we trust, under circumstances of the highest advantage before the throne of God and of the Lamb. "Be of good courage; fear not; for I will never fail you or forsake you."

Permit me, my dear young friends, the numerous surviving offspring of a revered and beloved father, to give you an affectionate and solemn charge, in the presence of many witnesses, that you never, never forsake your father's God; never think lightly of your father's religion, to which he cleaved in life, and which supported him in death. His constant and devout attendance on public worship-his regard to the holy sabbath which he ever revered and loved his attachment to the Sacred Volume which was his constant companion through the years of declining health and in the prospect of immediate dissolution-let these things live in your recollection; and so do you regard the worship of God—so do you revere the claims of the holy sabbath -so love the Sacred Scriptures-and so cleave to the blessed hope of eternal life given us in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is always a solemn time to a family, when the head of it is called away. You have been distinguished hitherto for your union and unbroken friendship: permit the preacher to say, Let brotherly love continue: never let the day come when the apple of discord shall be thrown in your path, so as to divide you who have till now been so happily united. Remember that you too are mortal; and though favoured at present with health and strength, and all the activities which marked your deceased relative, yet there is a time when the strongest must at last submit to the stroke of death. Remember therefore your Creator in the days of your youth; commit yourselves to that Saviour who is the Resurrection and the Life; and when you retire from this sanctuary may attendant angels hear you say from this time, "My Father, be thou the guide of my youth:" and may he guide you by his counsel, and then receive you into his glory.

Let the friends and acquaintances of the deceased, and all the members of

this Church and congregation, be concerned to apply the present providence to themselves, and to extract from it all the instruction and all the benefit it is eminently fitted to yield. Let us recollect that Death is inevitably certain.

Let us remember that the form and manner of death is altogether predetermined and wisely arranged by Almighty God. Let us recollect that we know not the day nor the hour of its approach. Therefore be ye also ready. What I say unto one I say unto all-Watch. Gird up the loins of your mind; be sober, and hope to the end; looking for and hastening unto the coming of the Great God our Saviour; anxious that he may be glorified, not only in your life, but in your death.

I would drop a word to those mourners in the assembly, who have been called by an affecting event to commit a beloved and only son to the silent grave. You and your family, who have been drowned in grief on this mournful occasion, should remember that you have no reason to sorrow as those who are without hope. Much have you to be thankful for, in the last sickness and in the dying testimony of the departed, who brought glory to God even the Saviour, by the testimony which he bore in your hearing, and which was granted you in answer to prayer, even above and beyond what might be expected from the nature of the disease under which the departed laboured. While one drops into the grave in the Seventy-third year of his existence, another is taken from the heart of the congregation in his Thirty-eighth year-one of whom it might be said, that the sun has gone down while it was yet mid-day; and therefore preparation for the tomb is the immediate duty and the high privilege of every living, every dying man. "Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." May God command his blessing on these admonitory instructions, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

HUMAN happiness and human misery are never felt in the extreme. The days of our best enjoyment never pass away unsullied by some cloud; nor is the sense of our worst suffering so entirely dark, but there is always some ray of comfort to break the gloominess of affliction, to reanimate the drooping sons of sorrow, and to yield despair by the sunbeam of hope. Mercy and judgment are indeed so wonderfully and so intimately combined in all the works of the Lord, that, even while we are trembling under his rod, we cannot but acknowledge his compassion; and his severest judgments are ever tempered and subdued by something that savours of mercy.

Thus, then, it is in the affairs of the world; and thus it has been ordained by the will of an Almighty Providence. Misfortunes are never so exquisitely acute, as to be devoid of all consolation and hope; nor happiness so exactly perfect, as to raise us beyond the common fears and infirmities of our nature. Even in our birth we bring to our mothers a manifold portion of pleasure and pain; and even in earliest childhood our tears and our smiles follow each other in a constant succession, and brighten or sadden our countenances with almost equal measures of sorrow and of joy. When we begin to grow in wisdom and stature, then, also, we begin to grow acquainted with grief as well as gladness; and are

VOL. I.

taught by experience, the melancholy knowledge of the difficulties and dangers of mortality, as well as the knowledge of its pleasures, and affections, and enjoyments.

