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are apt to look upon it, not as their fault, but as their doom, that they are strangers to the doctrine of peace and of righteousness; and often regard it to be as effectual a plea for justifying their ignorance of what is sacred, as of what is profane and secular, that they are not learned.

man, it may reach an influence as substan | that on this account, they must a so spend tial and as practical, as the report of to-mor- it in a state of desolation, as to the whole row's work, or to-morrow's wages. The light and learning of the Gospel. They fatter may be led to shape his actual measures by the terms of the message of revelation. The former may lavish all the powers of science, and subtlety, and speculation upon the terms-and yet be as unouched in his personal habits by all the information which it lays before him, as if the message were untrue. It is not learn- Now we refuse this apology altogether; ing that has made the difference; for the and we should like to warn you in time, veil may be upon the eyes of him who is that it will stand you in no stead, nor be of rich in this acquirement, while it is taken any avail to you in the day of reckoning. away from him who, in respect of scholar- The word of the Lord is in your hands, and ship, is poor, and blind, and destitute. you can at least read it. The candle of the There is not a single weapon in the whole Lord may be lighted in your hearts, and armoury of human learning, by which the you can at least pray for it. The Gospel proudest of its votaries can force his en-is preached unto you as well as unto others; trance into a region of spiritual manifestation. The wise and prudent cannot, on the strength of any of their own peculiar resources, they cannot, with all their putting forth of desire and energy, attain unto those things which are revealed unto babes. There is a barrier here against which all the machinery of the schools may be made to play without effect. And it would look as if argument might as soon remove the film from the eye of him who labours under a natural blindness, as dissipate that thick and impalpable obscurity which lies in the way of all spiritual discernment.

and you can at least attend to it. There will no incurable darkness settle upon your minds, unless you love the darkness. There will no fixed and obstinate unbelief adhere to, your understandings, unless your deeds are evil. This will be your condemnation, if you are found to be without knowledge and without faith. But be assured, that all the aids and promises of Christianity are unto you as well as unto others; and if you grieve not the spirit by your wilful resistance--if you put not at a distance from you that Holy Ghost which is given to those who obey him, by your disobeThere are two immediate uses to which dience-if you despise not the grace of God all this may be rendered subservient. The by your daily and habitual neglect of those first, to rebuke the poor for an apology mercies-in the use of which alone, God which they are sometimes heard to make, undertakes to meet you with its influences when convicted of blindness and ignorance--then be assured, that all the comforts of in regard to the essential truths of Chris- the Gospel, and all its high and heavenly tianity. The second, while we do not sus-anticipations, will descend more richly tain the apology, to encourage them with the assurance, that it is just as competent for them to be wise unto salvation, as for those in the higher and more cultivated walks of human society.

In pressing home the truths and overtures of Christianity on the poor, we often meet with the very answer of the text, "I am not learned." This answer is not copied by them from the text. But the text, true as the Bible strikingly and universally is, in all its descriptions of Nature, copied it from them. It is in truth a very frequent conception among them, that had they the advantages of a higher scholarship than what they actually possess, they would be nearer the wisdom which is unto salvation. This ministers a kind of false security to their hearts, under the consciousness of a lack of knowledge, and that too of vital necessity to their immortal well-being. They think that there is an ignorance which necessity attaches to their condition; and that this should alleviate the burden of their condemnation, in that they know not God. They spend the day in drudgery, and think,

upon you, than upon the noble and wealthy of our land; and let your work through the week be what it may, there is not an hour of it which may not be sweetened by a blessing from above, which may not be regaled and heightened into rapture by the smile of a present Deity.

