II. God not merely remembers, but will reward those who thus promote the salvation of his people, and retain their holiness amidst abounding iniquity, and in illustrating this point, the great advantage of holiness will appear.

The figures here employed are strikingly fitted to convey an idea, that decided Christians are exceedingly precious in the sight of God. With what care do men store up their jewels! All their other goods are reckoned less valuable than these. They store them up in secret and strong

the countenance of his friend. When the Sabbath comes round, we can take sweet counsel together as we walk to the house of God in company. When we go with trembling steps to a communion table, remembering how unworthy we are, the words of a friend are often "like ointment poured forth," or "like the dew on the Hill of Hermon, where God commandeth the blessing, even life that shall never end." When disease, with its dark clouds, settles upon our dwellings, when wearisome days and nights, with many tossings to and fro till the dawning of the day are ap-repositories, and when danger seizes upon their pointed to us, or any of our dear Christian relations, then it is grateful to the heart to hear accents of tenderness proceeding from human lips, and to be borne up by others who have known like afflictions, and are not strangers to sympathy. When death cuts "off the desire of our eyes with a stroke," and when a crowd of mourners come to carry from our sight the remains of all that was dear to us, when we see the last sight of the sad procession, and return and find the place unoccu pied where our friend once was, what so soothing in such hours as these as the conversation of those who can remind us of the time when the earth and the sea must give back their dead, and all the triumphs of death must be swallowed up in an eternal victory. In all circumstances, it is the duty of Christians to speak one to another; for a word fitly spoken how good it is; and this is one of the means appointed by God for saving souls from death, and promoting the sanctification of his people.

Oh! if God should offer us a golden wedge of Ophir, or a kingly crown for every soul that we comforted, for every delusion detected and exposed, every soul taught to surmount its difficulties, and enter the land of rest, how diligent would we be. See the physician, for a temporary subsistence, passing through a laborious course of study, from many parts of which human nature recoils,-exposing himself to the contagion of deadly disease, content to have his rest disturbed, and to sit up the weary night that he may gaze on human nature in agony,-passing from one sad chamber of sickness to another, till a sedate and melancholy air becomes habitual, and sits fixedly on his countenance. He does all this for his fellow men, only to obtain a small and temporary reward. See the lawyer putting forth his whole store of learning and subtlety in defence of another, burning the midnight oil that he may discover arguments in his defence, and throwing his whole soul so completely into the case, that as he speaks so earnestly, a stander-by will imagine that it must be his own. Will they do all this, and more, for their brethren, only for a reward in time, and will you, professing to be Christians, do nothing to promote the comfort and salvation of your Christian brethren, although God looks on with deep interest, and though he has declared that an immortal prize will reward your efforts, not of thousands of gold, or earthly crowns, but of endless joy, a long long immortality of blessedness?

dwelling, they fly to these, their jewels are first secured. When a day of mirth and feasting is appointed, is it possible for the sons and daughters of Adam then to forget their ornaments? And if we speak of kings, their crown, and the jewels with which it is adorned, their sceptre of gold, all the rubies and diamonds which their ancestors have collected, all the precious things which go to make up the regalia of majesty, constitute the emblems of the glory and greatness of their kingdom. And when foreign princes come, as the Queen of Sheba did, from the uttermost parts of the earth, to see the glory and hear the wisdom of Solomon; when a great and striking display must be made, the crown royal is placed on the monarch's head, and all the jewels of the kingdom are brought forth to dazzle the foreign eyes and make the assembled thousands shout for joy. And so God gives us to believe, that when at last he comes down to exhibit to the world his glorious majesty, and when all the princes of many generations must meet together, and all the potentates of hell must come to see the glorious spectaclenothing fairer will there be, nothing more precious and beautiful, nothing which illustrates more the dignity and glory of his power, his love, and all his attributes, than the members of the Christian Church, fair and glorious, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. "They shall be mine, saith the Lord, in that day when I make up my jewels."

