more elevated sentiments, of more refined taste, of more ardent ambition, than you are. We cease to contend with you for the honours of this world, as we have ceased to struggle for superiority in the amusements of children. While you are spending your time in contending for toys, we are fighting for everlasting glory. Your contest is then much misplaced. We have no reason to be ashamed of our hopes. We blush not, then, when you laugh; we feel no inferiority when you disdain. We look with pity upon the proudest monarch in Europe, who is ignorant of the gospel. We esteem the knowledge of all the philosophers in the world as despicable, when compared with that which is professed by the meanest of ourselves. If any of us have lowered our rank on account of obedience to Christ, we feel no sentiments of degradation. We estimate our importance by the value and honour of our inheritance. Though not wanting in the proper expressions of deference to rank and power, the consideration of our own dignity, as the children of God, preserves us from that overwhelming sense of inferiority, which usually embarasses, sinks, and confounds others in the presence of the great ones of this world; and from those mean submissions, that abject adulation, to which few of the human race will not submit, to secure the attainment of some favourite object. While they call the fear of God an abject spirit, and the belief of future wrath to the neglecters of the gospel, the humours of a timid superstition, they will fawn, and cringe, and truckle to any great man who can serve their purpose. They live regardless of God, but they mould their sentiments and conduct in conformity to those of their patron.

But what is there abject in the fear of God? Is it pusillanimity to fear him who hath power to destroy both soul and body in hell? Is it magnanimity to defy the arm of Omnipotence? If the Scriptures are true, I have proved that woe unutterable shall be the portion of the neglecters of the gospel, and of all the workers of iniquity. Shall men, then, profess to believe the Scriptures, and have the hardihood to despise their threatenings? Shall they have the impudence to tell us, that we are raising spectres to haunt the imagination of the feeble-minded, when we put men in mind of the

future punishment of the wicked?

Shall their frigid lessons on the dignity, beauty, and utility of virtue, be received as the effects of wisdom, while the declarations of the vengeance of the Almighty on his enemies must not be heard? We shrink not then from the attack of the sage, we deride his weapons as utterly feeble. Notwithstanding all the ingenious apologies they can make for the misconduct of man; notwithstanding all their speculations on the divine attributes, if they acknowledge the Scriptures to be the word of God, a very child could confute them, when they attempt to screen the sinner from the wrath of God.

To you especially, my dear relations and friends, do I commend the gospel. With much solicitude for your salvation, I warn you to flee from the wrath to come. I feel commiseration for the state of the whole human race. Knowing the terror of the Lord, I would endeavour to persuade men; but how can I think of the eternal damnation of those who are so dear to me on earth? Yet I cannot hide it from myself, that you must all perish, if you neglect this great salvation. That hereditary religion, that sound of orthodoxy, and decency of conduct, in which so many trust, will be found a refuge of lies in the day of God. Are you standing before God, on the atonement of Jesus? Have you taken up the cross to follow him through good and bad report? Have you peace with God, through the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you waiting for his Son from heaven? Are you looking unto the coming of the day of God? If not, it is in vain you talk of Christ. In vain, you say, Lord, Lord, if you do not the things that he says. He will reply to you, never knew you, depart from me, ye workers of iniquity. Many of you, I am sure, pity me, but I have no need of your pity. I seek for glory, and honour and immortality; you think people may be good enough, without going such lengths. Christ tells me otherwise, and surely he knows more of this matter than you He tells me "ye are my disciples, if ye do whatsoever I command you." He assures me that unless I take up my cross, and follow him, I cannot be his disciple, and that I am not to withhold my all, my very life, if he calls for it. If, then, your religion teaches you to serve God and Mammon, it will without doubt fail you in the

I

do.

end; your wisdom will prove folly. What saith the Scripture?-1 Cor. iii. 18. Why will you then lose the invaluable prize for the sake of any prospects the world can afford you? Is it worse to bear the cross for a few years than to bear the vengeance of the Almighty for ever? Are you so attached to Sodom that you will perish with it, rather than leave it? Remember the overthrow of the cities of the plain, which are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. If God so punished them, how much more dreadfully will he punish those who have rejected his gospel. It will be more tolerable for Tyre, and Sidon, and Gomorrah, than for you, if you receive not the truth. How, then, can I forget your situation? I see you on the brink of a precipice, ready to plunge into eternity, yet many of you as careless as men asleep, about the one thing needful. Night and day you are on my mind. I can fully enter into the feelings of the apostle when he says, "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost," &c.-Rom. ix. 1–3.

