son's side, to paint the prospect of future good, and display the terror of future suffering, hath been pleased to ordain that the business shall be so conducted, and the method of the business so clearly foretold, as to strike the profane with awe, and animate the humble and the timid. He hath warned us (and let them who dare to extenuate the warning ponder the dreadful curse with which the book of prophecy is sealed "If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life,")

God hath warned us that the inquiry into every man's conduct will be public Christ himself the Judge the whole race of man and the whole angelic host spectators of the awful scene. Before that assembly, every man's good deeds will be declared, and his most secret sins disclosed. As no elevation of rank will then give a title to respect, no obscurity of condition shall exclude the just from public honour, or screen the guilty from public shame. Opulence will find itself no longer powerful,- poverty will be no longer weak; birth will no longer be distinguished, -meanness will no longer

pass unnoticed. The rich and poor will indeed strangely meet together; when all the inequalities of the present life shall disappear, and the conqueror and his captive, the monarch and his subject, the lord and his vassal, the statesman and the peasant, the philosopher and the unlettered hind, shall find their distinctions to have been mere illusions. The characters and actions of the greatest and the meanest have in truth been equally important, and equally public; while the eye of the omniscient God hath been equally upon them all, while all are at last equally brought to answer to their common Judge, and the angels stand around spectators, equally interested in the dooms of all. The sentence of every man will be pronounced by him who cannot be merciful to those who shall have willingly sold themselves to that abject bondage from which he died to purchase their redemption, —who, nevertheless, having felt the power of temptation, knows to pity them that have been tempted; by him on whose mercy contrite frailty may rely-whose anger hardened impenitence must dread. To heighten the solemnity and terror of the

business, the Judge will visibly descend from heaven, the shout of the archangels and the trumpet of the Lord will thunder through the deep, the dead will awake,the glorified saints will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, while the wicked will in vain call upon the mountains and the rocks to cover them. Of the day and hour when these things shall be, knoweth no man; but the day and hour for these things are fixed in the eternal Father's counsels. Our Lord will come,- he will come unlooked for, and may come sooner than we think.

God grant, that the diligence we have used in these meditations may so fix the thought and expectation of that glorious advent in our hearts, that by constant watchfulness on our own part, and by the powerful succour of God's Holy Spirit, we may be found of our Lord, when he cometh, without spot, and blameless !

SERMON IV.

MATTHEW, xvi. 28.

Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.

THESE remarkable words stand in the conclusion of a certain discourse, with the subject of which, as they have been generally understood, they seem to be but little connected. It must therefore be my business to establish what I take to be their true meaning, before I attempt to enlarge upon the momentous doctrine which I conceive to be contained in them.

The marks of horror and aversion with which our Lord's disciples received the first intimations of his sufferings, gave occasion to a seasonable lecture upon the necessity of

self-denial, as the means appointed by Providence for the attainment of future happiness and glory. "If any one," says our Lord, "would come after me," — if any one pretends to be my disciple, "let him take up his cross. and follow me." To enforce this precept, as prescribing a conduct which, afflictive as it may seem for the present, is yet no other than it is every - man's truest interest to pursue, he reminds his hearers of the infinite disproportion between time and eternity; he assures them of the certainty of a day of retribution; and to that assurance he subjoins the declaration of the text, as a weighty truth, in which they were deeply interested,- for so much the earnestness with which it seems to have been delivered speaks. "Verily, I - these are words bespeak say unto you," ing a most serious attention, Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

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Here, then, is an assertion concerning some persons who were present at this discourse of our Lord's, that they "should