affecting spectacle to behold, with the warnings and the symbols of a dissolution which so speedily awaits him, that he just hugs more closely to his heart when on the eve of being taken away from his treasures for ever. Give me then a man who is actually alive to the realities of faith; and the inference from all is, that another power than that of the influence of nature over the feelings of nature must have been put forth to awaken him. There is not, within the compass of all that is visible, any cause conpetent to the production of such an effect on the human spirit. The power which awakens him to a sense of spiritual things cometh from a spiritual Creator. There is naught in the world that is present, which can bring a human soul under the dominion of the world that is to come. And although one would have thought that the follies and fluctuations of time would have been sufficient to wean men from a portion so evanescent and unsatisfying, and to point them to the things of eternity, yet it would ap

powering. Why, it may be thought, neighbour in the dust, he remains buried, should we be so anxious for urging a as it were, in the concerns of the world, truth which may safely be left to its own and will betake himself again with an evidence, or take occasion strenuously eagerness as intense and unbroken to its and repeatedly to affirm what none is able concerns and companies as before. We to deny? And this is just the marvellous affirm that, of the spell which binds him anomaly of our nature which it is so to earth, no power within the compass of difficult to explain. In the face of all this nature is able to disenchant him; that arevidence, and in utter opposition to the gument will not; that instances of morjudgment extracted thereby, there is an tality in his own dwelling will not; that obstinate practical delusion that resides sermons will not; and the evident ap most constantly within the heart, and proach of the last messenger to his own rules most imperiously over the judg-person will not: and it is indeed a most ments of the vast majority of our species. It is not that we are incapable of all influence from futurity-for it is the future gain of the present adventure, or the future issue of the present arrangement, or the future result of the present contrivance, that sets almost the whole of human activity a going. But it is the future death, and the future condition on the other side of it, to which we are so strangely insensible. We are all in the glow, and the bustle, and eagerness of most intense expectation, about the events that lie in the intermediate distance between us and death, and as blind to the certainty of the death itself, as if this distance stretched indefinitely onward in the region of anticipation before us, or as if it were indeed an eternity. There is a deep sleep into which our world has been lulled, as if by all the powers of fascination, from which it should seem impossible to awaken us. Nor do we now expect of any utterance of the brevity of time that it will awaken you. For this purpose there must be the putting forth of a force that is supernatu-pear not; the loss and desolation which ral; and the most experimental demonstration that we know of this necessity, is the torpor of the human soul about death, and the temerity wherewith it stands its ground amidst pathetic and plain exhibitions of it. We are never more assured of man, that he is wholly sold over to the captivity of this world, than in witness-power short of this which can spiritualize ing the strong adherence of his heart to it under the most touching experience of its vanity than in perceiving how unemptied he is of all his earthiiness, whether he goes from business to burials, or back again from burials to business-than in observing how, after having buried his

attach to the life of sense, and the certainty of all it can command being speedily and totally swept away, these will not of themselves germinate within the inan the life of faith. This wondrous phenomenon of our nature convinces me of the doctrine of regeneration-that there is no

us-that ere our affections can be set on things that are above, an influence from above must descend upon us--and tha* before we become alive to the delights and glories of the upper sanctuary, there must come down from that sanctuary the light and the power of a special revelation.