It is not merely to blame you, that we thus speak. It is further to encourage you, my friends, and that, by an assurance which we cast abroad among you, and that, too, with all the confidence of one who has the warrant of inspiration. The knowledge which is life everlasting, is just as accessible to the poor, as it is to the rich, who have time to prosecute, and money to purchase education. Whatever the barrier may be, which rises as a wall of separation between Nature and the Gospel, it is just as impenetrable to the learned as it is to the unlearned

and however the opening through that barrier is made, it is made as often and oftener, for the purpose of sending a beam of spiritual light into the heart of the latter, than into the heart of the former. The Gospel may as effectually be preached unto the

tures, may have the effect of more strongly detaining the mind from the call which I vainly lift, for the purpose of arousing them. And as the visionary scenes, whether of bliss, or of anxiety, or of sadness, or of eager pursuit, or of bright or of fearful anticipation, pass successively before them, the reality of my waking address may fall unheeded upon each; and though the one be learned, and the other be unlearned, it, in respect of their listening to me, and their understanding of me, totally annuls this difference be tween them, that their eyes are firmly closed, and a deep sleep is poured upon them both.

poor as unto the wealthy. Simply grant to | fancy, with its ever-floating and aerial picthe one the capacity of reading, and the opportunity of hearing, and he is, at the very least, in as fair circumstances for becoming one of the children of light as the other. In respect to human science, there is a distinction between them. In respect of the gospel, that distinction is utterly levelled and done away. Whatever the incapacity of Nature be for the lessons and the light of revelation, it is not learning, commonly so called, which resolves the incapacity; and until that peculiar instrument be actually put forth which can alone resolve it, the book of revelation may pass and repass among them; the one complaining that he cannot read it, because he is not learned; the other equally complaining that he cannot read it, because it is sealed.

II. Let us now proceed, in the second place, to explain a circumstance which stands associated in our text, with the incapacity both of learned and unlearned, to discover the meaning of God's communications; and that is the spirit of a deep sleep which had closed the eyes of the people, and buried in darkness and insensibility the prophets, and the rulers, and the seers, as well as the humblest and most ignorant of the land.

Such, it is possible to conceive, may be the profoundness of this lethargy, as to be unmoved by the most loud and terrifying intimations. I may lift this note of alarm, that a fire has broken out in the premises, and is on the eve of bursting into their apartment-and yet such may be the deathlike sleep of both, that both may lie motionless and unconscious on the very confines of their approaching dissolution. Or, what would be more affecting still, both, in the airy chase of their own imagination, may be fully engrossed among the pictures and the agitations of a dream, and be inwardly laughing, or crying, or striving, or pursuing or rejoicing; and that, while the flame is at their door, which in a few minutes is to seize upon and to destroy them.

When a man is asleep and dreaming, he is alive only to his own fancies, and dead t all the realities of the visible world around him. Awaken him, and he becomes intel

The connexion between the one circumstance and the other is quite palpable. If a peasant and a philosopher, for example, were both literally asleep before me, and that so profoundly, as that no voice of mine could awaken them; then they are just in the same circumstances, with regard to any demonstration which I address to their understandings. The powers and acquire-ligent and alive to these realities, but there ments of the latter would be of no avail to him in such a case, They are in a state of dormancy, and that is just as firm an obstacle in the way of my reasoning, or of my information, as if they were in a state of non-existence. Neither would it at all help the conveyance of my meaning to their mind, that while dead to all perception of the argument which issued from my lips, or even of the sound which is its vehicle, the minds of both of them were most busily alive and active amongst the imagery of a dream; the one dreaming too, perhaps, in the style of some high intellectual pursuit; and the other dreaming in the style of some common and illiterate occupation. Such, indeed, may be the intoxication of their fancy, that in respect of mental delirium, they may be said to be drunken, but not with wine, and to stagger, but not with strong drink. Still, though in the language of the text, I should cry out, and cry, it may be just as difficult to awaken them to a sense of what I am saying, out of a reverie of imagination, as it is to awaken them out of a simple and unconscious slum ber. Nay, the very engagement of their

may still be other realities to which he is not yet awakened. There may remain a torpor upon his faculties, in virtue of which, he may have as little sense and as little feeling of certain near and impending realities, as the man who is wrapt in the insensibility of his midnight repose has of earth and of all its concerns. The report of an angry God, and a coming eternity, may as little disturb him as the report of a conflagration in the premises, disturbs the sleeping inmate before he is awakened. It is not learned argument which works out, in the one case, the escape of him who is in danger. Could we only awaken him, we would need no argument. Neither is it learned argument which works out, in the other case, the escape of him who is in danger. It is the ery of, "Awake, O sinner," lifted with power enough to arouse him out of his spi ritual lethargies. It is the shaking of the soul out of those heavy slumbers, under which it is weighed down to deep and strong insensibility, about the awful urgencies of guilt, and danger, and death, by which it is encompassed. When the house which covers a sleeping peasant and a sleeping

