a rod to protect him from its gloomy and over hanging horrors; a staff to support and comfort him. Then it is that he becomes serious and thoughtful. This is the event that tries the ground of his heart, and discovers to him the nature and reality of his hopes and fears.

As he descends into this valley, all things around him begin to wear a graver aspect, a more sober cast. The shadows grow long, and his own among the rest; the glorious lamp of day is fading from his view; and being no longer able, by reason of the dimness that surrounds them, to see his beloved objects in their usual lustre; he descends involuntarily into the retirement of his own mind, more gloomy than the objects he has just quitted. And as the present scene fades from his sight, the next world rises with all its realities. Then it is, I say, that thoughtless man first becomes thoughtful; the careless, giddy, inconsistent, wavering mortal, becomes for the first time serious. He sees what he never saw before, the relative importance of the present and the future; of the things of the world, and those of eternity. To such a one, death must needs be an object of alarm. He has made no preparation for the awful journey. The darkness of everlasting night is setting in; clouds of doubt and, dismay fast crowd upon his steps;

and unless the light of the sun of righteousness, in a way no less merciful than supernatural, shine upon him; his feet stumble upon the dark mountains; he is bewildered and lost.

Not so the Christian. He treads, it is true, the same dark valley of the shadow of death, (for in Adam all die, and his gracious Lord has trodden the same ground, and led the way before him,) he has the same natural apprehensions; the fears and feelings of a man; but with an eye of faith he pierces the clouds of doubt and dismay, and contemplates that glorious dawn, when the sun of righteousness shall again rise upon him to his complete salvation. Hence, the bitterness of death is past almost before he has tasted it; he is carried through the valley, as it were, with a bound, while he is thus looking forward to and hasting to the coming of the day of God. He sings with David, "yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

In pursuing this subject, let us enquire a little further into the nature and ground of the Christian's hope, especially as regards this most momentous article-death. It is necessary to ascertain this point, inasmuch as human nature is too apt to proceed without sufficient ground.

There is no man, however profligate and vicious his life, who does not wish to die the death of the righteous, though he cannot prevail upon himself to give up his besetting sin, and to live their life. And there are many who proceed upon false grounds, and say, when they come to die, peace, peace,' when there is no peace, no rational, no scriptural ground for hope, that they have no evil to fear beyond the grave, or that God will be their portion for ever. "To them that sow beside the still waters shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance, for ever."

Death, then, is an event common alike to all, to every child of Adam. From this dissolution of nature, not even the Christian is exempt. He pretends no exemption: he claims none. Through this valley all must pass. We have seen, however, that all do not pass through it alike; with some remainder of natural antipathy, all, we confess, more or less, encounter the journey, but still not with the same. Death is not the same thing to the true Christian, as it is to the careless worldling. The question then is, what is it which thus alters its character, converting that event which terminates the hopes of the sinner, into the gate of life to the Christian? And it is this. The sting of death is sin; and

as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. If there be any mystery in the thing, these two texts of scripture, clear it all up; the riddle is dissolved; the knot is untied. As sin closes the gate of everlasting life, so Christ re-opens it. As the sin and disobedience of our hapless progenitor forfeited immortality to his posterity, and entailed on all his offspring the penalty of death, the bitter necessity of our nature, so also did a ray of the sun of righteousness gleam on the closing gates of Paradise; a glorious promise softened and allayed the curse that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. That Christ should destroy the works of the devil; that he should extract the sting of death, by satisfying the penalty due to sin; that he should put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. This was the glorious promise made to our fathers: a promise at once coeval with man's transgression, and commensurate with his sin. Commensurate, did I say? Yea, more than commensurate. For so argues the Apostle to the Romans. "But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it is by one that sinned, so is the gift: for

the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification." Here was laid the charter of our liberties. "Being made free from sin, and become servants to God, we have our fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Here is a death-blow aimed at death himself. And on this promise rests the foundation of the Christian's hope. This was the promise made to the fathers. In the faith of this promise, died all that glorious band of patriarchs and holy men to whom I have before alluded, "not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed, that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." In the faith of this promise, David also could say, "thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, (or the grave) neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption;" and those words of the text, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." For it cannot be doubted, but that it was in the faith of David's son, even of Christ the promised seed, that David himself passed through this valley, and