A far more satisfactory argument than ments. These have been drawn by phithat which is founded upon the reasonings losophers from the moral state of the of philosophy, for this doctrine is to be mind, and more especially from the profound in the fact of the resurrection of gressive expansion which they affirm to Christ. To satisfy yourselves upon ra- belong to it. Still we fear that, in retional grounds as to the immortality of spect of this argument, there is no expethe soul, we would say, study the histo- rience to support it. There is a beauty rical evidence for the truth of this fact. we do confess in many of their represenThe physical argument of nature for the tations. But beauty is only for them that doctrine is grounded on certain obscure sit at ease. It is a cruel mockery for the reasonings about the properties and inde- man who is stretched on the bed of death, structibleness of the mind; the physical and has in his view the dark ocean of argument of Christianity again is grounded annihilation and despair. Yes, we have on the truth, the historically established heard them talk, and talk eloquently too, truth, that Christ has actually risen; on of the high and triumphant progression the credit of this specimen, and with all of the good man-of his virtues and of his the authority that is given by a miracle prospects—and of his death being a genso stupendous, rests the doctrine of the tle transition to a better world-of its begeneral resurrection. The moral argu- ing the goal where he reaps the honourament again of nature for the soul's im- ble reward that is due to his charactermortality is furnished by the sense which as being little more than a step that leads is in all spirits of God's justice, and of him to a blessed immortality. Ay, this his yet unsettled controversy with sin. is all very fine, but it is the fineness of In the moral argument of Christianity poetry. Where is the evidence that it is again the doctrine is revealed in connex- real? We see it not. Why so cruel an ion with the doctrine of the atonement; interruption to the progress ?-why cross it rises every day in strength and in as- this awful and mysterious death ?-why surance in the experience of the believer, is the good man not suffered to carry on in who feels in himself what nature never his triumphant progress?—and why comes feels a growing meetness of spirit and this dark and unintelligible event to be character, which forms at once the prepa- interposed between him and the full acration and the earnest of the inheritance complishment of his destiny? You may which awaits him. In order to get at the choose to call it a step, but there is no physical argument of Christianity, you virtue in a name to quell our suspicions have to study the historical evidence for it bears in every circumstance all the the truth of Christianity, considered as a religion of facts. In point of fact, however, this rational conviction will do very little in the way of bringing you under the power of things unseen and things eternal. I believe we are never effectually brought under this power but by the study of the moral argument; and this moral argument can only be drawn from the internal evidence of Christianity in opposition to the external evidence. The moral argument never can be appreciated adequately, but by those on whom the internal evidence of Christianity has produced its right impressions. But before we proceed to consider strictly this argument, let us attend to how it really stands in the theology of nature-for natural theology also lays claim to moral argu

marks of a termination. We see their fortitude giving way to the power of disease-we see them withering into feebleness, and, instead of what has been called the dignity of man, we see the weakness and the fretfulness of age-we see the body bending to the dust-we see it extended in all the agony of helplessness and pain, and yet we must call this a triumphant procession to eternity! We observe the emission of the last breath, but whether the spirit is extinct, or has fled to another region, nature tells us not. We call upon the philosopher to reveal the mystery of death-we ask why the good man has such an ordeal to undergo?

why, like the angels, does he not flourish in perpetual vigour ?—and how shall we explain that universal allotment, with

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

all its affecting accompaniments of re- the senses, we should conceive death to morse, and agony, and despair? Death, be utter annihilation. But distinct from my friends, gives the lie to all such spe- the death of the body, there is what may culations of all such moralists; but it only be called the death of the soul,-not a gives evidence and consistency to the death which consists in the extinction of statements of the gospel. The doctrines its consciousness, for the consciousness of of the New Testament will bear to be guilt will keep by it for ever-not a death confronted with the lessons of experience. which implies the cessation of feeling, for They attempt no relaxment, and no pal- that feeling will continue to the last,though liation-they announce the truth in all its the feeling of intensest suffering-not a severity; nor do they attempt to strew death by which all sense of God will be flowers around the sepulchre, or throw a expunged, for the sense of God's offended deceitful perfume into the rottenness of countenance will prey upon it and agonize the grave. Were a physician to take up it through all eternity. He who undermy case, and speak lightly of my ailment, goes this second-this spiritual death while I knew that a consuming disease does not thereby cease to have life, but was lurking and making progress within he ceases to have the favour of God, me, I should have no confidence in him which is better than life-he lives, it is or in his remedies. I should like him to true, but it is the life of an exile from see the malady in its full extent, that the hope and from happiness-he lives, but medicine applied may be such as to meet it is in a state of hopeless distance from and to combat with it. Now, Christ, the the fountain of living waters. God is at physician of souls, has taken up our dis- enmity towards him, and in his own hear ease in all its magnitude. There is no there is enmity towards God. This, a covering or concealment thrown over it. least, is the death of all enjoyment; it is Their account of death accords with our the death of every thing which belongs experience of it. What they tell us of to a right moral state of existence. In death is just what we feel it to be. Not this sense verily the soul is dead, though. that thing of triumph, to those void of alive, most perfectly alive, to the corro Christianity and beyond the circle of its sions of the worm that never dies;--in influence, that nature says, but a thing of this sense there has been a quenching of distress, and horror, and unnatural vio- its life, though all awake to the scorch lence. He who is weak enough to be ings of that fire which is never quenched carried away by the false and flimsy re- Temporal death in such a case is only the presentations of sentimentalism, must be portal to sorer calamities. All who sin led to believe that each man who dies is shall die-but this is not the conclusion only sinking gradually to repose, or wing- of the sentence-but all who die in sir ing his way to an ethereal world. But shall live in torment. Now it promise the Bible talks to us of the sting, and well for our Saviour's treatment of thi pangs, and terrors of death; and what we sore malady, that he hath, as it were feel of the shrinking of nature, proves placed himself at the source of the mis that it has experience upon its side. And chief, and then made head against it. H those passages are particularly deserving hath combated the radical force and viru our attention in which death is spoken of lence of the disease--he hath probed it to in its moral and spiritual bearings. Death, the bottom, and has grappled with sin ir as it appears to the eye of the senses, is its origin and in its principle--he ha but the extinction of the life that we now taken it away; for, by the sacrifice of live in the world; but that death which himself upon the accursed tree, he has is revealed to us in the gospel is the effect expiated its guilt, and by the operatior and consequence of sin-sin is the root of the Spirit in the heart of the believe of the mischief, and it is a mischief which he is rooting out its existence. Had h Scripture represents as stretching in mag- only put together the fragments of my nitude and duration far beyond the ken of body, and recalled the soul to its former the senses. Had we no other ken than tenement he should have done nothing

