most severe, have I seen the bosom heave, and the countenance lighted up with a grateful pleasure, which no words can express, at the contemplation of that devoted care and love, which no toil nor watching nor peril could check, allay or exhaust.

But we would have our friends depart without feeling any grief or regret for their departure; or in other words we would not love them when alive and we would forget them as soon as they are dead. Is it not so? for how is it possible we can love them and our affections not be wounded when they die; and how is it possible that we can remember their benefactions, and be sensible to the want of their aid and kindness and counsel, and not feel a regret that we can have them no more? Shall we presume to speak of affection and friendship, and yet desire to forget the beloved friends that have left us?

In the last place, let us not complain of death, nor lament that life is given to us on earth on the condition that it must be sooner or later surrendered; for life, which is God's gift, is sufficient for the purposes for which he gave it. God designed it to be a blessing; his wisdom and goodness forbid any different conclusion; and it may be made such, both to its possessor and to the community when it is employed as it should be.

When we see it directed by prudence and discretion, marked by honest labor and industry, by exemplary temperance, moderation and frugality; when we see it distinguished by the strictest fidelity and kindness in the domestic relations of life, by an unwearied generosity and beneficence, by private charity and public liberality, and above all, regulated by the principles and sustained by the best hopes of religion, we may pronounce the gift of life a distinguished blessing from God, a blessing to its possessor, to his friends and to the community.

It would be wrong to complain of the appointment of death, when the best purposes of life seem to be accomplished; and a complaint of the removal of such a friend implies a want of gratitude for his having lived.

In whatever respects reason and philosophy may fail to reconcile us to the appointment of death, the instructions of the Gospel are ample and effectual. This day commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. On this rock, as Christians, we rest our hopes and exult in the assurance that "because he lives we shall live also." He has taught us that man must die in order that he may live; that this life is preparatory to another; that the gate of death is the passage to an immortal existence. May these hopes sustain us; and enable us to ask, where O! death is thy sting; where O! grave is thy victory? The proper preparation for death is a life of integrity, innocence, usefulness, and piety; may it be our happiness so to live, as that death may approach us, not as an unwelcome messenger, but as commissioned by that Being who alone hath immortality, to conduct us to his divine presence.

SERMON XX.

THE STATE AFTER DEATH.

JOB xiv. 10.

MAN DIETH AND WASTETH AWAY; YEA, MAN GIVETH UP THE GHOST; AND WHERE IS HE?

THE sentence of decay is passed upon every thing that lives. Human life is measured by various periods on earth; care, caution, self-government, security from accident, and vigilance in guarding against ordinary perils, contribute to prolong it; but no art and no carefulness can preserve it beyond a certain time; let it exist under circumstances the most auspicious, in spite of every thing that we can do, decay will begin and presently accomplish its work. This is evidently a principle or law of our nature; of which we cannot divest ourselves; which we cannot contravene or rise above; and man was as much made to die as he was made to live. Death is not therefore a curse; for who can believe that the Divine Being would have brought the human family into existence, or would prolong the species under any malediction; but that death is not, as some per

sons suppose, a curse, is evident from the simple fact that the vegetable and brute creation are alike under its irrevocable sentence. That can never therefore be regarded as a penalty, which visits all without discrimination; and falls equally upon those who are not, as upon those who are, moral and responsible.

Death however to man is a different dispensation from what it is to the vegetable or the brute creation. The vegetable existences are without sensibility; the brute creation suffer little or nothing from the apprehension of death; their pains are wholly animal; and as they have no expectation, so they can have no hopes nor fears beyond that which is present and immediate. The case is totally different with man; many exciting and interesting associations mingle in his mind with every thought of death. With reluctance and difficulty in most cases does he become reconciled to it; and a cloud of uncertainty hangs over its effects and results. The feeling, which dictated the exclamation in the text, is one, which often oppresses, rends, tortures the heart almost to bursting. Man giveth up the ghost and where is he? In the long succession of centuries, what multitudes of human beings have occupied this earth; filled up their appointed term, and then departed; where are they? Where are those who lived before the flood? where are they who came after it? Where are the great ones of the earth; the kings, who held empires in subjection; the conquerors, who desolated and enslaved whole countries, and led on their thousands and tens of thousands to new conquests; and where are the glittering and triumphant hosts, who followed in their train, and felt as though this earth was too narrow for their victories ? The wise men of the earth, who heaped up the treasures of philosophy and claimed to have received their