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SERMON VII.

The Vanity of the World.

[THE LAST SERMON PREACHED BY THE AUTHOR.]

HEBREWS xiii. 14.

For here we have no continuing city.

THE restlessness and immortality of our desires, the instability of the world, its insufficiency to fill the mind, and the want of permanent good here on earth, are topics familiar to our experience, and on which revelation is frequent and explicit: and both reason and revelation concur in acknowledging that man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, that our days which are few are also evil, that life itself is a dream, and that the best worldly promise is mere vanity and delusion. Youth, and the fondness of inexperienced hope, may, for a time, discredit the reality, and disown the shades which darken the picture; but every day will add wisdom, and sooner or later all will be free to confess that here" the eye is not satis"fied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing."

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And when age has brought with it maturity and experience, the confession will be involuntary, that the thing which hath been is that which shall be, that "all our days are sorrows, and our travail "grief;" "for here we have no continuing city." Well will it be for us, if, perceiving in these truths new reasons to confirm our belief in the sacred volume, we learn in time to regard its monitions, and to obey its precepts; if, duly estimating the shortness of time, we seek to ensure the joys of eternity; if, discovering that here we have no continuing city, we seek for happiness in that which is to come.

ence.

When it is said that here we have no continuing city, it is plainly meant that the present state is not the permanent abode of man, and that it does not comprise the whole extent of his existThis has been, in every age, the deeply rooted sentiment of the pious and the good; nor has it been unacknowledged by the fears and apprehensions of the bad. The votaries of natural religion and worldly philosophy, in the inconsistencies of their best creeds, and in the perplexities and doubts which surrounded their own existence, found cause to suspect this truth. But those who were favoured with better light, and had obtained the promises, openly confessed that they were pilgrims and strangers upon the earth, and that they looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. They

desired a better country, that is, an heavenly. Such was the confession of those who lived in ages long gone by. And if, looking back through the vista of time, we permit our thoughts to rest upon the generations who have succeeded each other, from the days of patriarchs to the times in which we live, how strikingly is the assertion of the text made good, by consideration of the vast multitudes of our race which have appeared for a little while, and then have vanished away.

"This earth and ocean, all,

Are the great tomb of man;

And all the planetary host of heaven

Are shining on the sad abodes of death,

Through the still lapse of ages.

"All that tread

The globe, are but a handful to the tribes

That slumber in its bosom.

-Millions-since first

The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep."

From their graves a small still voice seems to convey this prophetic caution to our hearts:

"So shalt thou rest; and what if thou shalt fall
Unnoticed by the living; and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone. The solemn sons of care
Plod on; and each one, as before, will chase
His fav'rite phantom. Yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come

And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The bow'd with age, the infant, in the smiles,
And beauty of its innocent age, cut off,

Shall, one by one, be gathered by thy side,

By those who, in their turn, shall follow them."

Nor does the confession of men, nor this waste of life, furnish the only or the strongest ground of evidence, that here we have no continuing city.

What mighty empires and powerful states have passed away; Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Macedonians, Romans, how have they chased each other over the stage of the world, like the pageants of an evening! Science and the arts have been exposed to the same vicissitudes with nations; and more than once have approximated to perfection; and then have been nearly lost in the darkness of ignorance, and the debasement of reason. The proudest monuments which vanity and ambition have reared, works on which lives of toil and years of labour have been spent, to give strength to which all the power and skill of man have been exhausted-works intended to last for ages, and which were designed to perpetuate for ever the names of their projectors, now no longer exist. Even their remembrance would be lost, were it not for the page which tells of their boasted strength, and of their unpredicted decay. Their projectors,

like the weakest of their slaves, have turned to dust, and "their memorial has perished with "them."

"Though deemed invincible, the conqueror Time
"Levels the fabric, with the founder, low."

Even cities, once great and populous, and exceeding in magnificence, and the promise of stability, all that modern times can produce, have sunk into ruin before the sentence of universal devastation, which has passed upon all earthly things. Of some the very traces have perished, and their place is no where to be discovered. In others, like Babylon, whose lordly palaces, and sumptuous abodes, proclaimed "the glory of

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kingdoms, and the beauty of excellency," now no dweller is to be found. History has confirmed the voice of prophecy, which declared, “It shall "never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in, "from generation to generation; neither shall "the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild "beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their "houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and "owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance "there; and the wild beasts of the islands shall "cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her days shall not be prolonged."

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Thus indeed has it come to pass; and in those
VOL. II.

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