When we have attained the fulness of our stature, both in body and mind, we become conscious both of the weal and woe of our life, both of the weakness and strength of our nature; and are troubled by many things, as well as rejoiced by many things. If married, carefulness comes with beings to care for, and the afflictions with the affections of a family. Today we are animated by looking forward to the greatness or excellence of a child, trained up in the virtue and admonition of the Lord; to-morrow we are, perhaps, troubled by the dread of that child falling away from his duty, and being lost to happiness, both in this world and in the next. Yet if we be unmarried, it is no matter; for there is that want of freedom and fulness in the exercise of the domestic affections, that want of some peculiar object of tenderness and regard, that solitude of the heart which checks its most glowing sentiments within the narrow sphere of self, and contracts the finest feelings and its greatest powers. If we pursue the path of life to its close, we shall still find it the same in the end as it was in the beginning-still chequered with happiness and misery, and that with coldness comes the calmness

X

and that prosperity which they covet, interrupted as that prosperity must be by the common misfortunes and inevitable accidents of life, and poor and unsatisfactory and painful as are sometimes the pleasures, which form a momentary gratification to the senses. How dangerous, then, and how destructive to all real godliness, and vital piety, and heartfelt gratitude, and sincere humility before God, would be a state of pleasure, from which there were no possibility of change, into which no fear could enter, and no pain be felt, it is easy to conceive. Had God dealt with man on this earth as he deals with the angels in heaven, and raised him to exceeding honour and happiness, man would have regarded earth as heaven, and not as the place of trial for heaven; and how then could his thoughts and feelings have been turned up to heavenly things? Here there would be no room for affliction; the state of which we now speak is one incapable of that misery we feel on earth. What would there be in such a state to restrain man from entering on vain indulgences, or to recal him when he had once deviated from the right path? It is the fear of being humbled before man, that sometimes brings the proud man to his senses, and makes him humble. In the state which we suppose, there could be no such fear. It is the sense of his dependence on God for all that he enjoys, which generally makes a man pious, full of prayer and alms; and it is by these men commend themselves to their Maker, in hope that they may stand through faith justified in his sight. Here we have no such reason for dependence; for, whether a Christian or another man, he would have his enjoyment in this world.

But still this is not the whole of the evil that would spring from a state of uninterrupted happiness in the world. There are many virtues in such a state that could not be practised at all, without the existence of misery as well as happiness; because their very nature consists in promoting or preventing, in causing or relieving, the woes, the sufferings, and the distresses of our fellow creatures. Neither compassion, nor charity, nor humanity, nor even justice could have any place in the world, if there were

not human wants to relieve, human woes to pity, human sufferings to feel for, human rights to advocate and provide for; and none of these duties could be practised were the world a universal scene of exceeding and unvaried joy. Were there no injuries to bear, there would be no patience in bearing them. Did God never afflict his children without their knowing the reasons of the affliction, there could be no resignation to his will, and his wisdom would never be called for. In one word, were man without these trials of his nature which spring from his misery, he would lose the best school of holiness on earth: for when the heart is in heaviness, then most of all does it turn and prepare itself for God. I believe that we may, most of us, trace the first turnings of our own thoughts to real religion, the first dawning of any righteousness we exercise, either to some mental or to some bodily suffering, with which we have been afflicted, perhaps, for our sins by heaven.

So little would the perfection of earthly happiness contribute to the elevation of our souls: but still less could men learn to be rightous under a dispensation of constant and inevitable misery. Were there no sun to rule the day, it would be in vain to sow seed in the earth; whether sown amidst thorns, in stony places, or on good ground, it would bring forth no fruit to perfection; and that which it had already brought up, would fade and wither and die. The mercy of God is in the spiritual, what the sun is in the physical firmament of heaventhe cause of light, and life, and fruitfulness, and all good works. If the spiritual world were to be made one universal dreary blank of darkness, without God and without hope, it would be in vain for any minister to sow the seed of God's word. Wanting the light of heaven, the soul would be barren, the seed would be fruitless, whether it fell on the mind of the sinner, the penitent, or the convert. If we were to talk to the sinner of the salvation of the Gospel, he would tell us that he saw nothing but the vengeance of God every where in the world; and therefore could not believe the word of mercy, when it contradicted the works of God. If we come to console the penitent with the pro