with all the strength and efficacy of a ruling sentiment, every purpose of religion would be answered. Men would then be seen every where to enquire into the real condition of their existence, they would and in the progress of that enquiry that they had wandered from the road that was set before them, that they had incurred the wrath of God by their vagrancy and guilt, that they had need of a guide and Saviour to restore them to his favour; that no man, no angel, no inhabitant of earth or heaven, except Jesus Christ himself, could be a worthy propitiation for their sins; and, thankful for the salvation purchased by his blood, and for the rules of guidance contained in his preached Gospel, they would set forward on their pilgrimage with a vigorous determination to believe in his name, to confide in his protection, to obey his precepts, and to imitate his example: this being the real state of human life; a state which is revealed to us by the book of grace, and corroborated by the book of nature; I put it to yourselves as reasonable beings, as well as professing Christians, if it does not impose upon you considerable obligations and considerable duties arising from them. If you are here, My Brethren, not as tenants but as travellers, not as the permanent possessors of earthly

things; but merely as stewards of the day, is it not eligible, is it not incumbent on you to reflect with serious anxiety on the end of your journey, and on the coming period when you must give an account of your stewardship. You are now in the infancy of existence; and shall the toys, which, however splendid, must soon perish, however entertaining, must be soon quitted, gain such an ascendancy and hold upon your heart, as to wean it from all preparation for that advancing manhood which is to be spent in the awful regions of eternity? If, in the pursuit of some great and necessary acquisition, it were your lot to travel through some strange country, would you think it prudent, or rather could you be allured by any temptation which the inhabitants could offer, to renounce the object of your peregrination, to waste your time in trifles, and to return bootless and unprofited to your native home? Yet this, My Friends, is the absurdity of which they are guilty, who, regardless of God, of Christ, and of eternity, satisfy every inordinate affection, and every unruly desire, as if they were the only pleasures which life could bestow. This is the wisdom (alas! that the term should be so disgraced!) which the Apostle justly characterizes as earthly, sensual, devilish. Earthly, as having no allaying hope of heaven in its mixture; sensual, as composed entirely of the worst and meanest ingredients of human nature;