Or take the other figure. We all know how tender is the affection of parents towards their children. It reigns amongst all the creatures of God. The very eagle, cruel to all the other fowls of heaven, "fluttereth over her nest, carrieth her young upon her wings." The "bear robbed of her whelps," makes the forest ring with the wailings of her grief. And man, guided by reason, betrays feelings stronger and deeper than these. Hear them expressed by Jacob: "Me have ye bereaved of my children; Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and will ye take Benjamin also? all these things are against me." Even the ut most cruelty, the most base ingratitude, is unable to quench a father's love. David "was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and, as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee." And the eternal Jehovah gives us to believe, that as parents write the names of their children in their sacred books, so he writes the names of his on the palms of his

hands-they are ever before him. Even as they watch over their tender infants with a zeal which tires not—an ardent unquenchable affection; and as when they call their friends together, they love to deck out these, and shew them as the objects most precious in their sight; so the God of heaven and earth, when he calls a vast assembly of all the universe, will bring forth these his children, decked with beauty, and prepared to enter upon an eternal joy. "I will spare them as a man spareth his son that serveth him."

The time is fast approaching when the reign of delusion will end for ever-when this strange scene, in which holiness is oppressed and sin apparently triumphant, shall change-light coming out of darkness, order out of confusion-the wicked being driven away in their wickedness, the chosen sons of God brought forth from their obscurity, that they may shine as the jewels in our Saviour's crown, as the stars for ever and ever.

How strange to stand on an eminence on that day of final decision and see the wondrous issue. "Every eye shall see it," every heart shall feel its overpowering interest. It will be a day of joy and unspeakable alarm-of hope

earth should suddenly reel beneath your feet, and in the hour of your extremity you send in despair for those ministers whose warnings you now despise, to administer a consolation which you now put away. Now is the accepted time, God waits to be gracious-his salvation is offered to the chief of sinners-his spirit can cleanse from all sin-his glory can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul. Flee to the stronghold as prisoners of hope. And ye Christians, hold fast that which you have, let no man take your crown; yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry, his reward is with him, but his work is before him. "Be ye faithful unto death, and Christ will give you the crown of life."

THE TOMB OF HOWARD.

Extracted from Dr Henderson's Biblical Researches and Travels in Russia.-London, 1826. "AT the distance of five versts to the north of Kherson, stands the original monument of the Prince of Christian Philanthropists the great, the illustrious Howard; who, after travelling 50,000 British miles, to investigate and relieve the sufferings of humanity, fell a victim, near this place, to his unremitting exertions in this benevolent cause. It is situated a little to the east of the public

road leading from Nikolaief to Kherson, near the south

ern bank of a small stream which here diffuses a partial verdure across the steppe. On the opposite bank are a few straggling and ruinous huts, and close by, is a large garden, sheltered by fine lofty trees, which have been planted to beautify the villa once connected with it, but

now no more.

more than fulfilled, or terror more than realized. It will teach in one hour what men could not be taught by a thousand sermons, and it will teach with a force and authority which none will venture to gainsay. This is the meaning of the prophet, "Then shall ye turn and disThe spot itself is sandy, with a scanty cern between the righteous and the wicked." At from the rest of the steppe by two brick pyramids, and sprinkling of vegetation, and is only distinguishable present you may be deceived, and the flatterers of a few graves, in which the neighbouring peasants have men, apparently backed by many strange appear-interred their dead-attracted, no doubt, by the report ances, may lead you astray. You may silence the voice of conscience, which proclaims aloud that 'there is an endless distinction between sin and holiness; you may lull yourselves into a temporary feeling of security; but the thunder-clap of the day of judgment will dispel the delusion" in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." Now there is peace, then there will be no peace; now there is a firm world beneath your feet, then that world will be burning with fire; now God hides himself, then he will come forth in wrath; now ministers beseech, then their voices will be silenced; now the wicked prosper, then they will be driven away to endless misery; now there is time, then eternity will have begun, and hope fled forever away. "Then shall ye turn and discerning on the superiority of principle which impelled the between the righteous and the wicked."

