will be relieved, by seeing your way through the difficulties of life. You never will be able to sit down, and see all matters so arranged, as that you can say, "now my perplexities are at an end." You may wait for such an hour, as the man did, who stood at the river's brink, and waited for the stopping of the water: but that hour of rest will never come, beneath the sun. Look around you; and to whatever point you turn your eye, the horizon will be dark, with clouds of anxiety, perplexity and care. There is but one relief: and that is, to look up to the clear heavens above you; to give over the fruitless task, of finding rest in things below; and to seek your rest, in calmer regions, and in milder air. Let us remember that we are citizens of heaven; that this is not our country; and that our treasures are not on earth; and these convictions will assuage the troubled waters of the soul. Then perplexities will not dishearten us; discouragements will not unnerve us, and unman us: because we counted the cost, and looked for our reward in heaven. We knew that the roads were rugged, and the ways uneven, by which we travel onward to that city which hath foundations, whose maker and builder is God.

Even as it respects those temporal blessings, which God has given for our solace here; the sense that we are denizens of a better country,

will not damp, but rather heighten, our enjoyment of them. There is no object in this uncertain world, on which the mind of man can repose its entire, unlimited affections. These profounder sensibilities of the soul, these boundless and vast desires, are the instinctive appetites of man's immortal nature, for infinite and unallayed enjoyment; the native tendency of the celestial principle, to God, its centre, and its fountain; its full felicity, and its all-sufficient good. But if we strive to rest the heart, with its whole weight, on any thing but God, it will bring keen disappointment, and pierce it through with many sorrows. To seek

our happiness in any earthly object, is to struggle against the fundamental laws of nature; and every effort to love the creature, with the affection due to the Creator, will recoil upon itself, and lacerate the soul. Whatever, then, may be the objects, which yield us most enjoyment here, or which cling the closest to the heart; nothing can give us solid satisfaction, even in these, but the having our conversation in heaven. Let things below be ever so cherished, or so dear, yet they must be torn, sooner or later, from our embraces. What, then, can support the sinking heart, when the tenderest cords of nature are torn asunder, but the prospect of a better world;-but the belief that we

have there a more enduring substance;—but the hope of an inheritance, incorruptible, and that fadeth not away, laid up for us in heaven;-but the joyful assurance, that our departed friends were fellow travellers to that happy region, where no separation divides, where no parting tears are shed, where no sorrowing lips can utter the word, farewell?

To become citizens of heaven, with privileges so high, with prospects so cheering, with an enfranchisement so glorious, is not, like other blessings, held out as the purchase of long, and arduous, and doubtful toil. "With a great sum obtained I this freedom," said the chief captain, as recorded in the 22nd chapter of the Acts: but Paul answered, "I was free born." In words like these, may every soul, whose conversation is in heaven, express the fulness, the freeness of that charter, which constitutes us of the household of God, and fellow citizens with the saints. It is not, that the kingdom of heaven has been open to believers, without a price; but because an infinite price alone could open it, we have no share in the purchase. The whole has been undertaken for

us.

Christ has, by the sacrifice of himself, broken the bars, and burst the gates. And our part is, without money, and without price, to enter in,

and take of the tree of life, and eat, and live for

ever.

It is astonishing that these offers should be freely made-made on the assurances of God himself-made in those Scriptures, which we all receive as a message from heaven; and yet be thrown aside, neglected and unheeded. It is astonishing, that rest should be thus offered to the heavy laden; that fountains of water should be opened to the thirsty; that happiness, commensurate with the loftiest aspirations, and deep as the profoundest longings, of the immortal soul, should be brought home to the doors of those, who hunt, with breathless chase, after every fleeting pleasure; -and yet that man should despise these miracles of mercy. And assuredly you do despise them, unless you can say, with the Apostle, my "conversation is in heaven"-the concerns and interests of that society above, engage my mind, and lie nearest to my heart—I feel naturalized to the spiritual world; and, though sojourning here below, am, by the grace of God, a citizen of

heaven.

You are all invited to become so. Nor is any past neglect, or past unworthiness, nor are the sins of a whole life, an impediment to your full admission to so desirable, so blessed a condition. Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners to

repentance: he came to seek and to save that which was lost.

In my own apprehension, the heart of man cannot frame to itself a picture of more solid joy, and lively transport, than, amidst the entanglements of this troublous world, the mists that obscure, and the clouds that overhang, its prospects, to feel a calm and settled assurance in the soul, that we have an interest in a higher system; that our inheritance is in a city, whose walls are salvation, and whose gates are praise;-to ascend, on the wings of faith, to that heavenly fortress; to mark well her bulwarks, and to count her towers, and then to say, " that celestial city is my habitation, and my home, prepared for me, before the foundation of the world." It is, I say, with the conviction, that a state of mind like this, is happiness here, as well as the sure earnest of future glory, that I would press the attainment of it, on every soul that hears me. If you saw one parched with feverish thirst, and beheld close to his lips, though hidden from his view, a cup of living water, pure and sparkling, from the fountain ; would the sympathies of a common nature, allow you to desist from repeating to such a man, with loud and earnest calls, that, if he would believe it, relief was just at hand? Or, if you saw a parent sorrowing for a child, whom, in his own apprehen