ment alone, therefore, that we are to derive the rules of life, and the precepts of conduct. He who is in Christ Jesus, as the Apostle says, that is, he who has been admitted into the Christian church, is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold! all things are become new.

In preaching from a text like this, wherein the author of it quarrels with that being which God had given him, I thought it necessary to observe in what manner a Christian ought to behave under the like circumstances.

But in favour of the person who appointed this text, let us remember how very difficult it is not to wish for death, when life is destitute of every comfort; when it is embittered with sorrow and sickness, with penury and pain,

I have before observed, that to arrive at that great pitch of Christian perfection, which implies an uncomplaining resignation, requires both great parts, and uncommon graces. It cannot, therefore, be the lot of the multitude.

We all know our readiness to complain; and where is the great soul that suffers in silence? We must endeavour to imitate those sublime perfections of which our divine Master has given us an example; but let us look with candour and compassion on those suffering brethren who travel night and day through

the paths of sorrow; who have their bed in darkness, and their pillow on the thorn.

We are all frail and changeable creatures: a perfect character is not in human nature; and he who dares to say that he is faultless, is a hypocrite, who wants to impose either on his own heart, or on the world, or, possibly, on both.

With respect to the character of the deceased, she appeared to be a pious and conscientious Christian, who, while she was attentive to the duties of her station, was by no means remiss in those of her religion. It must be remembered to her credit, that she was the industrious mother of a family, diligent to provide her household their portion of meat in due Thus she united in her own person the characters both of Martha and of Mary, choosing the good part of the one, and the useful part of the other.

season.

She, therefore, who had led such a life, might, with the more propriety, be desirous of that dissolution, by means of which alone she could receive the fulness of those rewards that are laid up for the just.

She had, morever, another motive for this seemingly unnatural desire of death: for she had, not long before her last sickness, buried her husband, an honest and industrious man,

who had divided with her the cares and the labours of life. When she was deprived of the partner of her affections, when she had taken her last leave of him who contributed to her happiness and support, no wonder if she grew weary of a life, that was at the best but solitary and uncomfortable.

Suffer these apologies to plead for the deceased; over whose foibles, whatever they were, charity should throw a veil, while it withholds not that praise which her virtues merited, though those virtues were obscured by an humble station.

For us who are assembled on this occasion, we cannot but derive instruction from every circumstance that attends it. And it is principally on our account indeed that such discourses as these are exercised. To the dead they are nothing. The last offices that are paid to them can only be useful as they are lectures to the living: so far, however, they are certainly of use: for notwithstanding the various mementos of mortality that we meet with, notwithstanding that death has established his empire over all the works of nature, through some infatuation or other we are still apt to forget that we were born to die: we go on from one design to another, we add hope to hope, and lay out plans for the em

ployment or the subsistence of many years, till life itself is at an end, and we are alarmed by the appearance of the phantom of death, at an hour which we had concluded to be mid-day.

Let us therefore have our loins always girded up, and our lamps burning, that we may be in readiness to take our journey to that far, far-distant country, from which no spirit returns.

Let us be diligent to procure the favour of that eternal Being, whose influence extends over all worlds.

By the light of his countenance we shall walk without trembling through those gloomy regions where all things are forgotten; and, when death itself shall be made subject unto him, then shall we rise to that immortal inheritance, which is promised to our faith, our piety, and our patience.