have corresponded with them-we have taken them by the arm and tenderly and affectionately conversed with them-we have pressed on them the vast importance of paying a prompt attention to the things that make for their everlasting peace before they are hidden from their eyes; but still we see they are hardened by the very word itself through their unbelief, through the perverseness of their spirits; and that word which might become a savour of life unto life is becoming to them a savour of death unto death; and we deprecate their departure from life, lest in reality the inscription should be written on their tombs as expressive of their state past and present, "Oh, that thou hadst known the things that belonged to thy peace, but now they are hid from thy eyes." But to take another view of this subject, perhaps there were some individuals who were bidding fair for the eternal world. In their hearts, powerful convictions of sin had been produced-on their minds, heavenly light had beamed-they seemed to be feeling after GOD-beginning to cleave to Christ to be following holiness, without which no man can see the Lord. They were just upon the edge of dissolving their secular associations and yielding themselves up entirely to GOD, and throwing in their lot among his people; but, oh! some golden apple has been rolled by their side, soon after they were seen to start in the race, and they have gone away. Like Demas they have forsaken Christ, and his Apostles having loved the things of this present evil world. "Oh, ye Galatians," we are ready to say to them, "who hath bewitched you; we marvel you have been so soon turned away after another Gospel." And of some who are evidently proceeding along the path of error, and along the parallel path of vice, and who are moving onwards in their course to wards apostacy, we weep over them, we tell others we have been weeping, that they so walk as to prove themselves in reality the enemies of the cross of Christ. Once more, however, and to bring our remarks to PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, the principle or sentiment we have drawn from this passage may be found applicable to the state of religion in your own souls. My dear hearers, though it cannot be a fact admissible that all who are assembled within these walls are the subjects of conversion to GOD; yet I think it is a fact, which we may also venture to state, that there are not a few, there are many who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, and who are walking in the way of holiness towards heaven. My Christian friends, compare your former and your present state. Time was when you were all darkness-time was when you were bound and fettered by the chains of unbelief and sin-time was when you were resting your dependance for salvation upon your own imaginary merits-time was when you never pleaded and never panted after a new heart and a right spirit-time was when cleaving to worldly associates, you said to GoD and to his people, "Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of your ways." But one thing you know, that whereas you were once blind, now you see-see the evil of sin-see the excellence of the Saviour -see that righteousness which can justify-see that stream which flowed from the victim of the cross, and which cleanses from all the foulest pollutions of sin-see the promises of the Spirit to succour you amidst all your spiritual weaknesses, and to enable you successfully to conflict with the powers of corruption and with the principalities of darkness, and with the opposition of this present evil world, until at length you attain the glories and the felicities of the heavenly state. And does not all this demand a song and an ascription of praise? Is not this event the result of the mercy of GoD which endureth for ever? Is not this an event compared with which there is no other, which can so involve the eternal interests of man? Is not this an event which calls upon you to praise GOD, and shout aloud for joy because the foundations of the spiritual temple are laid within you? You will concede it. And yet I make another appeal to you, whether even amidst all the joys and the grateful pleasures which you share, when marking the change which Divine mercy and grace have produced on the state of your hearts, there is not also much which should my members"-"To will is present with me, but how to perform I find not by reason of sin?" And then sometimes your associations grieve you, and you cry out "Wo is me, that I sojurn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar. My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace. I am for peace: | but when I speak, they are for war." Now, my Christian friends, let me say to you that this combination of joy and sorrow in the bosom of a believer is perfectly congenial and compatible. You recollect when Moses found that the children of Israel were well nigh through the wilderness, close to Jordan, and were about to enter into the land make you walk humbly before GoD-flowing with milk and honey, which was much, which not unfrequently extorts from you the cry, "Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!" Can you look back on your follies and crimes, antecedent to the hour which cut up your follies by the root, without a tear? Can you think of the backslidings and departures of your heart from God, since that blessed period when you found relief, without deep and poignant regret? Can you think of the slow progress you have made, on the paucity of your attainments in religion, compared with the ample number and variety