and gaiety, and amid their hurries and schemes, and promifing profpects, they are furprized by the arreft of death, and laid ftiff, fenfelefs, and ghaftly in the grave. A few creep into their beds of duft under the burden of old age and the gradual decays of nature. In fhort, the grave is the place appointed for all living; the general rendezvous of all the fons of Adam. There the prince and the beggar, the conqueror and the flave, the giant and the infant, the fcheming politician and the fimple peasant, the wife and the fool, Heathens, Jews, Mahometans, and Christians, all lie equally low, and mingle their duft without diftinction. There beauty in all its charms putrifies into ftench and corruption, and feeds the vileft infects. There the sturdy arm of youth lies torpid and benumbed, unable to drive off the worms that crawl through their frame, and riot upon their marrow. There lie our ancestors, our neighbours, our friends, our relatives, with whom we once converfed, and who were united to our hearts by ftrong and endearing ties; and there lies our friend, the fprightly, vigorous youth, whofe death is the occafion of this funeral folemnity. This earth is over-fpread with the ruins of the human frame: it is an huge carnage, a vaft charnel-house, undermined and hollowed with the graves, the last manfions of mortals.

And fhall these ruins of time and death never be repaired? Is this the final ftate of human nature? Are all these millions of creatures, that were fo curioufly formed, that could think, and will, and exercife the fuperior powers of reafon, are they all utterly extinct, abforbed into the yawning gulph of annihilation, and never again to emerge into life and activity? If this be the cafe, the expoftulation of the pfalmift upon this fuppofition, feems unavoidable; Lord, wherefore haft thou made all men in vain? Pfalm lxxxix. 47. It was not worth while to come into being, if it must be refigned fo foon. The powers

of

of reafon were thrown away upon us, they were given only for the low purposes of the prefent life.

But my text revives us with heavenly light to fcatter this tremendous gloom. Jefus hath abolished death, overthrown its empire, and delivered its captives; and he hath brought life and immortality to light by the gofpel.

*

Life and immortality here feem to refer both to the foul and the body, the two conftituents of our perfon. As applied to the body, life and immortality fignify, that though our bodies are diffolved at death, and return into their native elements, yet they fhall be formed anew with vaft improvements, and raised to an immortal exiftence; fo that they fhall be as though death never had had any power over them; and thus death fhall be abolished, annihilated, and all traces of the ruins it had made for ever difappear, as though they had never been. It is in this fenfe chiefly that the word Immortality, or Incorruptibility, is made ufe of in my text. But then the refurrection of the body fuppofes the perpetual existence of the foul, for whofe fake it is raised: therefore life and immortality, as referring to the foul, fignify that it is immortal, in a strict and proper fenfe; that is, that it cannot die at all, or be diffolved like the body; but it lives in the agonies of the dying animal; it lives after the diffolution of the animal frame in a separate state; it lives at the refurrection to re-animate the new-formed body; and it lives for ever, like its immortal Parent, and fhall never be diffolved nor annihilated. In this complex fense we may underftand the immortality of which my text fpeaks.

Now it is to the gospel that we owe the clear difcovery of immortality in both thefe fenfes. As for the refurrection of the dead, which confers a kind of immortality upon our immortal bodies, it is altogether the difcovery of divine revelation. The light

