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"sake these mansions of glory, and dwell with men. They who now wander in darkness, I will bring to light, and life, and immortality; they are now un"der sentence of death; that sentence shall be exe"cuted on me, and I will purchase for them life everlasting they have now gone astray into the paths "of perdition, I will point out to them the way that "leads to the heavens."

In this manner did Jesus Christ become the resurrection and the life. As the Prophet of the world, he gave us the assurance of life and immortality; as the Priest of the world, he purchased for us life and immortality and as the King of the world, he set before us the path that leads to life and immortality. In the first place, then, as the Prophet of the world gave us assurance of life and immortality.

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Curiosity, or the desire of knowledge, is one of the earliest and one of the strongest emotions of the human soul. No sooner does the mind arrive at maturity, but it proceeds to examine the objects around it, and to extend its researches wider and wider over the whole circuit of creation. With peculiar earnestness man turns his attention to his own nature, and becomes the object of his own contemplation. But here clouds and darkness surround him. He perceives himself a stranger in a wide world, where the plan of nature is very imperfectly known, where the system of things is involved in much obscurity, and where the Author of the universe is a God who hideth himself. Life appears to him as an intermediate state; but he is ignorant of what was before it, and is as ignorant of what is to come after it. He observes symptoms of decay and marks of mortality on all the productions of nature, the human race not exempted from the general law. He sees his friends and companions, one after another, perpetually disappearing; he sees mankind, generation after generation, passing away; passing to that awful abyss to which every thing goes, and from which nothing returns.

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whither do they go when they depart? Have they withdrawn into everlasting darkness? Or do they still act in another scene? We see the body incorporate with its kindred elements, and return to the dust from whence it was taken. But what becomes of the soul? Does it, too, cease to exist? Is the beam of heaven for ever extinguished? Is the celestial fire which glowed in the heart for ever quenched? Or, beyond the horizon which terminates our present prospect, does a more beautiful and perfect scene present itself, where the tears shall be wiped from the eyes of the mourner, where the wicked shall cease from troubling, and the weary be at rest?

If we consult our affections, we will be inclined to believe in a future state. Nature is loth to quit its hold. The heart still wishes to be kind to the friends whom once it loved. Imagination takes the hint, and indulges us with the pleasing hope of one day meeting again with the companions whom we dropt in life. The perfections of the Deity favour these wishes of nature. If God be infinitely wise and infinitely good, he would not have brought us into being only to see the light and to depart for ever. Would a wise builder have erected such a noble fabric to last but for a moment? On the other hand, if we consult the analogy of nature, the horrors of annihilation surround us. All the works of nature seem only made to be destroyed. The leaf that falls from the tree revives no more. The animal that mingles with the earth never rises to life again. Appearances also make against us. The mind seems to depend much upon the body. The temper of the one arises from the state of the other. When the external senses decay, the faculties of the soul are impaired. When the blood ceases to flow, the spirit evaporates, the last stroke of the pulse seems to put a final period to the whole man.

Between these fears and these wishes of nature, no conclusion can be drawn. After the maturest inves

tigation, and deepest reasoning, all that we arrive at is uncertainty. We see the traveller involved in the cloud of night, but we know not of any morning that awaits him. The ocean spreads before us, vast, and dark, and awful, but we know not if it will waft us to any shore. What a disconsolate situation is this to a serious inquiring mind? These thoughts would perplex us at all times; but if they affect us with anxiety in the gay and smiling scenes of life, how will they overwhelm us with horror, when our feet stumble on the dark mountains, and the shadows of the everJasting evening begin to close over our head? In that hour of terror and dismay, how shall the wretched man support himself, who knows not the hope of immortality? Afflicted with the view of his past life, tormented with present pain, and hovering over an abyss from which we know not if we shall ever emerge, how must it embitter the last hour, and mingle despair with the pangs of dissolution, to think of our bidding adieu to the living world; to go perhaps for ever into the dominion of darkness, into the region of shadows, into the land of forgetfulness, where, for any thing we can tell, we shall be as though we had never been! To such persons, the end of life must be insupportable. Their setting sun goes down in a cloud, and the long night closes over their head in its darkest and deepest shade.