philosopher, is in flames, it is not by a de- to bliss, or pain, or annihilation-and these monstration of philosophy that the one is are certainties which we do not keenly anawakened, and the other is left to perish in ticipate, and just because we are asleep unto the ruin; and when both are awakened by these things. Should we behold a neighthe same call, it is not at the bidding of bour on the same path of enterprise with philosophy that the one hastens his escape, ourselves, suddenly arrested by the hand of while the other lingers in the midst of de- bankruptcy, and be further told to our construction. They need only to be recovered viction, that the same fatality is sure to ento the use of senses which were alike sus- counter all who are treading that path, we pended with both, that both may flee with would retrace, or move aside, or do our utequal promptitude from the besetting ca- most to evade it-because all awake to the lamity. And the same of the coming disgrace and wretchedness of bankruptcy. wrath-the same of the consuming fire, We every month behold such a neighbour that is now ready to burst on the head of arrested by the hand of death-nor can we the guilty, from the storehouse of treasured escape the conviction, that sooner or later, vengeance-the same of all the surround- he will cast his unfailing weapon at ouring realities of God, and judgment, and selves; and yet no one practical movement eternity, which lie on every side of us. It follows the conviction, because we are asleep is not philosophy which awakes him who to a sense of the mighty ruin which awaits has it, to a sense of these things. Neither us from unsparing and universal mortality. is it the want of philosophy which keeps Should the house in which you live, be enhim who has it not, fast asleep among the tered with violence by the executioners of a vanities and day-dreams of a passing world. tyrant's will, and a brother, or a child, be All the powers of philosophy, operating hurried away to a perpetual dungeon-if upon all the materials of philosophy, will made to know, that it was because such a never dissolve the infatuation of him who doom had been laid upon the whole family, is not yet aroused either from the slumbers, and that sooner or later, its infliction was or from the visions of carnality. To effect most surely in reserve for every successive this, there must be either the bestowment member of it--would not you be looking of a new sense, or the restoration of an old out in constant terror, and live in constant sense, which has been extinguished. And insecurity, and prove how feelingly you be he learned or be he unlearned, such an were awake to a sense of the sufferings of awakening as this will tell alike upon both. an earthly imprisonment? But though death The simple view of certain simple realities, break in upon our dwelling, and lay a ruthto which the vast majority of the world are less grasp on the dearest of its inmates, and asleep, will put each of them into motion. leave the assurance behind him, that he will And when his eyes are once opened by the not cease his inroads on this devoted houseforce of such a demonstration, will he either hold, till he has swept it utterly away--all flee from the coming wrath, or flee for re- we know of the loneliness of the churchfuge to the hope set before him in the Gos-yard, and all we read of the unseen horrors pel, without the bidding or the voice of philosophy to speed his way.

on this side of the grave, we are asleep to the consideration both of the grave itself, and of all the reality which lies beyond it.

of that eternity to which the impenitent and the unbeliever are carried by the ministers And that the vast majority of the world of the wrath of God, fail to disturb us out are, in truth, asleep to all those realities of the habit of living here, as if here we which constitute the great materials of re- were to live for ever; and that, just because ligion, may be abundantly proved by ex-while awake to all the reality which lieth perience and we cannot proceed far in the details of such a proof, without leading many an individual hearer to carry the topic home to his own experience. For this purpose, let us just compare the kind of feeling and perception which we have about an event that may happen on this side of time, with the feeling and perception about an event, as nearly similar as possible, that will happen on the other side of time, and try how much it is that we are awake as to the former, and asleep as to the latter. Should we assuredly know, that in a few years we are to be translated into a splendid affluence, or sunk into the most abject and deplorable poverty, how keen would be our anticipation, whether of hope or of fear: and why? Because we are awake unto these things. We do assuredly know, that in a few years we pass that mysterious portal, which leads

