Conceive such a one, so young, so suffering, so sanctified, finding in the very last hour no abatement of pain, but a fearful increase of it; yet, while they who stood by were most distressed, and most wishing to relieve it, the faith and love of the sufferer were never clouded, and the trust in Christ, and cheerful submission to his will, never for a moment shaken. Conceive this: and shall not heaven and earth pass sooner, than that one so sleeping in Jesus, should not also be raised up by the Spirit of Jesus, and presented by him before the throne of his Father, to live for ever in the fulness of his blessing?

If there were many such, faith would scarcely be faith, but would be almost changed into sight: so great, so visible, would be the assurance of God's power and goodness in those who believe; so evident would it be, that his Holy Spirit thus largely given, was, indeed, but the earnest of an eternal inheritance. But each of us may, in our own selves-nay, we must, either add to this evidence or lessen it; we must either so live, as that it shall seem nothing extraordinary if our thoughts and desires being earthly, they and we should perish when earth perishes; or we must so show forth the grace of God, and so live to him, as to make it manifest that he is our God, and we are his people, that our lot is cast with him, and that nothing in the world can be so monstrous or impossible as for one of his children to perish.

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NOTE ON SERMON XIII.

Ir has been my endeavour in this sermon, in imitation, as I think, of the manner adopted by the Scriptures themselves, to express fully the particular view of truth with which the text was concerned, without entering into such other views as might be necessary to guard against opposite errors. I have argued, that none but true Christians can have a fair expectation of eternal life; that to other men, it would be nothing unnatural if death were to be the close of all. I have spoken here of death as opposed to life, not as expressing a life of misery; and I have left the great consideration untouched, as not concerning my immediate object, that as reason tells us that none but true Christians can hope to live for ever, so we have cause to believe, from God's word, that all but true Christians will be miserable for ever. But I do not think that our natural reason would have ever enabled us to discover what Christ has revealed, that good left undone will be positively punished for all eternity, as well as evil done. The careless, and what we call harmless livers, cut off by reason from the hope of eternal happiness, are condemned by revelation to an eternity of positive misery. It is undoubtedly one of the peculiarities of revelation, that it threatens with the heaviest punishment not only committed evil, but omitted good. A better proof of this cannot be given, than by contrasting our Lord's warnings against riches, with the sentiments of one of the characters in Plato's Commonwealth, Cephalus the father of Lysias. Christ's words are known to every one, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven." Cephalus is represented a as feeling comfort in his old age from the possession of wealth, because he was not tempted to the commission of those acts of fraud or violence which might be visited with punishment after death. Cephalus was glad to be rich, be

* Plato, de Republicâ, I. p. 331.

cause his wealth saved him from sins of commission: our Lord denounces riches as dangerous, because they tempt to sins of omission. But this high view of the evil and danger of negative sin is, I think, peculiar to revelation; and though most reasonable, when judging of things from Christian premises, would not suggest itself to our natural reason, which has but very inadequate ideas of God's penal government.

SERMON XIV.

CONVERSION.

LUKE, xxii. 31, 32.

And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not; and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.

We have occasion to observe in many places of the New Testament, that our Lord Jesus Christ is made to stand in the place of all Christians, so that what happened to him is a sort of image, as well as a pledge and assurance of what will happen to his true servants. He suffered and died; and we can none of us expect to escape what our Master did not escape: he rose again, so surely implying by this, that they who are his should rise likewise, that St. Paul does not hesitate to argue, that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then is not Christ risen: we are in a manner so wrapped up with him, that if we are not to rise, he cannot