All this will thrust itself upon every one's observation; there will be no disinterested spectator; all will learn from experience, whether of sorrow or joy. Will you not be wise in time? You are spending your years as a tale that is told, and now is that day of revelation nearer than when we last met in this house of prayer. Are you anxious to shut your eyes still, and to press on through another period of time, which shall, perhaps, lay some of us with the dust, uninstructed and unmoved? If ye are resolved, O why should we disturb you before the time? Rejoice and let your hearts cheer you; but take heed lest the

of the singular worth of the foreign friend whose ashes are here deposited till the resurrection of the just. As ordinary description grew upon our minds, and forced we approached the graves, a hallowed feeling of no upon us the conviction, that the scene before us was indeed privileged beyond the common walks of life. One of the pyramids is erected over the dust of our countryman, and the other has subsequently been raised over the grave of a French gentleman who revered his memory, and wished to be buried by his side. As we designed to perpetuate the memory of the Philanthrohad no person with us to point out which of them was pist, it was impossible for us to determine, otherwise than by confiding in the accuracy of information obtained by some former admirer of his virtues, who has cut into the brick the very appropriate inscription :—vixit propter alios,-i. e., he lived for the sake of others. It was impossible to survey this simple obelisk without reflect

great friend of his species, in that career of disinterested benevolence which he so unremittingly pursued. His was not mere animal sympathy, dignified and refined by its existence in human nature, though he doubtless possessed that quality in no ordinary degree; nor did his charities flow from an ambition to be admired and extolled by his fellow creatures; his toilsome pilgrimages and unnumbered acts of self-denial were not performed with the slightest idea of atoning for his sins, or meriting a seat in the mansions of bliss-the very thought he abhorred; but his whole character was formed, and his practice regulated by the vital influence of that Gospel which reveals the divine philanthropy expending itself upon human weal. Conceiving himself to be an eternal debtor to the blessed Saviour, who stooped to the lowest depths of suffering, in order to rescue him from the hor

་

rors of immortal death, he was sweetly and powerfully | tual faculties. And had we, therefore, been left to the constrained to imitate his bright example, the charac-investigations of unassisted reason, we must have been teristics of which are strikingly depicted in the simple totally and eternally excluded from all the hopes and declaration who went about doing good.' the consolations which it sets before us, amid the sepa"Such was Howard, the most virtuous, and yet the most humble of our race. How justly he might have rations and the bereavements of our mortal condition. taken for his motto what he wrote a few months before his death: In God's hand no instrument is weak, and in whose presence no flesh must glory.' He was enabled to effect great things, yet he utterly renounced dependance upon himself. My immortal spirit I cast on the sovereign mercy of God, through Jesus Christ, who is the Lord my strength, and my song; and, I trust, has become my salvation. My desire is to be washed, cleansed, and justified in the blood of Christ, and to dedicate myself to that Saviour who has bought us with a price.' Firmly resting upon this foundation, he was well prepared to address his last earthly friend and attendant, Admiral Priestman, in these words: Priestman, you style this a dull conversation, and endeavour to divert my mind from dwelling upon death; but I entertain very different sentiments. Death has no terrors for me; it is an event I always look to with cheerfulness, if not with pleasure; and be assured, the subject is more grateful to me than any other.'

Men there have been, it is true, of acute and discerning minds, who, without the aid of Revelation, have been able to form some kind of conception in regard to the immortality of the soul. And though their views on that subject have not been altogether free from doubt, or vagueness, or uncertainty, and have seldom been productive of any powerful or permanent impression on the mind, yet they seem occasionally to have caught some vivid glimpses of the truth, and in moments of solemn deliberation have almost persuaded themselves that the soul could never die. And when they dwelt, as they often did, on its high superiority both over the irrational and inanimate creation; on the vast measure of its capacities; on the boundlessness of its ambition; on its plans extending far onwards into futurity; on its hopes, even in the hour of decay, breaking from their confinement, and groping their way into the immensities of an unknown eternity, then nothing could be more natural or more rational than the conjecture that the soul, which was capable of such mighty things, was not to be doomed to annihilation, ere its faculties were half unfolded, or its plans accomplished; and that the very perishing of its mortal tenement might not only be the means of its emancipation from the bondage of this gross and material state, but of its admission into some higher clime, where its powers were to be fully expanded, and its perfection to be complete.