Now, the question comes to be, how is this sleep dissipated? Not, we affirm, and all experience will go along with us, not by the power of natural argument--not by the demonstrations of human learning, for these are just as powerless with him who understands them, as with him who makes his want of learning the pretence for putting them away--not by putting the old materials of thought into a new arrangement--not by setting such things as the eye of Nature can see, or its ear can hear, or its heart can conceive, into a new light--not by working in the varied processes of combination, and abstraction, and reasoning, with such simple and elementary ideas as the mind of man can apprehend. The feelings

and the suggestions of all our old senses it. The last messenger lifts many a note of put together, will not make out for us a preparation, but so deep is the lethargy of practical impression of the matters of faithand there must be a transition as great as that by which man awakens out of the sleep of nature, and so comes to see the realities of Nature which are around him--there must be a something equivalent to the communication of a new sense, ere a reality comes to be seen in those eternal things, where no reality was felt or seen, however much it may have been acknowledged before.

our text, that he is not heard. Every year do his approaching footsteps become more distinct and more audible; yet every year rivets the affections of the votary of sense more tenaciously than before, to the scene that is around him. One would think, that the fall of so many acquaintances on every side of him, might at length have reached an awakening conviction into his heart. One would think, that standing alone, and in mournful survey amid the wreck of former associations, the spell might have been alrea dy broken, which so fastens him to a perishable world. O, why were the tears he shed over his children's grave, not followed up by the deliverance of his soul from this sore infatuation? Why, as he hung over the dying bed of her with whom he had so oft taken counsel about the plans and the interests of life, did he not catch a glimpse of this world's vanity, and did not the light of truth break in upon his heart from the solemn and apprehended realities beyond it? But no. The enchantment, it would appear, is not so easily dissolved. The deep sleep which the Bible speaks of, is not so easily broken. The conscious infirmities of

ing specimens of mortality around us, cannot do it. The rude entrance of death into our own houses, and the breaking up of our own families, cannot do it. The melting of our old society away from us, and the constant succession of new faces, and new families, in their place, cannot do it. The tolling of the funeral bell, which has rung

It is true, that along the course of our ordinary existence, we are awake to the concerns of our ordinary existence. But this is not a wakefulness which goes to disturb the profoundness of our insensibility, as to the concerns of a higher existence. We are in one sense awake, but in another most entirely, and, to all human appearance, most hopelessly and irrecoverably asleep. We are just in the same condition with a man who is dreaming, and so moves for the time in a pictured world of his own. He is not steeped in a more death-like indifference to the actual and the peopled world around him, than the man who is busy for the short and fleeting pilgrimage of his days upon earth, among its treacherous de-age cannot do it. The frequent and touchlusions, is shut in all his sensibilities, and all his thoughts, against the certainties of an immortal state. And the transition is not greater from the sleeping fancies of the night to the waking certainties of our daily business, than is the transition from the daydreams of a passing world, to those substantial considerations, which wield a presiding authority over the conduct of him so many of our companions across the conwho walketh not by the sight of that which is around him, but by the faith of the unseen things that are above him, and before him. To be thus translated in the habit of our mind, is beyond the power of the most busy and intense of its natural exercises. It needs the power of a new and simple manifestation; and as surely as the dreamer on his bed behooves to be awakened, ere he be restored to a just sense of his earthly condition, and of his earthly circumstances, so surely must there be a distinct awakening made to pass on the dark, and torpid, and overborne faculties of us all, ere the matters of faith come to be clothed to our eye in the characters of certainty, and we be made truly to apprehend the bearing in which we stand to the God who is now looking over us, to the eternity which is now ready to absorb us.

