SERMON ready to give it up when Providence calls VIII. you to make room for others, who, in

like manner, when their time is come, shall follow you. He who is unwilling to submit to death when Heaven decrees it, deserves not to have lived. You might as reasonably complain that you did not live before the time appointed for your coming into the world, as lament that you are not to live longer, when the period of your quitting it is arrived. What divine Providence hath made necessary, human prudence ought to comply with cheerfully. Submit at any rate you must; and is it not much better to follow of your own accord, than to be dragged reluctantly, and by force? What privilege have you to plead, or what reason to urge, why you should possess an exemption from the common doom? All things around you are mortal and perishing. Cities, states, and empires, have their period set. The proudest monuments of human art moulder into dust. Even the works of nature wax old and decay. In the midst of this universal tendency to change, could you expect that to your frame alone a permanent duration

should

before SERMON

should be given? All who have gone
you, have submitted to the stroke of death.
All who are to come after you, shall
undergo the same fate. The great and the
good, the prince and the peasant, the re-
nowned and the obscure, travel alike the road
which leads to the grave. At the moment
when you expire, thousands throughout
the world, shall, together with you, be
yielding up their breath. Can that be
held a great calamity, which is common to
you with every thing that lives on earth;
which is an event as much according to
the course of nature as it is that leaves
should fall in autumn, or that fruit
should drop from the tree when it is fully
ripe?

The pain of death cannot be very long,
and is probably less severe than what you
have at other times experienced. The pomp
of death is more terrifying than death itself.
It is to the weakness of imagination that
it owes its chief power of dejecting your
spirits; for when the force of the mind is
roused, there is almost no passion in our
nature but what has shewed itself able to
overcome the fear of death.
3

Honour has

defied

VIII.

SERMON defied death; love has despised it; shame has VIII. rushed upon it; revenge has disregarded it ;

grief a thousand times has wished for its approach. Is it not strange that reason and virtue cannot give you strength to surmount that fear, which, even in feeble minds, so many passions have conquered? What inconsistency is there in complaining so much of the evils of life, and being at the same time so afraid of what is to terminate them all! Who can tell whether his future life might not teem with disasters and miseries, as yet unknown, were it to be prolonged according to his wish? At any rate, is it desirable to draw life out to the last dregs, and to wait till old age pour upon you its whole store of diseases and sorrows? You lament

that you are to die; but did you view your situation properly, you would have much greater cause to lament if you were chained to this life for two or three hundred years, without possibility of release. Expect therefore calmly that which is natural in itself, and which much be fit, because it is the Perform your

appointment of Heaven.

duty as a good subject of the Deity, during the time allotted you; and rejoice that a

period is fixed for your dismission from the SERMON present warfare. Remember that the slavish dread of death destroys all the comfort of that life which you seek to preserve. Better to undergo the stroke of death at once, than to live in perpetual misery from the fear of dying.

SUCH discourses as these are specious at least, and plausible. The arguments are not without strength, and ought to produce some effect on a considerate reflecting mind. But it is to be suspected that their effect will be chiefly felt when the mind is calm and at ease; rather when speculating upon death at a distance, than when beholding it at hand. When the critical moment arrives, which places the anxious trembling soul on the borders of an unknown world, reasonings drawn from necessity and propriety will be of small avail to quiet its alarms. In order to afford relief, you must give it hope; you must promise it protection; you must offer somewhat on which it can lay hold for support amidst the struggles of labouring nature. Hence the great importance of those discoveries which revelation has made, VOL. II.

P

and

VIII.

SERMON and of those principles with which it fortifies the heart. To the consideration of these let us next proceed, and observe their superiour efficacy for surmounting the fear of death. In order to judge of their importance, it will be proper to take a view of death in each of those lights in which it appears most formidable to mankind.

Ir may be considered, first, as the termination of our present existence; the final period of all its joys and hopes. The concluding scene of any course of action in which we have been engaged with pleasure, even the last sight of objects which we have been long accustomed to behold, seldom fails of striking the mind with painful regret. How many circumstances will concur to heighten that regret, when the time comes of our bidding an eternal adieu to the light of day; to every pursuit which had occupied our attention as citizens of the world; and to every friend and relation who had attached our hearts! How dejecting is the thought to the greatest part of men, that the sun shall rise, and the seasons shall return to others, but no more to them; and