For, the living know, yea, must know, unless they obstinately refuse, "that they shall die. But the dead know not any thing," that will avail, for the ease of their pain, or to lessen their misery. Also "their hope and fear, and their desire," all are perished; all of them are fled: "they have not any portion in the things that are done under the sun!"

11. Where indeed is the hope of those who were lately laying deep schemes, and saying, "To-day, or to-morrow we will go to such a city, and continue there a year, and traffic, and get gain?" How totally had they forgotten that wise admonition, "Ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For, what is your For, what is your life? It is a vapour that appeareth awhile and then vanisheth away!" Where is all your business? Where your worldly cares? Your troubles or engagements? All these things are fled away like smoke; and only your soul is left. And how is it qualified for the enjoyment of this new world? Has it a relish for the objects and enjoyments of the invisible world! Are your affections loosened from things below, and fixed on things above? Fixed on that place, where Jesus sitteth at the right hand of God? Then happy are ye: and when he whom ye love shall appear, "ye shall also appear with him in glory."

12. But how do you relish the company that surrounds you? Your old companions are gone: a great part of them probably separated from you never to return. Are your present companions angels of light? Ministering spirits, that but now whispered, "Sister spirit, come away!" "We are sent to conduct thee over that gulf into Abraham's bosom." And what are those? Some of the souls of the righteous, whom thou didst formerly relieve with "the mammon of unrighteousness ;" and who are now commissioned by your common Lord, to receive, to welcome you "into the everlasting habitations?" Then the angels of darkness will quickly discern they have no part in you. So they must either hover at a distance, or flee away in despair. Are some of these happy spirits that take acquaintance with you, the same that travelled with you below, and bore a part in your temptations? That, together with you, fought the good fight of faith, and laid hold on eternal life? As you then wept together, you may rejoice together, you and your guardian angels perhaps, in order to increase your thankfulness, for being "delivered from so great a death." They may give you a view of the realms below those

"Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell."

See on the other hand, the mansions which were "prepared for you, from the foundation of the world!" O what a difference between the dream that is past, and the real scene that is now present with thee! Look up! See!

"No need of the sun in that day,

Which never is follow'd by night!
Where Jesus's beauties display
A pure and a permanent light."

Look down! What a prison is there! ""Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fire!" And what inhabitants! What horrid fearful shapes, emblems of the rage against God and man; the envy, fury, despair, fixed within, causing them to gnash their teeth at Him they so long despised! Meanwhile does it comfort them to see, across the great gulf, the righteous in Abraham's bosom? What a place is that! What "a house of God, eternal in the heavens!" Earth is only his footstool: yea,

"The spacious firmament on high,

And all the blue ethereal sky."

Well then may we say to its inhabitants,

"Proclaim the glories of your Lord,

Dispers'd through all the heavenly street;
Whose boundless treasures can afford,

So rich a pavement for his feet.”

And yet how inconsiderable is the glory of that house, compared to that of its great inhabitant! In view of whom, all the first born sons of light, angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven full of light as they are full of love,

"Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes."

13. How wonderful then, now the dream of life is over, now you are quite awake, do all these scenes appear! Even such a sight as never entered or could enter into your hearts to conceive! How are all those that "awake up after his likeness, now satisfied with it?" They have now a portion, real, solid, incorruptible, "that fadeth not away." Meantime, how exquisitely wretched are they, who (to waive all other considerations) have chosen for their portion those transitory shadows, which now are vanished, and have left them in an abyss of real misery, which must remain to all eternity!

14. Now, considering that every child of man, who is yet upon earth, must sooner or later wake out of this dream, and enter real life; how infinitely does it concern every one of us, to attend to this, before our great change comes! Of what importance is it to be continually sensible of the condition wherein we stand! How advisable by every possible means to connect the ideas of time and eternity! So to associate them together, that the thought of one may never recur to your mind, without the thought of the other! It is our highest wisdom, to associate the ideas of the visible and invisible world, to connect temporal and spiritual, mortal and immortal being. Indeed, in our common dreams, we do not usually know we are asleep, whilst we are in the midst of our dream. As neither do we know it, while we are in the midst of the dream, which we call life. But you may be conscious of it now! God grant you may, before you awake in a winding-sheet of fire!

15. What an admirable idea for thus associating the ideas of time and eternity, of the visible and invisible world, is laid in the nature of religion! For what is religion? (I mean Scriptural religion, for all other is the vainest of all dreams.) What is the very root of this religion? It is Immanuel, God with us! God in man! Heaven connected with earth! The unspeakable union of mortal with immortal. For "truly our fellowship (may all Christians say) is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. God hath given unto us eternal life and this life is in his Son." What follows? "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life."

16. But how shall we retain a constant sense of this? I have often thought in my waking hours, "Now, when I fall asleep, and see such and such things, I will remember, it is but a dream." Yet I could not, while the dream lasted; and probably none else can, But it is otherwise with the dream of life, which we do remember to be such, even while it lasts. And if we do forget it, (as we are indeed apt to do,) a friend may remind us of it. It is much to be wished, that such a friend were always near: one that would frequently sound in our ear, "awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead!" Soon you will awake into real life. You will stand a naked spirit in the world of spirits, before the face of the great God! See that you now hold fast that "eternal life, which he hath given you in his Son.”