To you, my Christian brethren, would I speak a few words before I close. You have seen the importance of the gospel; be not then ashamed of it, but, feeling for others, publish it all around. Will you stand idle, and multitudes perishing every where around you? Let each occupy his talent. Remember the fate of him who hid his in the earth. When man reviles, remember Jesus approves. Let it be deeply engraven on your memory what Jesus says to his disciples "Whosoever shall be ashamed," &c.

Brethren let us all love one another. Let no difference of opinion about any matter alienate our affection. Let neither name nor party keep us from loving all who appear to be born of the incorruptible seed of the word. To our Master every one of us stands or falls. We are not the judges of one another. While, then, we faithfully contend for any part of truth, let us not cease to love all who love Jesus. Brethren, let us walk worthy of the gospel; let us not mar its progress by our lives. Let us not rest until we have already gained the victory, but "let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us."-Heb. xii, 1.

REMARKS

ON THE

GENERAL RESURRECTION.

"Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."-John v. 28, 29.

THE general resurrection is among the most awful and interesting scenes that can occupy the contemplation of man. According as it is viewed by hope, or by fear, it is calculated to yield the most transporting joy, or the most pungent pain. If we understand the way in which God is just, and the justifier of the ungodly; if we know the way in which a guilty creature may approach with confidence, the tribunal of the God of the whole earth; if we have a well-founded hope of enjoying the kingdom prepared for the ransomed of the Lord, no subject can yield sweeter consolation to the mind, than the prospect of rising from the ruins of mortality. Nature revolts against the thought of dissolution it is with reluctance that the soul is separated from its dearest companion; and without abhorrence we cannot contemplate the corruption and loathsomeness of the grave. Nothing but the hope of finally triumphing over death, can make the prospect of dissolution, and the gloom of the mansions of the dead, agreeable, or even tolerable, to a thinking mind. To view death as the debt of nature, and the terms on which we received existence, can yield no real, no

substantial consolation to a dying man. But how grateful to the mind, to turn from viewing the rottenness of the grave, and the worms that are about to devour the body, to the day when death shall be swallowed up in victory; when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality!

But, on the other hand, to those who are ignorant of God, whose consciences testify against them as evildoers, how insupportable is the view of the resurrection of the dead? No longer shall the graves be able to hide their bodies. These must awake from the rest of death, to suffer the punishment of transgression. They shall live, only to endure merited wrath. They may now put the evil day far from them, but it will at last overtake them as travail doth a woman with child. The crimes which they may have concealed from men, will now meet them in all their guilt; they will be unable to hide themselves or their deeds from the eye of Him who shall judge the living and the dead.

Yet such is the blindness of the human mind, that men often succeed in turning away their eyes from beholding that awful scene. The various occupations and incidents of life so engross them, that it is seldom thoughts of so gloomy and disagreeable a nature are allowed to present themselves. In health and prosperity men are carried down the streams of pleasure, and from the various amusements which they have contrived to kill time, they are secured from the frequent intrusion of serious reflections. In acute distress, or the bustle of business, the present feelings occupy the mind; or if adversity should force them to perceive the vanity of earthly things, and obtrude eternity upon their thoughts, they find relief in the delusions of false hope, and false views of their own situation and character. All is not right, it will be acknowledged, but the partiality with which men are inclined to view their own conduct, will discover some good qualities to counterbalance what is amiss, which, with their incorrect views of the justice and mercy of God, soothe them in the prospect of appearing before the judgment-seat of Christ. Nothing more fully evinces the awful situation of those who are