ERRATA.

p. 1, for 1841 read 1842.

p. 105, 1. 6, for word's read words.

p. 151, 1. 18, dele full stop and insert comma.

p. 155, 1, 12, for guilt read quite.

p. 157, 1. 13, for has read hears,

p. 159, 1, 25, dele comma and insert full stop.

p. 227, 1. 14, dele? after God.

p. 263, 1. 1, for necessities read medicines.

SERMONS.

SERMON I.

The Son of Man man's Judge.

[Preached at S. Giles on Advent Sunday, Nov. 27, 1841.]

REVELATIONS i. 19.

"EVERY EYE SHALL SEE HIM, AND THEY ALSO WHICH PIERCED HIM."

WHEN the day declines and evening is at hand, the sun goes down in the sky and darkness overspreads the earth, and man ceases from his labour and the image of death is upon the face of all things. When the seed is ripe, the grass of the field sheds its seed and withers away. When the winter is with us, in its coldness and dreariness, the trees are stripped of their leaves, and their

B

sad nakedness makes them appear as if they had no life in them at all. And, whenever God will, every man-each of us—must be stripped of our mortal flesh, and the breath must depart from our nostrils, and we must lie down in our long home, and our dust must return to dust, for death has passed upon all men and so we each one must die.

If

But if the sun sets in the darkness of night, he rises again gloriously on the morrow. the plant, having shed its seed, withers away, the seed is quickened and the grass is renewed. If the trees seem dead in the season of winter, when the spring comes, they will be again clothed with new and brighter greenness. And man, though he die, shall yet live again. He shall rise again the same living person, that he was, when he died. He shall know and recognize himself to be the same. Memory of the scenes of the life, that now is, but which then will be past, the recognition of those whom, when in time, he knew, will tell him that he is the same. The same, save in this, that whatever was mortal and corruptible shall then be immortal and incorruptible. "We shall be changed,

in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible." We shall then be able no more to die; we must live, soul and body, for ever.

It is necessary to be careful in insisting upon the nature of the change, which will pass upon us at the resurrection, because it is to be feared many on this point deceive themselves. I repeat then that the change so far as it concerns all, good and bad, will consist in this, that whereas we are now subject unto death, then we shall be deathless; we shall be no more capable of dying, than are the angels of God or the lost spirits. But the change will not consist in this, that the wicked man shall rise righteous, or that he, who slept in Jesus, shall have lost the sure stay of his hope. The unjust and the filthy will be unjust and filthy still; and the righteous and holy will be righteous and holy still. The careless liver, the forgetful of God, and again the penitent, the believing, the merciful, the good-all will rise with the same stamp of character with which they died,-in their own individual identity both of person and of temper. Only this will have happened to us, that we shall be unable to die any more.