busy here and there, she is gone—gone from a church in a militant, ins perfect state, to the Church triumphant. She knows more now of the world of spirits, than ever she learned, or even heared from this pulpit; she no longer is confined to the partial knowledge, but knows as she is known; she looks no more through a glass darkly, but sees face to face. I have been happy, in seeing a considerable number join this church since I have lived among you; a few have moved away to other parts, and some few have been excluded from the communion; but this is the first mortal bereavement that the church has sustained since I have been resident in town. O may her vacancy be filled up with some of equal piety. Our expectation is from the youth. From close observation, I have noticed, that the greatest part of those who are born again, receive the gracious change between the years of sixteen and twenty-five; yet to this general rule there are many exceptions; so that those who are younger may hope, and those who are older need not despair. There have been several revivals of religion in this town, among the youth; but at present a great degree of carelessness and vanity is seen. How soon will this church dwindle away to nothing, by the removals and deaths of the present members, if recruits are not made up from the rising generation! O, thou lofty One, who inhabitest eternity, send thy good spirit down upon our youth, and turn their hearts to the love of the truth. My hearers, one and all, I feel impressed with a sense of the uncertainty of all sublunary objects, the many ways in which death attacks the children of men, and the importance of our appearing before God, in eternity. Physicians have computed, that there are more than five-hundred ways, in which death assaults the offspring of Adam. Good God! are we yet living, when death, like a man of war, has so many instruments of mortality to reduce us to dust. It is owing to thy protective arm, Almighty Lord, that we are preserved from the terror by night, and the arrow that flieth by day; from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that stalketh at noon-day. When we consider the frailty of human nature, the wonder rises still higher; man has a vast number of vital fibres, infinately smaller than a hair, and dies if one of them is broken. "Strange that a harp of thousand strings, should keep in tune so long." Whoever studies human machinery, and calls in question the constant superinten dency of God, must always live in the utmost fear of death. It is as good a conjecture as can be made, that the earth is peopled, at present, with one thousand millions of souls. According to the bills of births that are taken, it appears that half that are born, die under seven years of age; but, as this may be questioned, we will suppose that half die under fifteen; the conclusion is, that in thirty years as many as a thousand millions leave this world. Now, if we suppose that a soul leaves the world every second, which is sixty for every minute, three thousand six hundred for every hour, at the expiration of thirty years, there will be left a surplus of about fifty millions, which I conclude is as great a surplus of living souls as thirty years produce. If we then contemplate the many ways that death invades our habitations, the frailty of human nature, and the amazing constancy of souls leaving this world, we shall naturally adopt the words of Paul, and say: "Having, therefore, obtained help of God, we continue unto this time." But let the careless sinner think that, when death dislodges his soul from his body, the yawning hell will be its residence. Notwithstanding the attempts of some to prove that the soul dies with the body, and of others to maintain that alt souls will go to heaven on making their exit, yet Revelation assures us of the death of a rich man, and the existence of his something, I say soul, after his body was buried; and that this something was in hell, where a great fixed gulf forever separated him from Abraham and Lazarus. When the wicked, impenitent sinner dies, he goes to the generation of his fathers, and shall never see the light. He that made him will not have mercy on him, and he that formed him will show him no favor. If there is not something pertaining to man that does exist in a separate state, after the dissolution of the body, what did our Saviour mean in his dying prayer— Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit"? And how are we to understand Stephen, on a like occasion—" Lord Jesus, receive my spirit"? Moses died, and the Lord hid him. Moses had not been raised from the dead when our Lord was on earth, and yet he appeared on the holy mount when our Lord was transfigured; but how could this be, if there was nothing belonging to Moses that survived the death of bis body? If souls know nothing when out of the body, why could not Paul tell whether he was in the body or out of it, when he was caught up into Paradise and the third heavens ? and why should he give us to believe that he could be present with the Lord when absent from the body? If the souls of the martyrs do not live, sing, and pray, too, after their bodies are dead, and before their resurrection, how could John see, under the altar, the souls of them who were beheaded, hear what they said, and the answers made them? And how could the soul of a prophet bring him intelligence from heaven, if souls die with the body? Who can believe Paul, when he declared he was a Pharisee, if he did not believe their doctrine? which, in opposition to that of the Sadducees, was in spirits, angels, and the resurrection from the dead. The arguments that are brought to prove the mortality of the soul, will not admit of the existence of angels, and some of them strike directly against the existence of God. But let souls continue ever so long in a separate state, yet the time will come—it hastens, when all will be raised from their graves, and souls and bodies will re-unite. The time is near, when we shall see a God in grandeur, and view a world in flames: when the Son of Man shall come in the clouds of heaven, and every eye shall see him. before him, and be very tempestuous round about him." white throne, all nations will appear to their final audit. when God doth this? "A fire shall burn Before his great It is not easy, if possible, to tell how many people have been on the earth since its first formation. If we suppose that from Adam to the flood, they doubled once in forty-five years, by births, there was born above one hundred and thirty-seven thousand millions. In the flood, all the threads of the web were cut off but eight. And if from the flood to this day, those eight souls have doubled in like manner, once in forty-five years, there have been born, since the flood, more than three hundred and ninetyseven thousand quatrillions, which, added to the antediluvians, make nearly four hundred thousand quatrillions. The surface of the whole globe would be as unequal to such a number, as a pepper-corn is to an empire; for if the whole solid contents of the terraqueous globe was reduced to square inches, there would be more than thirty-four thousand millions of souls to each inch. But if this earth could not contain them all, when the present is burnt up, God can make a new earth big enough; but it is not certain that resurrection bodies will require grass earth to stand upon. However these things may be, all rational creatures of Adam's line, will appear before God, and hear their final doom for eternity. May we all be prepared for the midnight cry—for the grand assize -for the solemn, righteous judgment of God; that we may hear the blessed plaudit—"Well done. Eater into the joy of your God." Amen. |