a solemn remembrancer indeed, both of the vanity of all earthly things, and of the nearer and nearer approach of immortal glory.

When sickness comes, and grace can meet it, O what a just representation do they make to the soul concerning the poor honours, riches, cares, and pleasures of this transitory world! How unimportant do all the struggles for power, splendour, titles, wealth, and pre-eminence, which have employed or enraged the past and present ages, appear! How childish and mean do these objects pass before us, for which men have lavished their time, and thrown

away their souls! What bubbles, what nonsense, what glaring and horrid stupidity, have filled and directed, have engaged and overwhelmed the counsels of the greatest men; and all to no other profit than a little fleeting vanity, with a rapid descent to lasting oblivion or ruin! Thus the soul feels, when it is quickened by sickness to consider the low and passing affairs of earth and of time.

On the contrary, how inexpressibly great and tremendous do the things of God and eternity rise in full view to the mind! O the worth of worlds, what are they, in some of these soul-searching moments! How is the soul astonished with the grandeur of God, and with the deep and wide importance of all that belongs to him! Wrapt in the solemn contemplation of unutterable glories, how doth the spirit of a man tremblingly examine and solicitously inquire into the truth and extent of its interest in them! And if grace seal an answer of peace upon the heart, how doth it flutter with gladness at its

safety, and how will the whole frame be agitated with a new delight in the sure prospect of an eternal concern in these valuable, these only valuable, things!

The Christian will be wakingly alive to all this and more, if his disorder be such as can admit of reflection. Blessed be God, however, whether he can thus reflect or not; yet, being a Christian, his state is equally safe with God through his gracious Redeemer. Whatever be the frame the promise is sure, the covenant of God is ordered in all things and sure, and sure and faithful is God himself to perform it. It is comfortable, and indeed desirable, to have pleasant foretastes and feelings of grace and glory, under the pain or decay of the body; but they are no otherwise material to the true believer's security for heaven. If he hath not these perceptions during the short time of his sickness, he will have them abundantly after it, if it end in his dissolution; or, if it do not thus end, the want of them is a loud admonition to make his calling and election sure, in the days that may yet be appointed him.

If we cannot think of Christ, through the power of disease, O what a happiness is it to be assured that Christ thinks constantly and effectually of us! He "maketh all our bed in our sickness;" that is, he turns the whole frame of our condition in it for our best advantage.

O Lord, leave me not, poor and helpless sinner that I am, in my most healthful state; leave me not, especially, I beseech thee, in the low, the languid, the distressing circumstances of infirmity and disease!

Jesus, Master, thou art said to have borne our sicknesses, because thou barest the sins which occasioned them; take, take away from my conscience the guilt which brought disease, and then the worst part of its misery shall likewise be done away. And when, through my feebleness or disorder, I cannot act faith upon thy love, O catch my drooping spirit, carry me as one of thine own lambs in thy bosom, enfold me in thy gracious arms, and let my soul wholly commit itself, and give up its all, in quiet resignation to thee! If thou raise me from my sickness, grant that it may be for the setting forth of thy glory among men if thou take me by sickness from this world, O thou Hope and Life of my soul, receive me to thyself for my everlasting happiness, and present me as another monument of sovereign grace, before the great assembly of saints and angels in thy kingdom of heaven!

CHAPTER XLV.

On Death.

It is an awful and a solemn thing to die; and I am sometimes amazed at myself, that, seeing it is not only awful but sure, I can be so void of reflection or recollection, as I frequently am, concerning it.

Some talk bravely about death, and of encountering it with great natural courage, or upon high

philosophical principles.

it away.

These may indeed defy or meet the sting; but they can neither soften nor take For a sinner to bully death with no spiritual life in his soul, and no everlasting life in reversion, is the act of a desperate madman, who laughs at a horrible precipice before him, and rushes down headlong to destruction.

O eternity! eternity! It is fearful indeed to burst the bonds of life, and to break forth into the boundless and unalterable regions of eternity!

Na

ture, in its senses, cannot bear the shocking reflection, which death affords, either of being an everlasting nothing, as atheists talk, everlasting misery as sin deserves.

or of enduring It is grace only

which can inspire the heart with a hope full of joy and immortality, that, when this brittle transitory life is past, the soul shall possess a being, happy and long as the days of heaven.

Through Jesus Christ alone is death disarmed. When the Saviour speaks peace and salvation through his cross and righteousness, this last great enemy is no more the king of terrors. He gives up his fearful sting, and destroys nothing about the Christian but sin, and the means of sin.

O how sweet is the smile of that Christian, who, dying in the body, feels himself just upon living for ever! "He is not sick unto death, but unto life," indeed. He quits his cares, his sorrows, his infirmities, and all that could distress or distract his spirit here, and looks calmly into the state before him, where he can meet with nothing but concord and joy, in the society of the redeemed and of his Sa

viour.

He is weaned from the earth, and therefore can part with it easily: he is fitted for heaven, and therefore longs for it earnestly. He cannot but desire that which is congenial with his own renewed mind; and this can only truly and perfectly be found in the regions of glory.

They who afflict themselves (said a primitive Christian writer) about the loss of this life, are like the infants unborn, who, if they could speak, might bewail an expulsion from the womb at the approaching time of their birth; foolishly considering it not as the means, but as the end of being. Men, in their natural state, may indeed deplore their removal from this world, for which only they desire to live; but the renewed Christian is privileged to have a more glorious hope of a life everlastingly pure like God's, and of a habitation wide and beautiful as the temple of heaven.

Lord, when I shall quit this clay, I know not, nor do I desire to know. It will be sufficient for me, if thou sustain me by thy grace now, and if I am divinely assured that I shall be for ever with thee in the world to come. O that this invincible "joy of the Lord may indeed be my strength," when I lie down upon the bed of languishing and death, waiting from moment to moment for Christ, and for my dismission to be with him.

Soon this body shall turn to the dust, from whence it was framed; but nothing can extinguish the life of my spirit, which hath no relation to earth, which cannot subsist by matter and form, and which, in its faculties of will, understanding, love, and per