a

season, this seed-time of life. Should the good seed be actually * sown in advanced years, it will find a sterile soil and an incle* ment sky; and the crop, if it should really follow, will scarcely repay the labours of the reaper. What fearful reasons have you to believe that your hearts will be covered with thorns and briers; that they will be nigh unto cursing, and that their end will be to be burned? How few of you are ready for the coming of Christ? How few would declare that they believed themselves to be ready. How few, while taking a retrospect of their lives, can find in them such a train of actions as they would be willing to rehearse before their Judge?

Open your eyes and see your privileges, and with them your hopes, every day lessening. Behold God every day removing ⚫ farther from you, and the world taking a more entire possession of your hearts. Look back. Do you not perceive that the gates of heaven have already become more distant, dim, and doubtful to your eyes? Listen. Are not the calls of mercy already more indistinct? What hope can he who is sinking every moment rationally entertain that he shall not be drowned? What hope can he, who is sliding down a precipice, and all whose efforts stop not his career at the beginning, soberly indulge, when he is farther advanced, that he will not be dashed in pieces at the bottom. Now, then, lay hold on the hope set before you.

Remember further, that life to you also is absolutely uncertain. When your hopes of living long are high, and with full confidence you are promising yourselves many days, go to the neighbouring burying-ground; mark how many monuments are there raised over the young; and consider how many more at the same period of life have become inhabitants of those dark and melancholy mansions, concerning whom no stone tells where they lie! How soon may you join these tenants of the grave? Wait not, then, for hoary locks to inform you that you are tottering over the tomb. The gates of eternity are always open, and the youth, the child, and the infant are passing through them night and day. The knell may soon toll for your funeral also, and your weeping friends may soon follow

you to the grave. How distressing will it be to them to look into that dark and narrow house without a hope, and to follow your souls into eternity, with no supporting evidence that, while here, you believed in the Redeemer, or loved God, or that there you will give your account with joy, be acquitted at the final trial, or find your names written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

SERMON XXII.

THE FINAL INTERVIEW.

ECCLES. XII. 7.

"Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it."

AFTER the death of one of our fellow-men we hear the funeral-bell summon together the surviving friends and neighbours of the deceased to perform the last kind offices. The assembly gathers, a prayer is made, the coffin is placed on the bier, and borne to the grave. The body is then committed to the earth. A solemn address is made to the living, while surrounding the narrow house; and, with impressions produced by the affecting event, and in some degree suited to its melancholy nature, they then return to their own habitation.

Our friend has now bidden us a final adieu. The intercourse between him and us is terminated, and both the persons and places which knew him in the present world will here know him no more. Nothing is more obvious than that this solemn subject affects the survivors less than its importance demands. The widow, indeed, and the orphan children, usually mourn sincerely, and in earnest. The death of the husband and the father has wounded their affection, lessened their happiness, and overcast their hopes. There are, also, at least

in many instances, other friends, less intimately connected, who sensibly feel the breach made upon their enjoyments. But there are multitudes of others, and those often not very remote in acquaintance or consanguinity, whose last affecting emotions concerning the departed man are felt at the grave, and who, when they turn their feet homeward, leave behind them every sympathizing reflection, every solemn thought. With them life immediately assumes the same aspect as if they had never known him, and the world as if he had never been.

But, notwithstanding all this indifference to death, and to those who are dead, there are occasions on which these emotions will, in some measure, come home to the heart; incidents which will call them up to view in an affecting light; and persons by whom they will be seriously realised in a manner not unsuited to their importance. On such occasions most men, perhaps, experience at times some degree of solicitude, and feel an involuntary twinge, a transient chill, passing over their hearts. That we should be so inattentive to a subject which so nearly concerns us, and so strongly appeals to our natural tenderness, seems at first thought to be strange. The explanation is, in some degree, perhaps, principally furnished by our fears. The death of others naturally alarms us concerning our own departure, and the consideration of their future allotments easily leads us to reflections concerning our own. It is not be wondered at, that subjects so painful as these should be unwelcome whenever they approach, and be dismissed, not only without reluctance, but with eagerness and self-gratulation.

There are, however, seasons in which we cannot wholly refuse to wander into the unseen world. Those who are witnesses of the death and burial of this departed friend will, at times, follow him in the exercise of imagination, and inquire with some anxiety whither he is gone, where he dwells, and by what circumstances he is surrounded. His body, we know, is lodged in the grave, is mouldering into its native dust, and is already become the prey of corruption, and the

3

feast of worms. But where is the man? Where is the living, conscious being, that saw with the eyes, spoke with the tongue, and moved the hands of that body?

Where is the being who thought and chose, loved and hated, controlled the cares of the family, mingled in the intercourse of the neighbourhood, and took an active part in the interesting concerns of the present world? Obviously he is gone to return no more. But whither has he gone? Is he blotted out of the book of the living? Has he returned to his original nothing? Or has he become an inhabitant of some unknown world, whence no person was ever permitted to come with tidings to us? He has given up the ghost, and where is he?

To these questions the text returns a decisive answer. "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the The man, the liv

"spirit shall return to God who gave it." ing, conscious being who inhabited the body, lately committed to the grave, has returned to God. We naturally inquire, "For what end has he been summoned to the presence of this "glorious and awful Being?" A following verse of the context replies, "For God shall bring every work into judgment, "with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it "be evil." This short and affecting answer to a question so solemn and interesting, it will be the aim of this discourse to expand into a few particulars, kindly presented for our meditation in other parts of the word of God.

It ought, however, to be observed, before I commence the execution of this design, that he concerning whom we inquire has now become an unembodied spirit. That union with the body which bound him to earthly objects, employments, and connections, is finally dissolved. To all these he has bidden his last farewell, and now wings his way alone through the regions of invisible being. The same man, who lived a little while since in the midst of us, and whose remains we followed to the grave, is now an inhabitant of eternity. Him we are now following to that amazing vast, that unknown somewhere. We pursue not an airy being of fancy, but a real man, a