But when the Sun of Righteousness arose in our region, it dispelled the shadows of the everlasting evening revealed all the heavens to mortal view, and poured its radiance upon the path of immortality. Our Saviour did not propose his doctrines as controvertible opinions; he confirmed them by proofs and miracles. Did he teach the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body? As an infallible confirmation of these doctrines, he himself arose from the grave, and being the first-born from the dead himself, he gives life to the world. The good man need not now live in a state of anxiety about his fq

ture éxistence, or mourn for his deceased friends as those who have no hope; we know that our Redeemer liveth, we know that we shall in like manner revive.

There is a time appointed, when the year of the redeemed shall come; when the everlasting morning shall dawn; when the voice of the Son of God shall pierce the caverns of the tomb; shall be heard over the dominions of the dead; shall re-animate the ashes of all that ever lived upon the earth, and raise a glorious and immortal army from the bosom of corruption.

In the name, and by the authority of Him who was once dead, but is now alive, and lives for evermore, I am this day to give you the bread of life, and deliver into your hand the pledges of immortality. It is the voice which Jesus this day addresses to you from these tables, I am the resurrection and the life. He that "believeth in me shall never die."

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In the second place, Jesus Christ, as the Priest of the world, purchased for us life and immortality.

When man came from the hands of his Creator, he was innocent, and therefore happy, and immortal. For although, in the present degenerate state of human nature, the imperfect virtue of good men neither insures their happiness here, nor merits an everlasting reward hereafter, yet, if we suppose them in a state of innocence or confirmed goodness, we can neither set bounds to their enjoyments nor their existence. The ideas of perfection and felicity are inseparable: whereever pure virtue is, it is in paradise; all good beings throughout the universe are happy. Righteousness is by its own title, immortal. The spring of innocence, and the fountain of life, for ever mingle their streams.

Accordingly, as the world, when it was first created, contained in it no principles of decay, so man, its noblest inhabitant, harboured in its nature no seeds of dissolution. The world, if it had not been cursed, had moved on in its original beauty, fresh, in undecaying vigour, and fair with perpetual youth; and

man, if he had never fallen, would only have exchanged an earthly paradise for a heavenly one. For, as we are told, God created not death, and there was no poison of destruction in the world which he made. Immortality was a part of his image, which he conferred upon our first parents. Amid the garden of Eden a tree arose, the sacramental pledge of life, and sign of immortality to man. And if man had never fallen by tasting of its fruits, he would have lived for ever. But, by the fall death entered into the world. On the day that man became a sinner he died. The man who was made after the image of God, died; the man who was created immortal, died; and there remained a lifeless form, a guilty and a mortal creature, doomed to earn his bread with the sweat of his brows, to drag out a threescore and ten years of wretchedness and pain, and then to return to the dust from which he was taken.

How art thou fallen from heaven, son of the morning! How is the gold become dim, and the most fine gold changed! The celestial spirits, appointed the guardians of Eden, knew our first parents no longer; they recollected no traces of original innocence in a form so fallen: They discerned none of the lineaments of heaven in a face so clouded with guilt. They drove out the man: Drove him out from the garden of Eden, where he had access to the tree of life; drove him out from the society of all those good beings who were at once happy and obedient; drove him out from the presence of the Lord, with which, in paradise, he had been often blessed.

Behold him now in his fallen state! Behold, O man! and mourn over this image. Fallen from the dignity of his nature, and in ruins; the beauty of innocence defaced; the splendour of heaven obscured ; cut off from the career of glory and immortality; his name erased from the book of life, no more to claim alliance with the father of spirits, no more to rank among those happy sons of God, who present them