of

of nature could not fo much as give a hint of it to the moft fagacious philofophers in the heathen world. They did not hope for it as poffible, much less believe it as certain. And when, among other important doctrines of pure revelation, it was firft preached to them by St. Paul, their pride could not bear the mortification of being taught by a tent-maker what all their studies had not been able to discover; and therefore rejected it with scorn, and ridiculed it as a new-fangled notion of the fuperftitious Jews. This feems to have been an entire fecret to all nations (except the Jews) till the light of Christianity dawned upon the world. They bade an eternal farewell to their bodies, when they dropped them in the grave. They never expected to meet them again in all the glorious improvements of an happy refurrection. But that divine revelation from whence we learn our religion, opens to us a brighter profpect; it ftrengthens our eyes to look forwards thro' the glooms of death, and behold the many that fleep in the duft awaking; fome to everlasting life, and fome to fame and everlasting contempt. Dan. xii. 2. It af fures us, that the hour is coming, when all that are in the grave fhall hear the voice of the Son of God, and fhall come forth; they that have done good, to the refurrection of life; and they that have done evil, to the refurrection of damnation. John. v. 28. Therefore, be it known unto thee, O Death, thou king of terrors, that though we cannot now refift thy power nor escape thy arreft, yet we do not furrender ourselves to thee as helpless, irredeemable prifoners. We fhall yet burst thy bonds, and obtain the victory over thee. And when we commit the duft of our friends or our own to thee, O grave, know, it is a truft deposited in thy cuftody, to be faithfully kept till called for by Him who was once a prisoner in thy territories, but regained his liberty, and triumphed over thee, and put that fong of victory into the mouths of all his followers, Ŏ death, where is thy fting? O grave, where is thy victory? I Cor. xv. 55.

As

As for the immortality of the foul, chriftian philofophers find it no difficulty to eftablish it upon the plain principles of reason. Their arguments are fuch as thefe; and I think they are conclufive: That the foul is an immaterial fubftance, and therefore cannot perish by diffolution, like the body; that the foul is a fubftance diftinct from the body, and therefore the diffolution of the body has no more tendency to deftroy the foul, than the breaking of a cage to deftroy the bird enclosed in it; that God has implanted in. the foul the innate defire of immortality; and that as the tendencies of nature in other inftances and in other creatures are not in vain, this innate defire is an indication that he intended it for an immortal duration; that as God is the moral Governor of the rational world, there must be rewards and punishments, and therefore there must be a future ftate of retribution; for we see mankind are now under a promifcuous providence, and generally are not dealt with according to their works; and if there be a future ftate of retribution, the foul muft live in a future state, otherwise it could not be the subject of rewards and punishments. These and the like topics of argument have been improved by the friends of immortality, to prove that important doctrine beyond all reafonable fufpicion. And because these arguments from reafon feem fufficient, fome would conclude that we are not at all obliged to the chriftian revelation in this refpect. But it should be confidered that those are not the arguments of the populace, the bulk of mankind, but of a few philofophic ftudious men. But as immortality is the prerogative of all mankind, of the ignorant and illiterate, as well as of the wife and learned, all mankind, of all ranks of underftanding, are equally concerned in the doctrine of immortality; and therefore a common revelation was neceffary, which would teach the ploughman and the mechanic, as well as the philofopher, that he was formed for an immortal exiftence, and confequently

that

that it is his grand concern to fit himself for a happinefs beyond the grave, as lafting as his nature. Now, it is the gospel alone that makes this important discovery plain and obvious to all. It must alfo be confidered, that men may be able to demonftrate a truth when the hint is but once given, which they would never have difcovered, nor perhaps fufpected, without that hint. So when the gospel of Chrift has brought immortality to light, our chriftian philofophers may support it with arguments from reafon; but had they been deftitute of this additional light, they would have been loft in perplexity and uncertainty, or at best have been advanced to no further than plaufible or probable conjectures. Perfons may be affifted in their fearches by the light of revelation; but, being accustomed to it, they may mistake it for the light of their own reafon; or they may not be fo honeft and humble as to acknowledge the affiftance they have received. The furest way to know what mere unaffifted reafon can do, is to inquire what it has actually done in thofe fages of the hea then world who had no other guide, and in whom it was carried to the highest degree of improvement. Now we find, in fact, that though fome philofophers had plaufibilities and prefumptions that their fouls fhould exift after the diffolution of their bodies, yet that they rather fuppofed, or wifhed, or thought it probable, than firmly believed it upon good evidence. The Socratefes, the Platos, and the Ciceros, of Greece and Rome, after all their fearches, were more perplexed on this point, than a plain common chriftian of the fmalleft intellectual improvements in our land of evangelical light. Whoever reads their writings upon this fubject will find, when they draw the conclufion of the foul's exiftence after death, it is often from extravagant and chimerical premises; fuch as the pre-existence of human fouls, their fucceffive tranfmigration from body to body, their being literally particles of the Deity, whom they fuppofed to be the VOL. II.

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Anima