our? No: unbelief may startle-impenitence may be dismayed, but the child of God can survey the grave with a countenance unchanged. He can look upon the closing eye-the shivering pulse-the sinking head-the sepulchral hearse-the heavy clod. He can view them with composure; for Christianity tramples all these chilly images under her feet, and invigorates the misgivings of nature with the triumphant assurance of the Gospel, "The righteous hath hope in his death."

But what is meant by the declaration, that the righteous hath hope in his death? Beyond the grave, my hearers, all is a dark unknown. It is the land of silence. No traveller returns to tell us what he has seen, what he has heard, or upon what state of being he has been ushered. This mysterious uncertainty throws over all of us a feeling of suspense and fear; but when an impenitent sinner walks down to the tomb, you can imagine the forebodings which must bear him company. He knows that he is guilty. He feels himself unpardoned. He sees the tribunal of a holy God before him, and no Saviour, no Saviour to stand by him in the moment of launching upon his final destiny. O, what must be his emotions? Now, it is an exemption from these terrors which is guaranteed by our text, to the children of God. The promise is, that every real Christian shall enjoy the presence of Christ in his dying hour; that he shall find the fear of the grave retiring before him the nearer he approaches its brink, and be enabled to triumph over all its horrors. And, my hearers, we might presume beforehand that this would be the case. Is it probable, that Christ should cheer his disciples through life, with his promises, and receive them beyond it to his glory, and yet, leave the dreary interval-the hour of exchanging worlds, unvisited and unblessed with his consolations? Is it likely that, at the very moment when most they needed his presence-while the most agonizing conflict, the struggle with the last enemy, was coming on-that then they should be left deserted and disconsolate, when even the self-possession of nature is prostrated, and the prop of constitutional firmness is torn away from under them? No; - that Saviour who pitieth the infirmities of his children in the trials of time, cannot, and will not, forsake them when crossing the threshold of eternity. But we have better evidence than presumptive. The word of God lends to us its plain and unequivocal confirmation. What means David when he exclaims, "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"? What means the prophet, "I will ransom them from the power of the grave, for I am God and not man"? What means the apostle, "The sting of death is sin-but thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ"? Search the Bible through, my hearers, and you arrive at the same result; you find a general promise issued without reserve to the followers of Christ, and comporting entirely with the sentiment of our

text.

But, if you still demur, go further, and consult the language of fact. I have never known, and after much inquiry, I have never learnt, a single instance of a person dying without some token of triumph, if he had strength to give it, who had lived an experimental disciple of Christ. The reverse of the position I do not assert. I do not say that every one who expires with composure, must, of course, be a Christian; but I do say, that, as far as I am informed, no sincere and broken-hearted child of God has ever bidden farewell to the world in tears, unless they were tears of joy and consolation. Often, very often, have the hardihood of impenitence and the confidence of formality been dismayed at the door of the sepulchre; but never yet has been heard there the voice of consternation or terror from Christian lips. And, my hearers, this is a doctrine of no trifling importance. When we come to stand on the last half hour of life, we shall find it anything but a trifle. Talk as we may, we shall need some mighty sustaining principle to hold us up in the day when God taketh away the soul; and to banish from us the timidities and the apprehensions of nature. In vain will reason whisper her sophistry in our ears: in vain will philosophy rear around us the shelter of her delusions. Nothing can calm a sinner on the breaking brink of eternity, but an All-sufficient Saviour to take him by the hand-to wipe the tear from his cheek, and the sweat from his forehead, and to annihilate the view of the grave by the loftier view of the glory and the blessedness beyond it. And who, my hearers, are meant by the righteous ? The appellation cannot denote those who have never sinned, for "we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God."

With the history of human guilt you are familiar. You know, without leaving the secrecy of your own bosoms, that there is none who inwardly doeth good-no, not one. Hope, then, if hope there be, must fix upon the offer of pardon. The criminal lies at the mercy of his judge, and the single inquiry comes up, whether mercy can and will be exercised? Here, too, you know the mighty discovery which Inspiration lays open. You have heard of a provided Saviour, and what I say is, that in and through him alone, can a sinner aspire to righteousness in the eye of Heaven. But let me ask if you wish to sustain this relation towards the Godhead? Then, on the threshold, I call upon you to repent. It is the first step to salvation. Without it you may lie down at once in helplessness and despair. Except ye repent, ye shall perish. Look back on your long and dreary course of alienation from God; on your unbending hardi

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hood in making light of His Christ; on the ten thousand instances in which you have trifled with the obligations of mercies, the warning of judgments, the urgency of sermons, the solemnity of sacraments, the admonition of sickness and death. Look back upon these things and mourn. Let the sobbings of contrition break out from your hard and unfeeling hearts. Let your closets find you on your knees, and reverberate with the agonizing voice of your supplications, "God be merciful to us sinners." But this is not all. Repentance will not make you righteous, for the righteousness of God is by faith. You must believe in Christ Jesus. Do not mistake my meaning. I have no reference to the mere assent of an understanding besieged by evidence which it cannot resist. If that were the principle of salvation, it would depopulate the caverns of woe; for not one is there -not one ever will be, who does not in such a sense believe. You are required to confide in the Redeemer-to put your trust in him. Your moralities, your good deeds, and even your penitential tears, must be alike disclaimed and discarded at the foot of the Cross. You must depend upon Christ, not because he is a Saviour, but because you have made him your Saviour in the way of his appointments. Here you are secure. As an evidence that you are righteous, I ask no more than this; but, as an evidence that this is done, I go on to demand, by the authority of the Bible, that you live religious from day to day, in all holy conversation and godliness. What doth it profit if a man say he hath faith, and have not works? When you have surrendered the indulgencies of the world-when you get to disrelish the least vestige of sin-when you find yourselves refreshed on the road to eternity by frequent prayer-when you heartily love the spirituality of God's people--when, in short, you feel that even Heaven without your God would be no Heaven to you, then, and not till then, can you hope that you have repented and believed to the saving of the soul.

These things, therefore, put together, make up the specific character which Inspiration pronounces righteous. Depend upon it, my hearers, nothing else will pass the test of the judgment-seat-nothing else will confer immortality on a sinner. It is no matter how many visible accomplishments we put on. They may furnish us a passport to the confidence and esteem of our fellow-men, but never will they decoy the scrutiny of the heart-searching God. Over all our deportment, however lofty, and all our virtues, however resplendent, and all our feelings, however glowing, there must preside the one great principle of real religiousness, or the whole is only a magnificent superstructure reared upon sand. The thunders of the final day will rock it to atoms.

In dismissing our subject, my Christian friends, we are again reminded, as in beginning it, of one who longed to see this day, but saw it not. She has gone down, with the hope of the righteous, to the dead. Think not that I aim at the language of eulogy. No: much and tenderly as she was loved, an assembly of sinners is not the place for pane. gyric; and could she speak to us from on high, she would repress the voice of praise and the tear of regret, and tell us only to gird up our loins and keep our lamps trimmed and burning. Methinks she would say, if she could revisit this house of prayer and resume her seat at the table which once she prized so highly, she would look around upon the little band of her surviving companions, and say, with affectionate_solemnity, "Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel!" Listen, then, beloved brethren, to the admonitions of the grave. Be up and doing, for the time is short. You are treading in the footsteps of your departed friend. When another communion shall have come round, some of you who now hear me may be missing forever. But what have you to