of your Christian privileges and means of grace, without a godly sorrow which needeth not to be repented of? And oh! the dulness and the languor and the carelessness, and the irreverence, and the coldness, and the indifference, and the sluggishness which often mark your devotions in solitude, in your families, and in the sactuary of GoD-does not all these awaken painful regrets? And when you enter upon close and upon serious self-examination are you not often constrained to say with an ardour of distressful feeling, "I find a law in my members warring against that which is in my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of Sin, which is in promised to the fathers, he gave them this charge," and thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments, or no." And said the prophet, or rather Jehovah by him to Israel, renewing their repentance, and going weeping in supplication on their return to GoD, "And thou shalt remember and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God." And when Paul wished to cherish in the bosom of his Christian friends a lowly and an humble frame, he reminds them of their obligations to the wonders of Divine grace; "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world. But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ." Professed humility, the habitual exercise of penitence for sin, and a joy unutterable and full of glory may exist together in the bosom of those who are converted and sanctified by the grace of God. Now I have only one more question to put to you in concluding these remarks, and that is, whether in the last part of my discourse I have supplied the description of your own real experience, or have I not? If not, my dear hearers, if the foundations of real religion are not already laid within your souls, then let me tell you whatever be your rank or position in society, and whatever the circumstances in which you are found, or the character which you sustain in the estimation of your fellow-creatures, you have no real cause for joy. You may have gifts as brilliant as the stars of the sky-you may have opulence abundant as the sands on the sea-shore-you may have success and prosperity in your several professions and callings-in a word, you may be distinguished by all that is honorable and all that is glorious in the estimation of men, and yet your condition in future, unless you become the subjects of genuine repentance, of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, of the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, your condition will be infinitely worse than that of the most miserable captive that ever groaned beneath the iron despotism of the Chaldean emperor. On the contrary, if you can say that I have supplied a description of your experience, namely, that you can rejoice that the grain of mustard seed is within your heart, that the little leaven is there, although at the same time you have much to deplore, much that is to be removed, much that is to be accomplished; yet we would prevent you from indulging too much depression-we would exhort you not to give way to despondency—we would tell you that the little leaven shall leaven the whole lump, that the grain of mustard seed shall rise till it becomes a lofty tree, and the fowls of the air shall lodge in the branches thereof, and that the water which begins to bubble up from the well shall prove the well of water springing up unto everlasting life. Oh, yes! he that has begun the good work in you, shall perform it till the day of Jesus Christ. "The work which wisdom undertakes Eternal mercy ne'er forsakes." And though powerful obstructions may again rise up to hinder the erection of this building which you are rearing, the top stone shall at last be brought forth with shoutings of grace, grace unto it. "The feeble saint shall win the day, Though death and hell obstruct the way." And soon, my Christian friends, the conflict shall be over, the enterprise shall be complete, and you, like the returned children of the captivity, shall settle down in a better country, even the heavenly, which shall be your permanent residence and abode, where there shall be no admixture of pain. "No roses grow on thorns, 1 Cor. xv. 35.-" But some man will say, How are the dead raised? and with what body do they come?" (Continued from page 16.) We are in search of truth and profit, not of ideal representations: and having therefore seen in some measure how the dead are raised-having seen that there will be a contemporaneous resurrection of the bodies of all the dead, both of the just and of the unjust, in one appointed day; and that after all the dead have been raised, there will next pass a change on the bodies of the living; let us proceed to examine with what bodies the dead will rise, and with what bodies the living will be caught up into the air to meet the Lord. First of all, then, we are taught that at the resurrection there will be a modification in the bodies, or rather in the attributes of the bodies which we bear with us on the earth: for, as all flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds; so also, says the apostle, is the resurrection of the dead. As the nature of the living body of one class of created beings differs from the living body of another class of created beings, so also does our present body of clay differ from that with which we shall be clothed when brought forth from the grave to an eternal existence. The nature of this change in general the Apostle thus describes:-"The Saviour, when he shall appear, will VOL. I. not only call up our vile bodies