was rich in all the glory of the world of light, for your sakes humbled Himself to a condition of mortality, and suffered death upon the cross? Is there nothing in this to awaken a feeling of affection? nothing to excite attention to His entreaty? Is that name, which is above every name, and which expressly, on account of His humiliation, is celebrated and adored by all the hosts of heaven, to be held in so little estimation by the sinners for whom He died? If that voice, which once prayed for His murderers, and which will hereafter summon you to His tribunal, were itself to address you, would you then turn away with indifference? We pray you in Christ's stead: we beseech you to be reconciled to God.

Is this appeal insufficient? Then let it be made for your own sakes, for the salvation of your souls. What profit can you derive from this continued hostility? Is there the slightest hope of reconciliation hereafter, if you leave this world at enmity with God? Has He not denounced, in terms the most awful and appalling, against every impenitent sinner, the sentence of eternal death? Do you believe the declaration? Your conscience will not suffer you to doubt of it. And why then will you die? why

not be reconciled to Him who so graciously invites you? As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.* We beseech you, if you have no other care, to care at least for yourselves. Listen to the offers of mercy, which the gospel so freely presents, and which the ministers of the gospel, in the name of God, and in the place of your Redeemer, most earnestly entreat you to accept.

The time will soon come when these entreaties will by you be heard no more: the day will presently arrive when both ministers and people will be summoned to the great tribunal: let the account, which we must then give, be accompanied with joy, and not with grief! let the sentence, which you will then hear, be that of the faithful servant! let the invitation now urged, that you would be reconciled to God, be succeeded by that welcome benediction which shall acknowledge you as the blessed children of your heavenly Father, and bid you enter into the joy of your Lord.

* Ezek. xxxiii. 11.

SERMON XVI.

THE RESURRECTION OF THE JUST.

PREACHED ON EASTER DAY.

1 THESS. iv. 13—18.

"But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words."

To a mind which is disposed to serious meditation, how many subjects of deep interest are suggested by the condition and destiny of man! If we look back for a few years, not one of the many millions, who at this day inhabit the earth, had been called into being: the world

was to us as if it existed not; and after the lapse of a very few years, another race will have succeeded, and we shall have passed intò that invisible region to which so many generations had been carried before us. While we look upon the scene around us, it is every day changing before our eyes: many of those with whom we have formerly taken counsel together, and some perhaps who were most dear to our affections, have now gone to the house appointed for all living. And what then has become of them? Has the principle of life been destroyed with the corruptible body? Has the body itself perished in the grave? and is nothing left for us but to contemplate with sad, or even hopeless forebodings, the dark night of futurity? The gospel invites us to better contemplations: it rolls back that thick mist which hangs over the tomb, and tells of life and immortality in the regions beyond it. It bids us extend our views to the day, which is emphatically called the day of the Lord: * it points out to us the Son of God descending in the clouds of heaven, and exhibits to us the glorious spectacle of them which sleep in Jesus, as they are summoned from their graves and

* 2 Pet. iii 10.

assembled before Him. It gives the assurance that of those who have departed in the faith of Christ, and those who, possessing the same faith, are alive at the period of this mighty consummation, not one shall be wanting: they shall all meet their Lord in the air, and shall from that moment be with Him for ever.

Such is, in few words, the substance of the information contained in this passage: but let us endeavour to examine the subject more in detail; let us take a nearer view of the scene which it presents to us, and endeavour to derive from it that practical instruction which the apostle meant it to convey.

I. The first point then which I would notice, is the certainty of the resurrection of the just.

This is distinctly affirmed in the text: and were we to cite all the other passages of Scripture which attest the same truth, they could not add to the certainty of an event so clearly revealed in the words before us. But we have not in this case a mere affirmation: the apostle evidently intends that we shall consider the grounds of it, and he refers us with this view to the resurrection of Christ; If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. We are taught