17. How admirably does this life of God branch out into the whole of religion! I mean Scriptural religion. As soon as God reveals his Son in the heart of a sinner, he is enabled to say, "The life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." He then "rejoices in hope of the glory of God, even with joy unspeakable. And in consequence both of this faith and hope, the love of God is shed abroad in his heart, which, filling the soul with love to all mankind, "is the fulfilling of the law."

18. And how wonderfully do both faith and love connect God with man, and time with eternity! In consideration of this, we may boldly say,—

"Vanish then this world of shadows:

Pass the former things away;

LORD, appear! appear to glad us,
With the dawn of endless day!
O conclude this mortal story;
Throw this universe aside:

Come, eternal King of Glory,

Now descend, and take thy bride !”

SERMON CXXIV.

ON FAITH.

"Now Faith is the evidence of things not seen."-HEBREWS xi. 1.

1. MANY times have I thought, many times have I spoken, many times have I written upon these words: and yet there appears to be a depth in them which I am in nowise able to fathom. Faith is, in one sense of the word, a divine conviction of God and of the things of God; in another, (nearly related to, yet not altogether the same,) it is a divine conviction of the invisible and eternal world. In this sense I would now consider,

2. I am now an immortal spirit, strangely connected with a little portion of earth; but this is only for a while. In a short time I am to quit this tenement of clay, and to remove into another state,

"Which the living know not,

And the dead cannot, or they may not tell!"

What kind of existence shall I then enter upon, when my spirit has launched out of the body? How shall I feel myself? Perceive my own being? How shall I discern the things that are round about me, either material or spiritual objects? When my eyes no longer transmit the rays of light, how will the naked spirit see? When the organs of hearing are mouldered into dust, in what manner shall I hear? When the brain is of no further use, what means of thinking shall I have? When my whole body is resolved into senseless earth, what means shall I bave of gaining knowledge?

3. How strange, how incomprehensible are the means whereby I shall then take knowledge even of the material world? Will things appear then as they do now? Of the same size, shape, and colour? Or will they be altered in any, or all these respects? How will the Sun, Moon, and Stars appear? The sublunary Heavens? The Planetary Heavens? The region of the fixed Stars? How the fields of Ether, which we may conceive to be millions of miles beyond them? Of all this we know nothing yet: and indeed we need to know nothing.

4. What then can we know of these innumerable objects, which properly belong to the invisible world? Which mortal eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into our hearts to conceive? What a scene will then be opened, when the regions of Hades are displayed without a covering! Our English translators

seem to have been much at a loss for a word to render this. Indeed two hundred years ago it was tolerably expressed by the word Hell, which then signified much the same with the word Hades, namely, the invisible world. Accordingly, by Christ descending into hell, they meant that his body remained in the grave, his soul remained in Hades, which is the receptacle of separate spirits, from death to the resurrection. Here we cannot doubt but the spirits of the righteous are inexpressibly happy. They are, as St. Paul'expresses it, with the Lord: favoured with so intimate a communion with him, as is far better than whatever the chief of the Apostles experienced while in this world. On the other hand, we learn from our Lord's own account of Dives and Lazarus, that the rich man, from the moment he left the world, entered into a state of torment. And there is a great gulf fixed in Hades, between the place of the holy, and that of unholy spirits, which it is impossible for either the one or the other to pass over. Indeed a gentleman of great learning, the honourable Mr. Campbell, in his account of the Middle State, published not many years ago, seems to suppose that wicked souls may amend in Hades, and then remove to a happier mansion, He has great hopes, that the rich man mentioned by our Lord in particular, might be purified by that penal fire, till, in process of time, he might be qualified for a better abode. But who can reconcile this with Abraham's assertion, that none can pass over the great gulf?

5. I cannot therefore but think, that all those who are with the rich man in the unhappy division of Hades, will remain there, howling and blaspheming, cursing and looking upwards, till they are cast into "the everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels.” And, on the other hand, can we reasonably doubt, but that those who are now in Paradise, in Abraham's bosom, all those holy souls, who have been discharged from the body, from the beginning of the world unto this day, will be continually ripening for heaven; will be perpetually holier and happier, till they are received into the "kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world."

6. But who can inform us, in what part of the universe Hades is situated? This abode of both happy and unhappy spirits, till they are reunited to their bodies? It has not pleased God to reveal any thing concerning it, in the Holy Scripture: and, consequently, it is not possible for us, to form any judgment, or even conjecture about it. Neither are we informed how either one or the other are employed, during the time of their abode there. Yet may we, not improbably, suppose, that the Governor of the world may sometimes permit wicked souls "to do his gloomy errands in the deep?" Or, perhaps, in conjunction with evil angels, to inflict vengeance on wicked men? Or will many of them be shut up in chains of darkness, unto the judgment of the great day? In the mean time, may we not probably suppose, that the spirits of the just, though generally lodged in Paradise, yet may sometimes, in conjunction with the holy angels, minister to the heirs of salvation? May they not

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