from the grave, but so change them that they shall be no longer vile, but become like unto his own glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself. Nor is the Apostle content with this single and general intimation on the subject; he has pursued it into a variety of the most interesting particulars; he has given us every degree of information which it is necessary to possess. Our body, when it dies, he tells us, in the first place," is sown in corruption :" it is the heir of death, the daughter of the earth, and the sister of the world; a vessel of clay, with the principle of dissolution bound up in its very essence, and the sentence of mortality written on its brow. It is to be raised in incorruption, without the possibility of being either crushed by violence, or worn away by suffering, with the germ of life planted in its centre, and springing up into a continual renewal of its vital powers, free from the decay of death, unchanging and unchangeable. Our body will, it is added, be "sown in dishonour." It is a body which hath its shameful and less honourable parts, as well as its more noble and dignified members. It is subject to deformities which make it hideous-to losses and defects which make it useless-and it C is a state of wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. In its most beautiful state the body has some uncomeliness, and its best honours fade and depart with youth, and turn into the wrinkles of wretchedness and age. But it will be raised in glory-the glory of unblemished righteousness, and the unspotted loveliness of a perpetual spring; and also in the ethereal and eternal charm of an angelic purity. It will be without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, a delight to every eye that looks upon it; walking like our first parents in the Paradise of God, naked, but not ashamed; without one dishonourable member, without one dishonourable infirmity. motion will fly from one end of heaven to the other at the bidding of our good intentions, and feel no decay of strength, never be weary in well doing, and never sink under the burden. Lastly, says St. Paul, the body that dies is "sown a natural body," the source of all fleshly natural lusts, and the seat of all earthly natural passions. But the body of the natural man is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be; for the flesh of the natural man lusteth always against the spirit, and mindeth earthly things. But it will be raised a spiritual bodyspiritual, and therefore holy in all its feelings, desires, and wants; the ever living, never failing instrument of obedience to the will of the spirit. There is but one other particular to be mentioned, and that is, that though the body of every redeemed Christian will at the resurrection be risen up, the glory will not be equal in all. The stars in the firmament on high shine not all with an equal lustre, or with an equal purity: the beams of some are faint and feeble--the glow of others powerful and bright; yet the shining of them all, however pure and Our body, when it dies, is sown, as it had lived, in weakness, in utter inability to labour without weariness in any work, however good or great. The body is in its power unable to fulfil the grand and lofty desires of the understanding; weak it is to obey the holier aspirations of the soul. The mind museth upon many things in its activity and strength-the body weigheth down in its musings. The spirit searcheth even the deep things of God; but the languid incapacity of the slug-powerful in the darkness of night, is gish flesh is unable to sustain the weight of its desires. The mind can do many things; but the weakness of the body hindereth. It circumscribes my longings after wisdom-checks me in my pursuits after truth. I would go and find wisdom in the uttermost parts of the earth-my body is weak in motion. I would search for hidden treasures day and night-my body is weak in watching. I would penetrate the deepest mysteries by the energy of unbroken meditation-my body is feeble, and its feebleness must be renovated. It is the same also in my pursuits of holiness. Suppose the mind forms the image of a great and godly enterprize for God's glory and man's welfare; then the living portion of strength fails, and the heart faints ere half the task of holiness has been accomplished. It is a feeble and unready instrument of the will, ever disappointing our best wishes, and leaving our best ideas unfulfilled. But it will not ever be thus. It is sown in weakness-it will be raised in power: its capacities of activity and endurance of lost before the coming splendour of the great luminary of day. When the sun rises on the earth, the stars get them away together, and their beautiful brightness is perceived no more. And thus, also, will it be, as we are taught by the Apostle, with the bodies of the saints when called from the grave to walk their everlasting rounds upon the face of God's heavenly firmament. Some will have a higher and better glory, and some will have a humbler bliss. The glory of the most glorious of all the stars will dwindle, decay, and fall disregarded in the presence of the superior excellency of the Lord Jesus, the sun of righteousness, the ruler of the heavens and everlasting day. So are we taught by the Apostle Paul, when he says, "that as there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; and as one star differeth from another star in glory-so also shall be the resurrection of the dead." Blessed be the Lord Jesus, that he hath inspired the Apostle to make known to man these circumstances; |