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whole can be solved in the infinite wisdom and goodness of that Being who will so apportion our future condition as to qualify and correct our present evils. Immortality decyphers man, unravels the winding mazes of his life, and explains all the mysteries of his make. While apart from this, many of his desires, wishes, and inclinations are a dark enigma, and all his piety is but a dream; connected with it the enigma is fully solved, and we trace his piety as conducting him to the great Metropolis of the universe, and as placing him before the throne of his Creator, where there is bliss without limits, and without end. This shows how it is that while he is so much athirst for things great, grand, and intelligent, and while, to a considerable extent, he has the means of gratifying these desires, he still longs and pines for something more, and why many of the things of time only inflame his passions, instead of settling and composing them. These desires and inclinations, though now sullied, and bewildered in sin, are nevertheless of heavenly birth, and nothing can satisfy them but what comes from thence. They were implanted in the human mind in their purity by that Being who gave it existence, and were the pure rays of a celestial fire. They form a part of the constitution of man, were possessed without taint or improper bias by the happy pair in Eden, and glowed in Paradise before the fall. But then they were governed by a proper disposition, were fed with proper fuel, and were directed towards a proper end. They are possessed by angels, and constitute a powerful stimulus in urging them to renewed efforts, to prosecute noble pursuits, and to make increasing acquisitions in whatever is great and noble. They will also glow in the breasts of the redeemed with decreaseless ardour before the throne of God for ever, where they will have ample satisfaction and petually increasing enlargement along the progress of endless ages.

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piled up the twinkling stars, and whose breath kindled up the blaze of our sun; He who stretched out the heavens like a curtain, spread the north over the empty space, and suspended the world upon nothing; He who weighs the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance; before whom “all pations are but as the drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance;" He who sustains all things by the word of his power, works in every part of the vast universe which his hands have formed, directs the heavenly bodies in their courses, and who, nevertheless, fainteth not, neither is he weary; He who from the excessive light of his perfections, dwells in darkness; whose presence is the happiness of the heavenly powers; before whom the Seraphim vails his face; and at whose feet the archangel feels it an honour to lay his crown. It was this wonderful being that made the atone.ment for our souls. Consider-The greatness of his condescension. Though in the beginning he was with God and was God; though the brightness of the divine glory and the image of his person; though at his word creation sprung into existence, and though the God of all that breathed, the matter of angels songs, and the object of their profoundest adorations,-yet, strange to tell, he became poor,—a man,-a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs! He could say what the poorest person that hears me cannot say, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head." Consider again,-The perfection of his obedience. He fulfilled all righteousness, condescended to the smallest necessary particular, kept every tittle of the law, "magnified it, and made it honourable," exemplified the perfection of piety in humanity, and furnished a pattern of the most unblemished goodness for the imitation of his followers to the end of the world. Consider,-The extent and efficacy of his Atonement. By the grace

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of God he tasted death for every man. From Cal vary's cross, the benefits of his atonement verged backward to the garden of Eden, and to the miseries of the first sinner. At the same time, like some mighty river, whose waters shall never fail, and whose virtue is calculated to converts the barren desert into a fruitful field, and to ferti lize and bless the whole earth, these benefits have rolled along with the progress of time, conveyed innumerable blessings to countless millions, will retain all their riches and efficacy until this mundane system of things is displaced, and will be realized in the happiness of a multitude which no man can number before the throne of God for ever. Consider,-The extremity of his sufferings. These were personal. Christ also suffered for us, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.-They were extensive. He suffered in body. For he bore our sins, in his own body, upon the tree. In his soul. His soul was sorrowful even unto death. They were awful. The wrath of the Divinity roused in flaming vengeance against the surety of the human race. This he began dreadfully to feel when in the garden of Gethsemane; an awful agony seized his soul," and he began to be sore amazed;"" -and still more so when, while stretched upon the cross, he felt an entire suspension of the Divine smile.-His sufferings were complicated. He suffered from men. Whips, a hammer, nails, a cross, and a spear were used by them as the instruments of torture. From devils. They insulted him in his conflict. From God. This completed the awful catastrophe. For " it pleased the Father to bruise him and to put him to grief." Consider, finally,-The Dragonies of his death. These were such, that nature felt them through all her powers. The sun was shrouded in darkness, the rock broken asunder, the vail of the Temple rent in twain, from the top to the bottom; the graves were shattered; the dead raised to life; his enemies were confounded; the sea heaved, and the world shook.

By this glorious interference, the soul was ransomed, and ample provision made for preventing the prisoners from going down to the pit. Though immortal in its own nature, yet the soul viewed in this light possesses an awful importance far transcending any other consideration connected with it."Touched by the cross we live, or more than die." This will either sink us low in the shades of woe, or raise us high in the climes of bliss. Encouraged by such a lavish of heavenly goodness, we venture to bow at our Creator's footstool, and confidently calculate upon the clemency of heaven. Through this medium we calculate upon receiving all we need. "To us the bleeding cross has promised all, the bleeding cross has sworn eternal grace." Wrapped in this miracle of mercy, and encompassed in the vision of God's reconciled and cloudless perfection, we triumph in the thought that we have to live for ever.

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We see the path, and in his death the price,
And in his great ascent the proof supreme,
Of immortality"

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The arguments which are found in the word of God continued. The means employed to put man in possession of salvation considered.-The deathless nature of his soul and its certain destination to endless existence.-The resurrec tion and immortality of the human body.-The scrutiny through which the soul's probationary conduct will pass and the important consequences that will result from it.A brief glance at the leading features of the circumstances under which the soul will be placed for ever.-The argumentative part of the Lectures closed with an address to three descriptions of persons.

In the preceding lecture I have taken a limited view of the divine authenticity of the sacred Volume. I have also remarked that this Volume affords us great light, and indeed decisive evidence, in favour of the immortality of the soul. This evidence I have remarked may be found in all parts of the sacred Book. Immortality triumphs in every page. Particularly I have noticed the account which we have of the soul's divine origin,-its moral character and responsibility, its degradation and pollution,-its exposure to wrath beyond the grave,-and the great and glorious price of its redemption. I will now proceed to notice,

6. The means employed to put it in possession of salvation. Christ, we are informed in this book, is head over all things for the church's sake. Here let it be carefully remarked, that sin not only exposed the first delinquent and all who

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