"His genuine humility prompted him to choose this sequestered spot for the reception of his mortal remains; and it was his anxious desire, that neither monument nor inscription, but simply a sun-dial should be placed over his grave. His wishes were at first so far complied with, that no splendid monument was erected to his memory; but the august monarch, in whose territory so many of his benevolent acts were performed, and who nobly patronized the attempts made to follow out the plans of Howard for the improvement of the state of prisons, has borne a public testimony to the respect he entertained for his virtues, by ordering a conspicuous monument to be built in the vicinity of Kherson, the town in which he died. This cenotaph, which attract- But though such have been the views of stronged our notice as we approached the gate of the town, minded men in regard to the immortality of the soul, is erected at a short distance from the Russian cemetery, we find not, apart from divine Revelation, the most disand close to the public road. It is built of a compact tant or obscure intimation in regard to the resurrection white free-stone, found at some distance, and is about thirty feet in height, surrounded by a wall of the same of the body. Their own consciousness might nurture stone, seven feet high by two hundred in circumference. the idea that the soul, peradventure, night live for ever. Within this wall, in which is a beautiful cast iron gate, But with regard to the body, when they saw it divesta fine row of Lombardy poplars has been planted, which, ed of all motion, of all feeling, of all life; deaf to when fully grown, will greatly adorn the monument. their most affectionate addresses, incapable of the On the pedestal is a Russian inscription of the follow-slightest exertion, mouldering away into dust and coring import: Howard: died January 20th, 1790, aged 65: the simplicity of which is in strict accordance with the orders the great Philanthropist more than once gave, and which, with the rectification of the dates, only requires the all-emphatic addition, Christ is my Hope, to render it perfectly conformable to the inscription dictated by his own pen, and placed under that to the memory of his wife in Cardington Church, near Bedford. Agreeably to his request, a sun-dial is represented near the summit of the pillar, but with this remarkable circumstance, that the only divisions of time it exhibits, are the hours from ten to two, as if to intimate that a considerable portion of the morning of life is past ere we enter on the discharge of its active duties: and that, with many, the performance of them is over at an early hour after the meridian of our days.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY. BY THE REV. J. A. WALLACE, Minister of Hawick. THE resurrection of the body is one, certainly, of the most comfortable doctrines on which it is possible for us to fix our thoughts. But it is a doctrine which could never be discovered, either by the perceptions of our bodily senses, or by the researches of our intellec

They

ruption,-with regard to it, they had no hope.
gave it up as a thing which was completely lost. In
fact, they could behold the change which was taking
place upon it; they could trace the humiliating process
through which it was passing; they could see it re-
turning into dust, and apparently into nothingness;
they could draw the conclusion, from the outward ap-
pearances, that when the earthly house of this taber-
nacle was dissolved, it was dissolved finally and for
And, therefore, they were left to mourn over
their departed friends, even as those who have no
hope, and to go down to the grave themselves, with a
feeling of hopelessness, and desolation, and despair.

ever.

Hence, we are indebted to the Bible for the information which we possess in regard to the resurrection of the body. There, it is not only revealed to us in terms which are so plain and explicit, that he who runs may read, but we have distinct and specific examples of it, as if for the purpose of putting down all the objections which it is possible for the subtlety or the infidelity of the human mind to bring against it, and shewing to us, by well-authenticated facts, what a

possible thing it is for the corruptible to put on incor- | which he hath purchased with his blood; a part of his ruption, and for the mortal to be clothed with immortality. On that account the Bible is to be regarded as a great and invaluable treasure. Even in regard to that one point-the restoration of the mortal and material part of our nature-it contains more sound philosophy, and more solid comfort than can be gathered from the profoundest speculations of all the wise men who have lived since the creation of the world. And were it silent on every other subject but that, it would still be like a well of living water in the wilderness, a light to cheer and to conduct us amid the darkness and the mysteries of death; a heritage with which the wealth of worlds is not for one moment to be compared.

mystical body, which he hath engaged to keep, not to
destroy, to purify and to perfect, not to annihilate ;
nay, tell me that it shall actually be raised again, with
no other change but the removal of all its imperfec-
tions, and arrayed in a loveliness more glorious and
transcendant than before, and that I shall see it again
with my own eyes, and speak to it with my own lips,
and walk along with it for ever through the boundless
blessedness of heaven. Tell me that, and I am com-
pletely satisfied. I feel that I am capable of under-
standing it.
The comfort comes home to my very
heart. And because I have the prospect of getting
back the same body, united again with the same soul,
and that, moreover, in a state of perfection, I feel that
the fountain of consolation is filled to the overflowing;
and that the hope which passes over the grave, and
pierces into eternity, is without a shadow and without
a cloud.

