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-While the words of the Apostle are thus instructive, there is another sense in which I think, my brethren, you will feel them as commemorative. "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world." Can we pronounce them without remembering, that there was indeed One who "was born of God," and who "hath overcome the world ;" and can we murmur at whatever the world has to try us, when we remember what it had to try him?

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This is the high example which this season ought ever to bring to our minds; and it is with hearts glowing with the remembrance of his holiness, that we should ever return from his cross to our own homes. If it be into the scenes of danger and of temptation we bare to return, let us remember that He also passed through the world, but unsubdued by its temptations, and unacquainted with its sins. If it be into the scenes of hardship and of suffering we return, let us remember that he once "endured

the cross and despised its shame,”—that it was by "suffering" that he was made "perfect,”—and that now at his name every thing in Heaven and earth is commanded to bow.-If it be into the scenes of mourning and of sorrow we return, where death has been busy, and where the grave has closed upon cour hopes, let us remember that He hath burst the fetters of the grave; and that, in that final state, where there is death, and sin, and sorrow no more, he reigneth to reassemble, in one happier hour, all those who, amid the miseries of the world, put thei trust in him. 9999 0.4 bili t

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May these, my brethren, be the influences of this season upon all our hearts!-May the spirit and the strength of that faith which we have now professed, and "which is able to overcome the world,” go along with us into every scene where the providence of God may lead us; and, under its guidance, may we so pass through all the shadows of time, that we may finally gain all the promised realities of Eternity!

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SERMON XXIII.

ON OUR SAVIOUR'S ASCENSION. *

ST. JOHN xiv. 2, 3.

"I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place "for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that "where I am there ye may be also."

THE discipline of our church, which has appointed annual seasons in which we commemorate the great events of our religion, has not only for its object to confirm our faith, but to awaken those religious feelings and dispositions which such events are intended to produce. It is ever to little purpose that our understanding is employed upon the subject of religion, if our hearts remain unmoved; and a wise man will ever study to meet those yearly solemnities which the discipline of the church prescribes to him, with a mind prepared for the peculiar emotions which the season is fitted to inspire.

The season which is now passing, is that in which we commemorate the ascension of our Lord: The portions of Scripture which are read, are those in which this great event is related;-the prayers which are employed, have all a reference to the influence which it ought naturally to have upon our minds; and, to receive all the benefits which so

* Preached on Ascension day.

lofty a contemplation is fitted to leave upon us, it is necessary for us to fix our attention with more than ordinary care, upon the magnificent event we are commemorating, and to open our hearts to all the suggestions which it is calculated to awaken. It is in this view, that I am now to lay before you a few reflections upon the subject, in the confidence that I cannot present it, even for a few moments, to your minds, without awakening sentiments, of religious gratitude, and I trust of religious consolation.

The first and most obvious reflection that occurs to us upon the remembrance of the Ascension of our Lord is, that of the demonstration which it gives of the truth of the Gospel, and of the certainty of our faith. The circumstances in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, which have occasioned the incredulity of vulgar and sordid minds in every age, as they did of those of the Jews in his own, the humility, the poverty, and the apparent meanness of his condition, are now all past. He is no longer "the humble and despised "teacher,"--the 66 son of the carpenter,”—-the "friend of publicans and sinners," and who had not "a place where he could lay his head." By the most stupendous of all miracles ;-by his visible Resurrection from the grave, his pretensions are now confirmed by the interposition of Heaven;— and by his Ascension from earth, he has proved to. the senses as well as to the understanding of mankind, from what abode he came, and what is the divine nature to which he belongs. It is on the right hand of the Father that he is now seated, far above all hu

man principality, and all angelick power; to him is given “that holy name which is above every name; "and before Him every knee is now commanded to "bow, of things in Heaven, and things in earth, and "things under the earth." The gracious work which he was commissioned to do, is now performed; and the Christian eye follows now the Leader of its salvation into that original glory from which he descended, and in which "He dwelt before the foundation "of the world." Compared to such astonishing events, the pretensions of all other religions are vain; and even the philosopher who measures the powers of human invention, by what it has performed, will acknowledge the truth of the Ascension of our Saviour, from the very circumstance, that it is an event too stupendous for imagination to have invented, or for imposture to have attempted to perform. There is, beside all this, another circumstance in the event which every Christian mind will feel,— it is, its analogy to the whole genius of the Gospel, in the simplicity and even the modesty with which it is performed. The greatest scene upon which the eye of man ever gazed,—the visible passage of a divine person from earth into Heaven,-is yet transacted with the plainness and simplicity of an ordinary event. No convulsions happen in nature ;— no disturbance of its usual serenity to awaken the attention of the world to the spectacle which was to follow. In the midst of his apostles, while he had assembled them as usual in the calm of the evening, upon the mountain where he used to teach,-when

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