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SACRED BIOGRAPHY.

LECTURE I.

LUKE XX. 27-38.

Then came to him certain of the Sadducees (which deny that there is any refurrection) and they asked him, faying, Mafter, Mofes wrote unto us, If any man's brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother fhould take his wife, and raise up feed unto his brother. There were therefore feven brethren: and the firft took a wife, and died without children. And the fecond took her to wife, and he died childless. And the third took her ; and in like manner the feven alfo. And they left no children, and died. Laft of all the woman died alfo. Therefore in the refurrection, whofe wife of them is she? for feven had her to wife. And Jefus anfwering faid unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the refurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage. Neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the refurrection. Now that the dead are raised, even Mofes fhewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Ifaac, and the God of Ja cob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.

ONE of the most obvious and natural confolations of

reason, under the lofs of those whom we dearly loved, and one of the most abundant confolations furnished by religion, is the belief that our departed friends are, at their death, difpofed of infinitely to their advantage. We weep and mourn while we reflect upon the deprivation of comfort which we have sustained; but we wipe the tears of forrow from our eyes, when we confider that our lofs is their unfpeakable gain. "Rachel weeping for her children,' refuses to be comforted fo long as the thinks " they are not ;" but her foul is tranquillized and comforted when her eyes, in faith, look within the veil, and behold them foftly and fecurely repofing in the bofom of their Father and God. It is an humbling and a mortifying employment to vifit church-yards, to ftep from grave to grave, to recal the memory while we trample upon the afhes of the young,

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