sin, both in its power and condemnation, would have claimed me as its own, and in appalling banishment from God it should have stepped in with an immortality, but an immortality of despair. But the author of the gospel has swept off the whole tribe of combatants, and has made a decisive charge at the very heart and principle of the disease.

so of a new character. The believer's sensibilities are now awakened to objects to which before he was morally dead. In other words, he now becomes alive to other objects, he expatiates on a new theatre of contemplation, and he rejoices in other scenes and in other prospects than before; he has lost his relish for what he formerly delighted in, and he now delights in what he formerly had no delight; if he is not ushered into life for the first time, he is at least ushered into a new state of things-he undergoes preferment from the animal to the spiritual life; and this life, with the immortality for which it is a preparation, is not only made clear by the gospel, but faith in the gospel may be said to have created it.

petent to awaken this. It loosens the spirit's bondage by transforming the aspect of the divinity from the face of an enemy to that of a friend-it changes the sinner's hatred into love; and this affection, from the central, the commanding place, which it occupies, subordinates the whole man, and so utterly changes his moral system, as to make a new creature To estimate aright the new moral ex- of him. The faith of the gospel is someistence into which Christ ushers everything more than the formation of a new sinner who receives him, we have only habit--it is the germ of a new heart, and to reflect for a moment on that state of distance and alienation from which He emancipates him. Formerly the man was either immersed in deepest oblivion and unconcern, in reference to that Being who made all and who upholds all, or, if his conscience be at all awake to a true sense of the holiness of the law, he must view the lawgiver with feelings of dread, and discouragement, and jealousy. There is a wide field of alienation between him and his Maker, and the fearful apprehensions of God's displeasure towards him engender in him back again additional dislike towards God. There is no community of affection or fondness between them; and pierced as he is by a conviction of guilt which he cannot escape from, he imagines a scowl on the aspect of the Divinity-an awful barrier of separation by which he is hopelessly and irrecoverably exiled from the sacred presence of the Eternal. His Spirit is not at ease he is glad to find relief, in the day-dreams of a busy world, from those solemn realities, the thought of which so often disquiets him; it seeks an opiate in the things of sense and of time, against the disturbance which it finds in the things of eternity; and so cradled is he in this profoundest lethargy, that while alive unto the world, he is dead unto God.

