* SERMON V.

THE LOVE OF THE PERISHABLE MADE PERFECT IN THE LOVE OF THE IMMORTAL.

THE love of the perishable is the proof, as it is the penalty, of the Fall. God made not life, for death; nor, yet, to yearn upon the dying. In all that blessed Garden, there was no token of decay: no autumn leaf, upon the trees; no drought, or frost, upon the streams; no blood, upon the earth. The flowers forever bloomed ; the fruits were always ripe; the fountains, ever full. There was but God, that they could love: and He was life. And, when they looked upon each other, in their loveliness and love, it was the immortal gazing on the immortal. What pure, what perfect, what perennial bliss! Love, without a fear. Love, without a limit. No separation. No sorrow. No satiety. For yesterday, no regret. row, no apprehension. Conscious health. Conscious strength. Conscious life. Conscious innocence. Conscious happiness. Infinite themes for thought; and minds, commensurate with their infinitude. Inexhaus

Love, without a doubt.

For to-mor

* At the funeral of the Rev. Prof. Ogilby, March, A. D. 1851; published by request of the Clergy, Wardens, and Vestrymen of Trinity Church, New York; where it was delivered.

tible sources of enjoyment; and hearts, incapable of exhaustion. Perfect unity. Perfect confidence. Perfect security. Hope, bursting into joy. Peace, deepening into pleasure. Love, incapable of shame. Life, incapa

ble of death.

Sin came; and all this beautiful description reads backward, like a witch's prayer. For Paradise, a bleak and barren world. For the communion and companionship of God, sorrow, and solitude, and exile. For life immortal, universal, everlasting death. When shame came, first, with sin, there was no shelter but the leaves, which blushing haste snatched from the trellised vine, or spreading fig, which canopied their love. But, when the curse had come, the gentle lamb, the sportive kid, the fleet gazelle, lay weltering in their blood, to clothe their murderers with their skins. Who can imagine the wild shriek, which, from the realms of nature, all, went up, when, on the world which sin had ruined, the curse came down, in death. With what astonishment, the moaning dam gazed on her yeanling, as it lay, panting and struggling, at her side; and how the lorn and lovely nightingale poured her first notes of sorrow, from her empty nest. Nature all, fell into "the sere and yellow leaf." The genial air, now, scorched; now chilled; now, froze. The river, that went out of Eden, rushed, with maddening force, along its torn and trembling banks; or left them, desolate and dry. Blood was upon the earth. Blackness, upon the sky. By the first altar, stood the first child of the first parents; the murderer of his only brother. "By one man, sin

entered into the world; and death, by sin: and, so, death passed upon all men; for that all have sinned."

The death, which was the cause of sin, was not the instantaneous destruction of the ruined race. As you will read it, in the margin of your Bible, it was a "dying, thou shalt die :" a living death; a dying life. The throes of birth, only less fearful than the pangs of dissolution. The weakness of infancy, reproduced, in the weakness of old age. One half our years employed in toiling up the hill; the other half, in tottering down. The pulses of our life beat from the bell, which tolls our death. The sands forever sinking in the glass. The first gray hair, but half concealed, among the garlands of the bridal. And, every step we take, wherever else it tend, a step toward the tomb. Is it not true, even beyond the letter, "dying, thou shalt die?"

And this is not the worst. Our dying nature clings to dying natures. Love reproduces life, only to find it death. The infant does but draw the yearning mother's heart all out of her, to drag it to the grave. In hopeful children, that untimely fall, parental hearts die; and are buried, with their dust. A life-long love, that has knit in the very heart-strings with each other, is rent and sundered, by the lingering touch of dull decay; or, in a moment, crushed; when a horse falls, or when a ship goes down. We watch the hectic, as it spreads upon the cheek of our beloved; and must turn the tears in, though they scald the heart. We count the life-drops, as they fall from the dear bosom, where our love is garnered; with vain desires that we could

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reinforce them with our own. We sit in silence and in solitude, unsolaced and unsustained. The Lord God prepares a gracious vine, to come up over us, and shadow our heads, and console us in our grief; and we are exceeding glad of the vine. But, the next morning, a worm has touched it, and it withers. And, as the hot wind scorches, and the sun beats down upon us, we faint, and wish to die; and say, in our impa tience, "It is better for us to die than to live." Is not the Prophet's gourd a true and bitter allegory of mortal love and mortal life? And is not the love of the per ishable the proof, as it is the penalty, of the Fall? And is this all there is? Is the sole remnant of the trees of that fair garden the funereal willow? Are we still left, to love the perishable; and to perish in our loving? Is death to be the end of life? No, my beloved! As, at the first, the tree that stood in the midst of that untempted Garden, was the Tree of Life; so, now, to all the nations that have perished by the Fall, the Tree of everlasting life, the blessed Cross of Jesus Christ, presents, to their obedient faith, its precious and immortal fruits. The promise of the woman's seed has been fulfilled, in Him. In Him, the ruined race has been restored. He "bore our sins, in His own body, on the Tree." And, now, for all who will, that bleeding Tree bears pardon and salvation. The bathing of His blood blots out our sins, and transforms death to life. "Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth." "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth

in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Bring your beloved, then, to Him. Lay them beneath His Cross. Kneel with them, there, in penitential faith. And, in the love for Him, which His redemption challenges, from every heart, renew and consecrate your human love. He will bless it. He will beautify it, beyond the beauty of poetic dream. He will sustain it in absence. He will console it in sorrow. He will succour it in sickness. He will immor talize it in death. The perishable shall no longer perish, in the love of the perishable; but the immortal live forever, in a new and glorious life, in the love of the Immortal.

Dearly beloved, to meet your doubting faith, and cheer your mourning love, and help you upward, to Himself, He bends to you the blessed branches of the Tree of Life; and bids you eat of it, and live. He bows Himself, the true and living Vine, that you may press, from the full, bursting clusters, the streams of comfort and salvation, and have life in Him. "How excellent is Thy mercy, O God. And the children of men shall put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings. They shall be satisfied with the plenteousnesss of Thy house; and Thou shalt give them drink of Thy pleasures, as out of the river. For, with Thee, is the well of life; and in Thy light, we shall see light."

Such thoughts as these welled up, and filled my heart, when first the tidings came, that Ogilby was dead. And, bidden here to-day, to do for him what, in the course of nature, I had looked that he should do