If

With respect to the institution for which I have the honour to be an humble advocate on this occasion, if there be any force in the preceding remarks, few words are necessary to recommend it to your patronage. As you would live in a land of Bibles and readers of the Bible,-in a nation dignified as a seminary of religious instruction; as you would desire, when called to quit the present stage of being, to leave your children in a nation of christians; it becomes you, more especially in a season of public alarm, to support an institution which justly assumes the name of national. the man who rescues from barrenness a neglected portion of the country, and spreads over its face fertility and beauty, deserves and obtains our praise, shall that society solicit our support in vain, which rescues from all the evils of ignorance multitudes of those in the humbler walks of life, who might otherwise perish for lack of knowledge; while it opens their understandings, at least in a degree, to understand the Scriptures of eternal truth and life? It is impossible to doubt that such an institution is one of the great means which the Divine Being employs for the accomplishment of his own great end. He does not christianize the world by magic: we are not to expect religion to descend from heaven, or to rise upon the earth like a beautiful vision! It will indeed descend from heaven, and arise upon the earth; but this will be by regular, appointed, adapted means; by means such as those which are now set at work, and require our continued assistance:

means which afford an omen of the desired success; since we cannot conceive why all this energy should have been impressed on the minds of men, if not for the providential accomplishment of one grand result-the transformation of the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.

XII.

THE LOVE OF LIFE.*

[PREACHED AT BRISTOL, FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE BAPTIST MISSIONS, NOVEMBER, 1820.]

JOB ii. 4.-And Satan answered the Lord, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.

THOUGH these words were uttered by the father of lies, they are no lie. The truth of a communication does not always depend on the character of those who convey it.

The expression might perhaps be more properly rendered, "skin upon skin," or "skin after skin:" skins, of which the uses are not easily enumerated, being the principal article of property and exchange in a primitive and pastoral state of society.

I propose briefly to consider the principle of attachment to life, so emphatically asserted in these words; some of the reasons for which it is implanted; and some improvements which may be derived from the subject.

*Printed from the notes of the Rev. Thomas Grinfield.

I. The love of life is the simplest and strongest principle of nature. It operates universally, on every part of the brute creation, as well as on every individual of the human race; perpetually, under all circumstances, the most distressing as well as the most pleasing; and with a power peculiar to itself, while it arms the feeble with energy, the fearful with courage, whenever an occasion occurs for defending life, whenever the last sanctuary of nature is invaded, and its dearest treasure endangered. This mysterious principle does not act with a variable force, dependent on the caprices of will or the dictates of reason: it operates with a steady, constant influence, as a law of nature, insensible and yet powerful. It corresponds, in the animated world, with the great principle of gravitation in the material system, or with the centripetal force, by which the planets are retained in their proper orbits, and resist their opposite tendency to fly off from the centre. The most wretched, not less than the most prosperous,those who seem to possess nothing that can render life desirable, not less than those who are surrounded by all its pleasures,—are bound to life as by a principle of central attraction, which extends its influence to the last moments of expiring nature. We see men still clinging to life, when they have lost all for which they appeared to live. A striking instance of this has been recently exhibited by that extraordinary individual,* who, rather than lose his life in the scenes of his

* Buonaparte.

renown, has exchanged the pinnacle of power and fame for the deepest degradation and obscurity. There are few qualities that command greater admiration than the superiority to the love of life and the dread of dissolution: as we admire things in proportion to their difficulty and rarity, we are astonished by that heroic bravery which can triumph over the first law of our nature. The Scriptures frequently recognize and appeal to this fundamental principle: thus, in apparent allusion to the text, our Saviour demands, "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul," or, as the word literally denotes, his life? The only promise annexed to any of the ten commandments, exhibits life as the chief earthly good, and its prolongation as the reward of filial piety: while, in the Proverbs, Wisdom is represented as having "length of days in her right hand, in her left, riches and honour."

II. I proceed to assign the reasons, or some of the reasons, for which this instinctive attachment to life is so deeply implanted in our nature.

1. The first and most obvious reason respects the preservation of life itself. That which, of all our possessions, is the most easily lost or injured, is that on the continuance of which all other things depend. The preservation of life requires incessant attention and exertion; the material requisite to feed the vital flame, must be collected from innumerable sources at great expense of time and trouble the spark of life is perpetually exposed to the danger of extinction, like a lamp

carried in a stormy night, that requires to be covered by the hand, and seems every moment ready to expire. Nothing but the strongest attachment to life could secure it, amidst continual exposures, from sudden or premature destruction : without the operation of the self-preserving instinct, man would be literally like a shadow, that is here to-day and gone to-morrow. On the first departure of prosperity, on the first preponderance of sorrow over joy, in this chequered scene,-in which the colours of good and evil are so constantly intermingled that it is often difficult to say which predominates over the other, how many, unrestrained by the natural love of life, would forsake their stations; how few, unsupported by attachment to being, would persevere in their course to the end, or "run with patience the race set before them!" Our first father would probably have fulfilled, in the letter, the sentence he incurred, and died on the very day of his transgression, thus destroying the human race in their original, had it not been for the benevolent care of his Creator, by which his existence, and the desire of its continuance, were secured for the great purpose of his moral probation. For life, we cannot forget, is, in its highest use, the season of our trial for an eternal state of being. This is the point of view in which its preservation becomes unspeakably interesting. It stands connected with nothing less than the incarnation, sufferings, and glory, of the Son of God; and, whatever is the importance of those stupendous mysteries, the