Now all this is the doing of the Saviour. He has fully exposed the disease, and he has brought to it a radical cure. I cannot trust the physician who dwells upon the surface of my disease, and throws over it the disguise of false colouring. I have more confidence to put in him, who, like Christ, the physician of my soul, has looked the malady fairly in the face-has taken it up in all its extent and in all its soreness has resolved it into its original principles-has probed it to the very bottom, and has set himself forward to combat with the radical elements of the disease. This is what our We cannot imagine a greater revolution Saviour has done with death-he hath in the heart than that which is produced bereaved it of its sting-he has taken a upon this distrust or apathy being done full survey of the corruption, and met it away. When, instead of viewing God in every one quarter where its malignity with fear, or shrinking from the thought appeared. It was sin which caused the of him, the sinner can calmly gaze on his disease, and he hath extricated it-he reconciled countenance, and be assured of hath put it away-he hath expiated the the complacency and good will that are sentence-and the believer, rejoicing in graven thereupon. Now, a simple faith the sense that all is clear with God, serves in the glad tidings of the gospel is com-him without fear, in righteousness and

Saviour. It is not a sense of his own righteousness that gives peace to his conscience, it is the righteousness of Christ; it is a hope of being found in him, and a sense of the forgiveness which he has received through his hand. In a word, it is Christ who resolves the mystery; it is his presence that pours tranquillity and joy among such scenes of distress; it is he who dispenses fortitude to the dying man; and while despair sits on every countenance, and relations are weeping around him, he enables him to leave them all with this exulting testimony, "O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory!"

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holiness, all the days of his ife. The sustains him, it is the merit of the exalted sentence is no longer against us; we behold the Saviour, and the sentence upon himself" he bore our iniquities in his own body on the tree"-" he who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." The sentence is no longer in force against us, as the Saviour has cancelled it. He has done more than this--he has not only cancelled the guilt of sin, he has destroyed its power-he reigns in the heart of the believer-he sweeps it of all its corruptions he takes it up as it is he makes it such as it should be-he brings the whole man under a thorough process of sanctification, so that while he lives, he adds one Christian grace unto another-when he dies, he rejoices in hope of the coming glory-when he stands at the bar of judgment, he is presented holy and unblamable in the sight of God and his Saviour. In the whole of his treatment, I see the skill, and intelligence, and superior conduct of a physician, who is up to the disease, and knows where the force of its malignity lieswho has a thorough insight into the properties of the mischief, and has reached forth an adequate remedy to counteract it --who to abolish death, has directed the strength of his attack against sin, which is its origin-who has averted the condemnation of sin, by an expiatory sacrifice-and who has destroyed its power and influence by the operations of that mighty Spirit, whereby he can break down the corruptions of the human heart, and subdue it unto himself.

While we hold out this triumphant prospect to those who entertain the overtures of reconciliation, we would urge all, even those who have not yet been visited with a spirit of concern and inquiry, to bestow one single thought on the great practical importance of the subject. The very sound of such words as life and death, judgment and immortality, should reduce you to sacredness—should set you to the work of serious reflection on this subject. We have the vantage ground of your own experience on which to stand while we endeavour thus to urge you. For your experience at least tells you thus muchthat the time that is past, when you look back to it, appears as if it were nothing; and you may believe from this, that the time which is to come, will come as quickly, and appear as little, and as unworthy to be suffered to tempt you away from eternity by its pleasures, which are but for a season, as the period of your life that is already gone. The very moment of your final farewell, if you are not pre

This is no matter of mere idle declamation; there is many a minister of Christ who could give you experience for it. He can take you to the house of mourn-viously cut short by death, which is a ing, to the chamber of the dying man. He can draw aside the curtain which covers the last hours of the good man's existence, and show you how a good man can die. He can ask you to bend your ear, and catch the last faltering accents of praise and piety. What meaneth that joy in the midst of suffering-that hope in the midst of approaching dissolution that elevation in the midst of cruelest agonies? It is not his own merit that VOL. I.-7

very possible thing, that moment will come, and old age will come, and the last sickness will come, and the dying bed will come, and the last look you shall ever cast upon your relations will come, and the agony of the parting breath will come, and the time that you will be stretched a lifeless corpse before the eyes of your weeping relations will come, and the coffin that is to enclose you will come, and that hour when the company assem E