Such are the cheering prospects which are opened before us in the Bible, and which every true believer is permitted to entertain in regard to all his friends who have fallen asleep in Jesus. It not only leads us to understand that their souls do not perish at their death, but are made perfect in holiness, and do pass imme

dubitable certainty, what formerly, and in the view of human reason, was the object only of dim and uncertain conjecture; but that their bodies also, by virtue of their connection with the great Redeemer, are now resting in their graves, and shall rise again in glory, and incorruptible; thus fetching light out of a dispensation apparently the darkest and the most hopeless, and bringing us to sources of consolation which must have lain for ever beyond the reach or the discovery of the wisest and the most enlightened of men.

For what is the kind of consolation which is most suited to the constitution of our nature, amid the trials and the bereavements of this present life? Suppose that death has entered into my dwelling, and borne away from me some venerated parent, or some beloved brother, or some affectionate sister, or some darling child, or some friend that sticketh closer than a brother, and that every feeling of my nature is wrung to agony with the awful severity of the trial. Oh! then, would it be enough to tell me that I must think no more for ever of the image the bodily appearance of my buried child, or my venerated parent, or my be-diately into glory; thus turning into a matter of inloved friend the very being who was entwined most closely about the fibres of my heart and whose likeness is still associated with every object on which my eye gazes, and every event which my memory recals, and every scene which my imagination paints? Would it be enough to tell me, that the spirit is disembodied, and is blessed, and that I must think of it, and of it alone? Impossible. I cannot do it. It is beyond the power of my nature. And did my comfort depend on the achievement, I should still "be of all men the most Iniserable." A disembodied spirit, even in a state of perfect happiness! I try to think of it-I try to realize it. But no power of abstraction, no force of thought, no grasp of intellect can bring me to the distinct recognition of what a spirit is. I cannot see it, I cannot hear it, I cannot follow it, I cannot comprehend it. The bond which united us together appears to be awanting. And I feel myself to be almost as far removed from it, and as incapable of entering into its fellowship, as if it had lost its very existence. But along with the spirit, Oh! speak to me also of the body; the body, which my own eyes have seen, and my own lips have spoken to ; the body, about which all my associations, and affections, and reminiscences are eternally entwined; the body, whose living image is engraven imperishably on the tablets of my heart. Tell me that not one particle of its dust shall be lost, and that not one lineament of its likeness shall be defaced. Tell me that it forms a part, and an important part of the nature, for whose redemption Christ descended from heaven, and clothed himself in our likeness, and tabernacled amongst our dwellings, and laboured, and suffered, and died, and slept in the grave, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, and is now reigning triumphant at the right hand of God the Father. Tell me that, though to the eye of sense, it may seem to be brought into a low and most humiliating condition, it is nevertheless precious in the sight of the great Redeemer, because it is his own property,

Therefore, the grave is not to be regarded as a place of perdition, where the believer can be divested of ought that essentially belongs to his nature. It is a place merely of transformation, where the earthly house of his tabernacle is to be dissolved, not for the purpose of destroying it, but for the purpose of freeing it from its imperfections, and rebuilding its imperishable materials into a more glorious temple for the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit for ever. And could we only realize the day when the Saviour shall fetch them out from the darkness and the desolations of the grave, and raise them up to all the glories of a new and endless life; could we see the meeting together, after the long and silent sleep in which they have been reposing, of parents with children, and children with parents, of brothers with sisters, and sisters with brothers, of ministers with people, and people with ministers,—the blending together of kindred spirits that had been long severed, but now re-united for ever; and could we listen to the loud thunders of adoration which shall sound through the universe, when all the mighty host that have been loosed from their fetters shall rise triumphant to meet their glorified Redeemer in the air; could we realize all that, we should see enough, and more than enough, to reconcile us to the most humiliating of all the changes to which our mortal and corruptible nature can be subjected, and to prompt us in faith and in triumph to exclaim, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is

sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks | with happy fitness, the intercourse and joys of Christ's