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I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.

What powers of thought are equal to a happy termination of this subject of meditation! What pencil is capable of depicting the joy of the sons of God in that eventful day, in which they shall behold again, in which they shall embrace, a father, a friend, a child, from whom death had once separated them! Let imagination soar to the highest objects which the mind is capable of contemplating. Let nothing divide the love which we entirely owe to our adorable Redeemer, or damp the delight which we derive from the exalted hope of seeing him return to us in the clouds of heaven, with his angels that excel in strength.

Who is capable of representing the transport which the return of this Jesus shall kindle in the bosom of the faithful! "There he is, that Jesus whom we loved, and to whom we were faithful, even unto death. Come, Redeemer of our souls, come and wipe away the tears which thy departure drew from our eyes: come, and compensate to us the heaviness of so long a separation from thee: come and receive the effusions of our gratitude and joy suffer us, suffer us to yield to the transports of that love which absorbs every faculty, which constrains us, which exalts us to seraphic ardor."

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This is the last source of consolation which Jesus Christ disclosed to his disciples; this is, that consolation which flows out in copious streams toward you, Christian confounded, overwhelmed with wave upon wave, in all thy fears, thy sorrows, thy sufferings. O religion of the blessed Jesus, how powerful are thy attractions! What charms dost thou possess for a wretched creature, who feels the whole earth a cheerless void! Let this religion, my beloved brethren, be the object of our most ardent

affection let us go on unto perfection: let us transmit it to our children, as the goodliest portion, as the fairest inheritance. Let us live with Jesus. Christ. Let us die with Jesus Christ. May God grant us this supreme felicity. To him be honor and glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

SERMON III.

CHRIST'S SACERDOTAL PRAYER.

JOHN Xvii.

These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy son, that thy son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine orun self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me ; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things, whatsoever thou hast given me, are of thee: For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me: and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me ; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world bath hated

them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctified myself, that they also might be santified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one: and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me. Pather, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them, and I in them.

HE words of dying persons usually sink deep

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into the listening ear, and touch the inmost soul. Ah, why are not the impressions, which they produce, as lasting as they are lively! The words of a dying pastor more especially, seem calculated to produce an extraordinary effect. At these last solemn moments of life, every motive of self-interest or of vain-glory, by which he might have been actuated through the course of his ministry, vanishes away. Then it is that a faithful minister derives from the bosom of that religion which he has taught to others, the means of fortifying himself against the idea of a futurity all gloom, if a man has mere human reason for his only guide, but all light and joy to him who follows the spirit of revelation. Then it is that he feels a more particular concern and tenderness for

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