good devolves on a single point. A house rises to affluence; it acquires a rank in life; it is distinguished by equipage; and all its elevation proceeds from a single head this head is the mover of all its springs : he is the protector, the father, and friend of all: this head is cut down this father, protector and friend, expires; and by that single stroke, all our honours, rank, pleasures, affluence, and enjoyments of life, seem to descend with him to the tomb. At this stroke nature groans, the flesh murmurs, and faith also is obscured; the soul is wholly absolved in its calamities, and contemplating its own loss in that of others, concentrates itself in anguish. Hence those impetuous passions; hence those mournful and piercing cries; hence those Rachels, who will not be comforted because their children are no more. Hence those extravagant portraits of past happiness, those exaggerations of present evils, and those gloomy augurs of the future. Hence those furious howlings, and frightful distortions, in the midst of which it would seem that we were called rather as exorcists to the possessed, than to administer balm to afflicted minds.

It is not difficult to vindicate the judgment we have formed of the grief proceeding from this principle. When the privation of a temporal good casts into despair, it was obviously the object of our love; a capital crime in the eye of religion. The most innocent connections of life, cease to be innocent when they become too strongly cemented. To fix one's heart upon an object, to make it our happiness, and the object of our hope, is to constitute it a god; is to place it on the throne of the Supreme, and to form it into an idol.

Whether it be a father, or a husband, or a child, which renders us idolaters, idolatry is not the less odious in the eyes of God, to whom supreme devotion is due. Religion requires that our strongest passion, our warmest attachment, and our firmest support, should ever have God for their object: and being only in the life to come that we shall be perfectly joined to God, religion prohibits the making of our happiness to consist in the good things of this life. And though religion should not dictate a duty so just, common prudence should supply its place; it should induce us to place but a submissive attachment on objects of transient good. It should say, Let those that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that use this world, as though they used it not, for the fashion of this world passeth away.-Put not your trust in princes, nor in great men, in whom there is no help: his soul goeth forth, he returneth to the earth, and in that very day his purposes perish. 1 Cor. vii. 29. Psa. cxlvi. 3, 4.

Hence, when driven to despair by the occurrence of awful events, we have cause to form a humiliating opinion of our faith. These strokes of God's hand are the tests whereby he tries our faith in the crucible of tribulation, according to the apostle's idea, 1 Pet. i. 7. When in affluence and prosperity, it is difficult to determine whether it be love for the gift, or the giver, which excites our devotion. It is in the midst of tribulation that we can recognize a genuine zeal, and a conscious piety. When our faith abandons us in the trying hour, it is an evident proof that we had

taken a chimera for a reality; and the shadow for the substance. Submission and hope are characters of a Christian.

The example of the father of the faithful here occurs to our view. If ever a mortal had cause to fix his hopes on any object, it was undoubtedly this patriarch. Isaac was the son of the promise; Isaac was a miracle of grace; Isaac was a striking figure of the blessed Seed, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. God commanded him to sacrifice this son; who then had ever stronger reasons to believe that his hopes were lost? But what did Abraham do? He submitted, he hoped. He submitted; he left his house; he took his son; he prepared the altar, he bound the innocent victim; he raised his arm; he was ready to dip his paternal hands in blood, and to plunge the knife into the bosom of this dear son. But in submitting, he hoped, he believed. How did he hope? He hoped against hope. How did he believe? He believed what was incredible, rather than persuade himself that his fidelity would be fatal, and that God would be deficient in his promise: he believed that God would restore his son by a miracle, having given him by a miracle; and that this son, the unparalleled fruit of a dead body, should be raised in a manner unheard of. Believers, here is your father. If you are the children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham. I say again, that submission and hope are the marks of a Christian. In the mountain of the Lord he will there provide. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; yet my kindness shall not depart from thee; neither shall the covenant

of my peace be removed. But Zion said, the Lord hath forsaken me; and my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee. When my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up. Though they slay me, yet will I trust in thee. Isa. xlix. 14. liv. 10. Psa. xxvii. 10. Job xiii. 15.

II. We have reprobated the affliction of which despondency is the principle. A man judges of the happiness of others, by the notion of his own happiness ; and estimating life as the supreme good, he regards the person deprived of it, as worthy of the tenderest compassion. Death presents itself to us under the image of a total privation. The deceased seems to us to be stripped of every comfort. Had he, by some awful catastrophe, lost his fortune; had he lost his sight, or one of his limbs, we should have sympathised in his affliction, with how much more propriety ought we to weep, when he has been deprived of all those comforts at a stroke, and fatally sentenced to live no more? This sorrow is appropriate to those who are destitute of hope. This is indisputable, when it has for its object those who have finished a Christian course; and it is on these occasions more than any other, we are obliged to confess that most Christians draw improper consequences, and act in a manner wholly opposed to the faith they profess. We believe the soul to be immortal, we are confident at the moment of a happy death that the soul takes its flight to heaven; and that the angels who have encamped around it for protection and defence, carry it to the

bosom of God. We have seen the living languish and sigh, and reach forth to the moment of their deliverance; and when they attain to this moment, we class them among the unhappy! Was I not right in saying, that there are no occasions on which Christians reason worse than on these, and act more directly opposite to the faith they profess? While the deceased were with us in this valley of tears, they were subject to many complaints. While running a race so arduous, they complained of being liable to stumble. They complained of the calamities of the church in which they were entangled. They complained when meditating on revelation, that they found impenetrable mysteries; and when aspiring at perfection, they saw it placed in so exalted a view, as to be but imperfectly attained. But now they are afflicted no more; now they see God face to face; now they are come to mount Zion, to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the myriads of angels, to the assembly of the first-born. Now, as the Holy Spirit hath said, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them. Heb. xii. 22. Psa. xvi. 11. Rev. xiv. 13.

These remarks concern those only who die the death of the righteous: but should not piety indulge her tears when we see those die impenitent to whom we are joined by the ties of nature, and shall we call that a criminal sorrow when it is the death of reprobates which excite our grief? Is there any kind of comfort against this painful thought, that my son is dead in an unregenerate state? And can any sorrow