SERMON XV.

ON THE DEATH OF HIS LATE MAJESTY,

KING WILLIAM THE FOURTH 1.

ROM. vii. 23.

The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

THIS Concluding sentence of the Epistle for this morning's service, may well be described as comprehending within itself a summary of Christian truth. For what is Christian truth, but that which leads us unto Christ? and by what other constraining principle does it lead us to Him than by the conviction of sin? Our weakness, therefore, and our strength, our fall and our stay, our danger and our defence, our fear and our hope, are here placed side by side before us; and holiness,-undeviating, patient, and stedfast holiness, is the result which the Apostle

1

1 Preached at St. George's Chapel, Brighton, on the 9th of July, 1837, being the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, and the day after the Funeral of His late Majesty.

would impress upon the believer's heart, from the joint contemplation of them both.

I seek not to dwell this day upon the terms in which this humiliating yet consolatory declaration of the Apostle is expressed. I seek not to point out its close connexion with the object which he is pursuing in the present portion of his argument; (and which you have had already pressed upon your notice in the Epistle which has been read upon this, as well as upon the preceding Sunday);—because I trust, that, week by week, and year by year continually, I have been employed in putting this truth before you, under one or another aspect;-and that your own participation in those means of grace which the Church dispenses for your comfort, your own daily self-examination, your own daily prayers, your own daily searching of the Sacred Oracles, has taught you to confess the force of its unchanged, its unchangeable reality.

I take the words of the Apostle, then, whilst the recollection of them, and of the context, is yet fresh upon our minds, not so much for the purpose of following out the specific consideration of the doctrines which they teach, as of finding in them a suitable and safe guide to our thoughts, at the present moment, when "we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts 1," and behold, not only in

1 Mal. iii. 14.

this House of Prayer, but whithersoever our footsteps turn throughout the land, the outward tokens of a nation's woe. Is not this an occasion which opens in our hearts afresh the springs of tender sympathy and of serious thought? And are we not bound to profit by it? Most assuredly we

are. For we are the creatures of time and of sense; and, living every instant within the sphere of their influence, are in danger of forgetting the certainties of the future and of faith. Bitter as are the wages of sin, we yet toil and waste our energies in its service, unmindful of the issue. Precious as is the gift of God, the gift of "eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ," we grow careless in its possession; and suffer it to fall, with all its distinctive graces and requirements, from our grasp. Our own experience must confess that this is so; that, whilst the existence of these truths is admitted by our very profession of Christianity, to be an undoubted certainty, their actual form and character are nevertheless lost sight of by many who make the profession. Death reigns, for instance, in our mortal bodies:-we hear, we see, we confess this sad reality. It is the wages of sin :-this too we know and we confess. And yet, this conviction which no argument can shake and no time destroy, is thrust aside by every passing incident of the day or hour. In the midst of danger we dream that we are safe. The enemy is close at hand, and his

weapons are drawn to strike us; and yet we can sleep on and take our rest. Assuredly, then, that voice is one of mercy, which startles us from this slumber; which bids us arise, and watch, and pray; which tells us of the foe that is ready to fall upon us, of the Saviour that is able to help us.

And such a voice, my brethren, has been heard even now in the midst of us :-heard in the announcement of our Sovereign's death;-heard in the solemn accents of confession and of prayer which, from the hearts and lips of his subjects, have, but a few hours since, followed him to the grave. In this event we believe that God addresses to the hearts and consciences of us all, a lesson of more than ordinary import. For, although we admit that a lesson similar to it is heard, whensoever any of our friends and companions in life are removed from the sphere of its existence, and are no more seen;-and, although we admit further, that, as far as our future destinies are concerned, the consequences which ensue upon the decease of the mightiest potentate upon earth, are no more than those which await the removal of its lowliest and obscurest children;-since, in either case, the immortal spirit, stripped of all the distinctions which once covered its earthly tabernacle, is gone to render its account, and to abide the irreversible judgment of the Lord;-yet, with reference to ourselves, to us who are still travelling onwards in

our pilgrimage,—that warning must, no doubt, be felt the most deeply, which holds forth the most prominent evidence of our perishable estate.

And, that there is such a gradation of evidence,— that some points of it are more prominent than others, is obvious from the very fact that there is a gradation in the different classes of mankind; and, that, from the constitution of our being, we are affected the most deeply by that which relates to the most distinguished of those classes. It is with the social system, as with the material universe. The lofty, the noble, the majestic,-be they exhibited in the works of nature or of art,—(and what is nature but the art of God1?)—are always those objects which, through the medium of the senses, excite the imagination with wonder, and impress the mind with reverence. The mountain that lifts up its summit to the clouds; the tree that casts forth the broadest shadow in the forest; the wide spread ocean; the embattled fortress; the gorgeous palace;-these are the objects which, with the great mass of mankind, arrest the attention, and awaken in the heart associations of awe and grandeur. And when the Almighty God shows that He can change even these; when we see the deep fissures which the earthquake and the torrent make upon the mountain's side; or the tree hurled up from its roots, and its branches scathed

1 See Sir Thomas Brown's Religio Medici, p. 9. Folio ed.