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SERMONS.

SERMON I.

AT THE FUNERAL OF MR. WILLIAM LAKE;

WHO DIED IN A CONSUMPTION IN APRIL 1772.
AGED TWENTY-ONE.

1 Cor. xv. 55.

O Death! where is thy sting?

VICTORY! Victory! Shout, my fellow-christians, my fellow-soldiers, who are engaged in the same warfare, and must one day encounter the same enemy. Shout, ye angels of light and love; you especially, whose office it is to attend the death-bed of the saints, to wipe off the dewy.sweat from the faces of the struggling combatants, and convoy their disencumbered spirits to the realms of bliss. Let earth and heaven ring with the joyful acclamation. Victory! victory! the conqueror is conquered: this mighty champion, that hath so long defied the armies of the living God, and through fear of whom so many have been all their life-time subject to bondage, is vanquished-by a stripling vanquished. Ah, Death, where is all thy boasted prowess? All that were witnesses of the combat will publish thy defeat. Thou the king of terrors!--a vain title, an empty boast. If we had never seen any of thine achievements but this, we should laugh at the shaking of thy spear. What could all thy terrors

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avail thee here? Say, ye that constantly attended, or occasionally visited, this young hero;-for so I must call him. Though but a babe in Christ, yet he was quite a veteran in experience and fortitude, and, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, endured hardness, fought the good fight, and finished his course, and kept the faith-I say, let those who saw him walk through the valley of the shadow of death (unusually lengthened as it was) declare whether he discovered, either in his looks or language, the least symptom of fear-Fear! far enough from fear. Go when you would, you always found him calm and cheerful. In the earlier part of his confinement, when he had been for several days, as we thought growing better, but some unfavourable symptom suddenly appeared and dashed all our hopes of life, I shall never forget with what a smiling countenance he addressed me on my entering his

room.

"O Sir," says he, "the wind is come about fair for home again. I was afraid, last week, that I was to be kept longer at sea; but now I believe I shall soon be at my desired port. I have in the course of my disorder, made many tacks; but I hope I have got some ground by every one of them. Christ is a good pilot, and I leave all to him. I am not my own, but his. He doth with me just what he pleases; and I am willing he should; if he were to offer to let me choose my own circumstances, I would instantly refer it to him again: I would not choose any thing for myself. I confess I have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which, I know, is far better than any thing I do now, or ever did, enjoy in this world; but I would not be too earnest

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