of friendship and dependance upon each other for enjoyment than perhaps we do in after life, each making the bosom of our playmate a refuge where we discharge our troubles, and communicate our joys. The same reciprocity of feelings attends us as we together in company with hearts light as air, and hopes bright as the morning, ascend the hill, and mount upon the platform of life, when we expect the fruition of all our anticipations, and enjoyment of every delight. Here hope still sheds her lustre, while with all the ardor of inexperience, we enter into the busy scenes of life, thinking that every shadow is substance, and all we touch is gold. We now form much the same schemes, are affected with much the same emotions, are subject to similar prosperity and adversity, and seek from each other the same comfort and repose. And after having played our busy part, we are handed over to a new state of things, and begin to descend the hill, with either anxious forebodings for the future, and remorse for the past, or wonder that we could have ever been so affected with such fluctuating things, of which misery is often an ingredient, and vanity always has its share. As we descend into the vale with trembling knees and tottering steps, each carrying his own burden of affliction, we gradually approach the dark valley of the shadow of death. The shades of night now thicken around us,-an awful stillness reigns,-our sun is going down,

scarce a glimmer of light appears upon the horizon, -till, like the sun, and with it, we sink into the grave! Let such considerations deeply affect us: we share the same afflictions, and same grave; let us therefore share the same comfort and consolations, "being of one accord, of one mind."

SERMON VI.

COLOSSIANS III. 1—3.

If ye then be risen with Christ seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.

THE death and resurrection of Christ was a subject of such momentous importance-was a truth so full of comfort and consolation-was a theme so dear to the apostles, and a fact conveying such useful instruction, that we find them perpetually directing our attention to the garden of Gethsemane and the tomb of Christ-to the grave, which, while it receives as prisoners the kings and princes of the earth, could not contain within its cold and icy walls him who had triumphed over death and hell.

Death was hereby taught that his iron sceptre would soon be wrested from his grasp, and his dominion for ever annihilated. The grave herein learnt that the tie of brotherly league and friend

ship between himself and death, would soon bẹ broken; and that their mutual and confederate power, which they had conjointly exercised with hitherto undisputed authority, would soon be destroyed, and for themselves, no place under heaven would be found. Death was made to know, that by Christ blunting the point of his deadly weapon, and by extracting the venom from his deadly fang, in vain would he point his threatened dart, and Cerberus-like, shew his threatening teeth. The grave would soon know, that by receiving Christ, he received his greatest enemy, who would unbar his prison and set the prisoners free-that by the Messiah being buried, multitudes would burst forth from their graves-that by the sowing of this single grain, a whole harvest of immortality would shoot out from the earth, and a host of armed men arise from the ground as in the days of Cadmus, from the death of the mighty dragon, to dispute his rule and government.

Such, then, being the mighty effects of Christ's death and resurrection, no wonder that perpetual allusions are made to these great events, and that the most beautiful illustrations should be drawn, and the most cogent arguments of doctrines and urgent enforcements of practice, be elicited from these important occurrences.

By Christ dying for all the apostle draws the conclusion, that all must be spiritually dead. He

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teaches us that the death of Christ is significant of our moral death, that as the body of Christ, when in the grave, was incapable of life and motion, and insensible of feeling; so in like manner we, in our natural and unrenewed state, are dead in trespasses and sins.

He further brings forward the death of Christ as an illustration of our being dead to sin when we are renewed and sanctified. So that while in Ephesians ii. 1. he reminds the Ephesian church of their having been once dead in sin, in allusion to the death of Christ; the same apostle in Romans vi. exhorts the church of Rome, in consideration of their being dead with Christ, "to reckon themselves dead to sin."

The apostle likewise brings forward the resurrection of Christ as illustrative of our being delivered from the dominion of sin, and generally in opposi tion to our having been once dead in sin, and sometimes in reference to our being dead to sin. Thus in the preceding chapter, from whence my text is taken, ver. xii. and xiii. he says, "buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. And you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses." And in Ephes. ii. 1. the apostle says, " and you hath he quickened who