the most brilliant condition, and the most delicious life, are only a splendid slavery, and a source of grief, all these advantages, I say, are inseparable from piety. A charitable man cannot see, without deep affliction, objects of his tenderest love renounce such inestimable advantages, poison the pleasure of their own life, open an inexhaustible source of remorse, and prepare for themselves racks and tortures.

But, my brethren, these are only the least subjects of our present contemplation. We have other bitter reflections to make, and other tears to shed, and there is an exposition of charity more just, and at the same time more lamentable, of the words of my text, "Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law."

I am thinking of the eternal misery in which sinners involve themselves. We are united to sinners by ties of nature, by bonds of society, and by obligations of religion, and who can help trembling to think that persons round whom so many tendrils of affectionate ligaments twine, should be threatened with everlasting torments! Some people are so much struck with this thought, that they think, when we shall be in heaven all ideas of people related to us on earth will be effaced from our memory, that we shall entirely lose the power of remembering, that we shall not even know such as share celestial happiness with us, lest the idea of such as are deprived of it should diminish our pleasure, and imbitter our happiness. It would be easy, in my opinion to remove this difficulty, if it were necessary now. In heaven order, and order alone will be the foundation of our happiness; and if order condemns the persons we shall have most esteemed, our happiness will not be affected by their misery. We shall love only in God; we shall feel no attachment to any, who do not love God as we do: their cries will not move us, nor will their torments excite our compassion.

But while we are in this world, God would have us affected with the misery that threatens a sinner, that our own feelings may excite us to prevent it. You have sometimes admired one of the most marvellous phenomena of nature; nature has united us together by invisible bonds, it has formed our fibres in perfect unison with the fibres of our neighbour; we cannot see him exposed to violent pain without receiving a counter blow, an unvaried tone that sounds relief to him, and forces us to assist him. This is the work of that Creator, whose infinite goodness is seen in all his productions. He intends that these sentiments of commiseration in us should be so many magazines to supply what the temporal miseries of our neighbours require. So in regard to eternity, there is a harmony, and, if you will allow the expression, there is a unison of spirits. While we are in this world, an idea of the eternal destruction of a person we esteem suspends the pleasure, which a hope of salvation promised to ourselves would other wise cause. It is the work of the Creator, whose goodness shines brighter in religion than in the works of nature. That horror, which is caused by a bare appearance, that the man we so tenderly love should be reserved for eternal torments, I say, the bare suspicion of such a

of the unhappy object of our esteem, to pluck him from the jaws of destruction by reclaiming him from his errors with the force of exhortation and the power of example. To combat these sentiments is to oppose the intention of God; to tear these from our hearts is to disrobe ourselves of that charity, without which there is no religion.

Accordingly, the more a mind becomes perfect in the exercise of this virtue, the more it has of this kind of sensibility. Hence it was that St. Paul so sharply reproved the Corinthians, because they had not mourned on account of that incestuous person, who had disgraced their church. Hence it was that Moses, when he discovered that gross idolatry of which we just now spoke, gave himself up to the deepest sorrow, and said to the Lord, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin! Yet now, forgive their sin, and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book." Hence it was that Jeremiah said to the Jews of his time, who were going captives into a foreign land, where they would be destitute of the comfort of religion, "give glory to God before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains. But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride, and mine eyes shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because the Lord's flock is carried away captive." Hence this declaration of Paul to the Philippians, "Many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ." Hence it was that Jesus Christ, the chief model of charity, when he overlooked the unhappy Jerusalem, and saw the heavy judgments coming upon it, "wept over it," saying, "O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes."

Here I venture to defy those of you, who glory in insensibility, to be insensible and void of feeling. No, nothing but the most confirmed inattention to futurity, nothing but the wretched habit we have formed of thinking of nothing but the present world can hinder our being affected with subjects which made the deepest impressions on the soul of the psalmist. Consider them as he did, and you will be affected as he was. You hardest hearts, try your insensibility, and see whether you can resist such reflections as these! This friend, who is my counsel in difficulty, my support in trouble, my comfort in adversity; this friend, who constitutes the pleasure of my life, will be perhaps for ever excluded from that happiness in heaven, to which all my hopes and wishes tend: when I shall be in the society of angels, he will be in the company of devils: when he shall knock at the door of the bridegroom who opened to me, he will receive this answer, "Verily, I say unto you, I know you not." This catechumen, in whose mind I endeavoured to inculcate the truths of religion; a part of the men, whom I thought I had subdued to Jesus Christ; a great number of these hearers, whom I often told, that they would be my joy and crown in the day of the Lord (certainly "you are our joy and crown,") will perhaps be one day disowned by Jesus Christ in the face of heaven and earth.

(and this is one of the most beautiful images under which a man who loves his God, can represent the happiness of heaven,) the employment of the blessed in heaven is to serve God; their delight is to serve God; the design of all the plans, and all the actions, and the motions of the blessed in heaven, is to serve God. And as the most laudable grief of a believer in this unhappy world, which sin makes a theatre of bloody catastrophes, and a habitation of maledictions, is to see the unworthy inhabitants violate the laws of their Creator, so the purest joys of the blessed, is to see themselves in a society where all the members are always animated with a desire to please God, always ready to fly where his voice calls them, always collected in studying his holy laws.

This is the society to which you, my dear brethren, are appointed; you who, after the example of Lot, vex your righteous souls from day to day at seeing the depravity of the world; you, I mean, "who shine as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation." Into that society those happy persons are gone, whom death has taken from us, and a separation from whom has caused us so many sighs and tears. Behold, faithful friend! behold the company where now resides that friend to whom your soul was knit, as the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David! See, thou weeping Joseph! See that society where thy good father now is, that good Jacob whom thou didst convey to the grave with tears so bitter, that the inhabitants of Canaan called the place where thou didst deposit the body, "AbelMizraim, a grievous mourning to the Egyptians." Look, frail father! look at that society, there is thy son, at whose death thou didst exclaim, "O Absalom, my son, would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" And you, too, distressed Rachels! whose voices are heard lamenting, weeping, and mourning, refusing to be comforted, because your children are not; see, behold there in heaven your chil

dren, the dear objects of your grief and your love!

Oh! "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord! I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." Let us apply this thought of the prophet to ourselves, and may the application we make, serve for a balm to heal the wounds, which the loss of our friends has occasioned! "They shall not return to us," they shall never return to this society. What a society! A society in which our life is nothing but a miserable round of errors and sins; a society where the greatest saints are great sinners; a society in which we are often obliged to communicate with the enemies of God, with blasphemers of his holy name, violaters of his august laws! No, they shall not "return to us," and this is one consolation. But (and this is the other,) but "we shall go to them." They have done nothing but set one step before us into eternity; the pleasures they enjoy are increased by the hope of our shortly enjoying the same with them. They, with the highest transports, behold the mansions which Jesus Christ has prepared for us in the house of his Father. "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God," said our divine Redeemer, to raise the drooping spirits of his apostles, stunned with the apprehension of his approaching death. This is the language we have heard spoken, this is the declaration we have heard made by each of those whom we have had the consolation of seeing die full of the peace of God, "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." O may we be shortly united in the bosom of this adorable Being with our departed friends, whose conversation was lately so delightful to us, and whose memory will always continue respected and dear! May we be united with the redeemed of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, in the presence of the blessed God! God grant us this grace! To him be honour and glory, for ever. Amen.