ON

SERMON X.

ON THE DEATH OF A SINNER, AND THAT OF

A RIGHTEOUS CHARACTER.

REV. xiv. 13.

Bleffed are the dead which die in the Lord.

THERE is fomething peculiarly striking and incomprehen

fible in the human paffions.

All men wish to live; they look upon death as the moft dreadful of all evils; all their passions attach them to life; yet nevertheless thofe very paffions inceffantly urge them towards that death, for which they feel fuch horror; nay, it fhould even feem, that their only purpofe in life is to accelerate the moment of death.

All men flatter themselves, that they fhall die the death of the righteous: They wish it; they expect it. Knowing the impoffibility of remaining for ever upon this earth, they truft, that before the arrival of their last moment, the paffions which at present pollute, and hold them in captivity, fhall be completely overcome. They figure to themfelves, as horrible, the lot of a finner, who expires in his iniquity, and under the wrath of God, yet nevertheless they tranquilly prepare for themselves the fame destiny.

This dreadful period of human life, which is death in fin, ftrikes and appals them; yet, like fools, they blindly and merrily pursue the road which leads to it. In vain do we announce to them, that in general men die as they have lived: They wish to live the life of a finner, yet nevertheless to die the death of the righteous.

My intention, at prefent, is not to undeceive you with regard to an illusion so common, and fo ridiculous, (let us reserve this fubject for another occafion); but, since the death of the righteous appears fo earnestly to be wished for, and that of the finner fo dreadful to you, I mean, by a representation of them both, to excite your defires for the one, and to awaken your just terrors for the other. As you must finally quit this world in one of these two fituations, it is proper to familiarize yourselves with a view of them both, that by placing before your eyes the melancholy spectacle of the one, and the foothing confolations of the other, you may be enabled to judge which of the lots awaits you; and, confequently, to adopt the necessary means to fecure the decifion in your favour.

In the picture of the expiring finner, you will fee in what the world, with all its glory and pleasures, terminates; from the recital of the last moments of the righteous man, you will learn to what virtue conducts, in spite of all its momentary checks and troubles. In the one you will fee the world from the eyes of a finner in the moment of death And how vain, frivolous, and different from what it seems at present will it then appear to you! In the other, you will fee virtue from the eyes of the expiring righteous man: How grand and eftimable will your heart then acknowledge it to be!

In the one, you will comprehend all the mifery of foul, which has lived forgetful of its God. In the other, the happiness of him who has lived only to please and to ferve him. In a word, the picture of the death of the finner will make you wish to live the life of the righteous; and the image of the death of the juft will infpire you with a holy horror at the life of the finner,

PART I.-In vain do we repel the image of death; every day brings it nearer, Youth glides away; years hurry on s and, like water, fays the Scripture, fpilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again, we rapidly course towards the abyfs of eternity, where for ever swallowed up, we can never return upon our steps, to appear once more upon the earth.

I know that the brevity and uncertainty of life are continual fubjects of conversation to us. The deaths of our relations, our friends, our companions, frequently fudden, and always unexpected, furnish us with a thousand reflections on the frailty of every thing terrestrial.

We are inceffantly repeating, that the world is nothing; that life is but a dream; and that it is a ftriking folly our interesting ourselves fo deeply for what must pass so quickly away. But thefe are merely words; they are not the fentiments of the heart; they are difcourfes offered at the shrine of custom; and that very custom occafions their being immediately, and for ever forgot.

Now, my brethren, form to yourselves a destiny on this earth, agreeable to your own wishes: Lengthen out in your own minds, your days to a term beyond your most sanguine hopes. I even with you to indulge in the enjoyment of fo : VOL. I. pleafing

LI

pleafing an illufion: But at last, you must follow the track which your forefathers have trod: You will at last see that day arrive, to which no other shall fucceed; and that day will be the day of your eternity: Happy, if you die in the Lord: Miferable if you depart in fin. One of these lots awaits 'you In the final decifion upon all men, there will be only two fides, the right and the left; two divifions, the goats and the sheep. Allow me then to recal you to the bed of death, and to expose to your view the double spectacle of this last hour, fo terrible to the finner, and fo confolatory to the righteous man.

I say terrible to the finner, who, lulled by vain hopes of a conversion, at last reaches this fatal moment; full of defires, empty of good works; having ever lived a stranger to the Lord, and unable now to make any offering to him, but of his crimes, and the anguifh of feeing a period put to those days, which he vainly believed would endure for ever. Now nothing can be more dreadful than the fituătion of this unfortunate wretch, in the last moments of his life! Whichever way his mind is employed, whether in recalling the past, or confidering what is acting around him; in a word, whether he penetrates into that awful futurity, upon the brink of which he hangs, or limits his reflections to the prefent moment; thefe objects, the only ones which can occupy his thoughts, or present themselves to his fancy, only open to him the blackest profpects, which overwhelm him with despair.

For what can the paft offer to a finner, who extended upon the bed of death, begins now to yield up dependence upon life, and reads, in the countenances of those around him, the dreadful intelligence, that all is over with him? What now does he fee in that long course of days, which

he.

he has run through upon the earth? Alas! he fees only vain cares and anxieties; pleasures which passed away before they could be enjoyed, and iniquities which must en.. dure for ever.

Vain cares. His whole life, which now appears to have occupied but a moment, prefents itself to him, and in it he views nothing but one continued conftraint, and an useless. agitation. He recals to his mind all he has fuffered for a world, which now flies from him; for a fortune, which now vanishes; for a vain reputation, which accompanies him not into the prefence of God; for friends, whom he lofes; for mafters, who will foon forget him; for a name, which will be written only on the ashes of his tomb. What regret muft agitate the mind of this unfortunate wretch, when he fees that his whole life has been one continued toil, yet that nothing to the purpose has been accomplished for himself! What regret, to have so often done violence to his inclinations, without gaining the advance of a fingle step towards heaven! To have always believed himself too feeble for the fervice of God, and yet to have had the ftrength and the conftancy to fall a martyr to vanity, and to a world which is on the eve of perishing!

Alas! it is then that the finner, overwhelmed, terrified at his own blindness and mistake, no longer finding but an empty space in a life which the world had alone engroffed; perceiving, that, after a long fucceffion of years upon the earth, he has not yet begun to live; leaving history, perhaps, full of his actions, the public monuments loaded with the transactions of his life, the world filled with his name, and nothing, alas! which deferves to be written in the book of eternity, or which may follow him into the prefence of God: Then it is, though too late, that he begins to

hold