VIII. God and keep his commandments; let us SERM. bold faith and a good confcience, if we hope for comfort at our laft hour. To prepare for this last hour, every wife man fhould confider as his most important concern. Death may juftly be held the test of life. Let a man have fupported his character with efteem and applaufe, as long as he acted on the busy stage of the world, if at the end he finks into dejection and terrour, all his former honour is effaced; he departs under the imputation of either a guilty conscience, or a pufillanimous mind. In the other parts of human conduct, disguise and fubtlety may impofe on the world; but seldom can artifice be supported in the hour of death. The mafk moft commonly falls off, and the genuine character appears. When we behold the fcene of life closed with proper compofure and dignity, we naturally infer integrity and fortitude. We are led to believe that divine affistance fupports the foul, and we presage its transition into a happier manfion. Mark the perfect SERM. man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace *. THE laft inftruction which our fubject points out, refpects the manner in which a wife and good man ought to ftand affected towards life and death. He ought not to be feverely attached to the one. He has no reafon abjectly to dread the other. Life is the gift of God, which he may juftly cherish and hold dear. Nay, he is bound by all fair means to guard and preserve it, that he may continue to be useful in that poft of duty where Providence has placed him. But there are higher principles to which the love of life fhould remain fub-. ordinate. Wherever religion, virtue, or true honour, call him forth to danger, life ought to be hazarded without fear. There is a generous contempt of death which should distinguish those who live and walk by the faith of immortality. This is the source of courage in a Christian. His behaviour Pfalm xxxvii. 37. ought VIII. ought to fhew the elevation of his foul above SERM. the prefent world; ought to difcover the liberty which he poffeffes of following the native sentiments of his mind, without any of those restraints and fetters which the fear of death imposes on vicious men. At the fame time, this rational contempt of death muft carefully be distinguished from that inconfiderate and thoughtless indifference, with which fome have affected to treat it. This is what cannot be juftified on any principle of reason. Human life is no trifle, which men may play away at their pleasure. Death, in every view, is an important event. It is the moft folemn crisis of the human exiftence. A good man has reafon to meet it with a calm and firm mind. But no man is entitled to treat it with oftentatious levity. It calls for manly seriousness of thought. It requires all the recollection of which we are capable; that with the proper difpofition of dependent beings, when the dust is about to return to its duft, we may deliver up fpirit to Him who gave it. the SERMON IX. On the HAPPINESS of a FUTURE STATE. Preached at the Celebration of the Sacrament of the SERM. IX. REVELAT. vii. 9. After this I beheld, and, lo! a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, flood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands. IN I N this myfterious book of Scripture many revolutions are foretold, which were to take place in the church of God. They are not indeed fo foretold as to afford clear and precife information concerning the time of of their coming to pafs. It would have been, on many accounts, improper to have lifted up too far that awful veil which covers futurity. The intention of the Spirit of God, was not to gratify the curiosity of the learned, by disclosing to them the fate of monarchies and nations, but to fatisfy the ferious concerning the general plan, and final iffue, of the divine government. Amidft those diftreffes which befel Christians during the first ages, the discoveries made in this book were peculiarly feasonable; as they shewed that there was an Almighty Guardian, who watched with particular attention over the interefts of the church which he had formed; who forefaw all the commotions which were to happen among the kingdoms of the earth, and would fo overrule them as to promote in the end the cause of truth, This is the chief scope of those mystic visions with which the Apoftle John was favoured; of feals opened in heaven; of trumpets founding; and vials poured forth. The kingdom of darkness was to maintain for a while a violent ftruggle |