This awakening calls for a peculiar and a preternatural application We say preternatural, for such is the obstinacy of this sleep of nature, that no power within the compass of nature can put an end to it. It withstands all the demonstrations of arithmetic. Time moves on without disturbing

fines of eternity, and in a few little years, will perform the same office for us, cannot do it. It often happens, in the visions of the night, that some fancied spectacle of terror, or shriek of alarm, have frightened us out of our sleep, and our dream together. But the sleep of worldliness stands its ground against all this. We hear the moanings of many a death-bed--and we witness its looks of imploring anguish-and we watch the decay of life, as it glimmers onwards to its final extinction--and we hear the last breath--and we pause in the solemn stillness that follows it, till it is broken in upon by the bursting agony of the weeping attendants--and in one day more, we revisit the chamber of him, who, in white and shrouded stateliness, lies the effigy of what he was-and we lift the border that is upon the dead man's countenance, and there we gaze on that brow so cold, and those eyes so motionless-and, in two days more, we follow him to his sepulchre, and mingled with the earth, among which he is to be laid, we behold the skulls and the skeletons of those who have gone before him--and it is the distinct understanding of nature, that

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and the adventures, and the bustle, and the expectation of the scene that is immediately around him. Eternity is again shut out; and amid the dreaming illusions of a fleeting and fantastic day, does he cradle his infatuated soul into an utter unconcern about its coming torments, or its coming triumphs.

soon shall have every one of us to go through the same process of dying, and add our mouldering bodies to the mass of corruption that we have been contemplating. But mark the derangement of nature, and how soon again it falls to sleep among the delusions of a world, of the vanity of which it has recently got so striking a demonstration. Look onwards but one single day Yes! my brethren, we have heard the more, and you behold every trace of this man of serious religion denounced as a loud and warning voice dissipated to no- visionary. But if that be a vision which is thing. The man seemed, as if he had been a short-lived deceit-and that be a sober actually awakened; but it was only the reality which survives the fluctuations both start and the stupid glare of a moment, after of time and of fancy--tell us if such a use which he has lain him down again among of the term be not an utter misapplication; the visions and the slumbers of a soul that and whether, with all the justice, as well as is spiritually dead. He has not lost all with all the severity of truth, it may not be sensibility any more than the man that is retorted upon the head of him, who, though in a midnight trance, who is busied with prized for the sagacity of a firm, secular, the imaginations of a dream. But he has and much exercised understanding, and gone back again to the sensibilities of a honoured in the market-place for his exworld which he is so speedily to abandon; perience on the walks and ways of this and in these he has sunk all the sensibili- world's business, has not so much as enties of that everlasting world, on the con- tered upon the beginning of wisdom, but is fines of which he was treading but yester- toiling away all his skill and all his energy day. All is forgotten amid the bargains, on the frivolities of an idiot's dream.

SERMON VII.

On the new Heavens and the new Earth.

"Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."-2 Peter iii. 13..

THERE is a limit to the revelations of the | somewhat is made known, and which, too, Bible about futurity, and it were a mental may be addressed to a higher principle than or spiritual trespass to go beyond it. The curiosity, being like every other Scripture, reserve which it maintains in its informa- "profitable both for doctrine and for instructions, we also ought to maintain in our in- tion in righteousness." quiries-satisfied to know little on every subject, where it has communicated little, and feeling our way into regions which are at present unseen, no further than the light of Scripture will carry us.

But while we attempt not to be "wise above that which is written," we should attempt, and that most studiously, to be wise up to that which is written. The disclosures are very few and very partial, which are given to us of that bright and beautiful economy, which is to survive the ruins of our present one. But still there are such disclosures-and on the principle of the things that are revealed belonging unto us, we have a right to walk up and down, for the purpose of observation, over the whole actual extent of them.

What is made known of the details of immortality, is but small in the amount, nor are we furnished with the materials of any thing like a graphical or picturesque exhibition of its abodes of blessedness. But still

In the text before us, there are two leading points of information, which we should like successively to remark upon. The first is, that in the new economy which is to be reared for the accommodation of the blessed, there will be materialism, not merely new heavens, but also a new earth. The second is, that, as distinguished from the present, which is an abode of rebellion, it will be an abode of righteousness.

I. We know historically that earth, that a solid material earth, may form the dwelling of sinless creatures, in full converse and friendship with the Being who made them-that, instead of a place of exile for outcasts, it may have a broad avenue of communication with the spiritual world, for the descent of ethereal beings from on high-that, like the member of an extended family, it may share in the regard and attention of the other members, and along with them be gladdened by the presence of him who is the Father of them all. To inquire how this

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