When you retire from this place, allow not the good impressions, which you have received, to be effaced by the temptations and vanities of the world into which you again enter: but carry with you the lesson of the text; and pray that it may be engraven by the divine Spirit on your hearts-"Now is the accepted time: behold, now is the day of salvation."

SERMON XX.*

VIEWS OF DEATH.

PSALM civ. 29, last clause.

"Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust."

DEATH, my friends, is a subject to which our attention has been frequently directed. We have read of it in the word of God, every page of the history of the world brings it under our review; and many a time has it come home to our observation and our feelings, in the melancholy experience of our own families and kindred. And yet how feeble is the impression which it has made upon our minds, and how limited the effect which it has produced upon our conduct, as beings who have been created at once for time and for eternity! We feel and weep for a little hour: we talk sadly of the departure of our friends and our fellow-creatures for a few passing days we wear the customary badges of mourning for some weeks; and then we forget it all, and go on to live as if nothing had happened, and as if God were

* Preached in St. George's Church, Edinburgh, 23d November, 1817. being the Sabbath after the funeral of the Princess Charlotte of Wales.

never to "take away our breath, and we were never to die and return to our dust." Alas! my friends, we must acknowledge that this has been too much the case with every one of us, in the time that is past. And unless we shall in future think of death much more closely and much more seriously than we have hitherto done, there is reason to fear that the lesson will be equally unimpressive and unimproved in all the time that is to come; and that those, who are now loudest in their expressions of grief, will ere long be seen as heedless. of God and a future state, and as much devoted to the pursuits and pleasures and vanities of a present life, as if this world were the everlasting rest of man.

Deprecating such an empty and unworthy result as this of the affecting dispensations of Providence, and anxious that you should be led by them to become wiser and better, I would now submit to your thoughts some particular and interesting views of that solemn subject to which the text refers. I say particular, as well as interesting views; for a great proportion of the evil to which I allude arises from this circumstance, that we think of death, when it is presented to our notice, vaguely and indefinitely. We regard it too much as a general abstract truth. We do not look at it in those individual and separate aspects which it assumes. And, consequently, our conceptions of it are destitute of vividness and force, and we see in it nothing more than the proof, and the lesson, of man's mortality—a proof which is rather acknowledged than felt, and a lesson which is too extended to be impressive, and is therefore learned only to be disregarded or forgotten. Let us, then, devote ourselves this day to the contemplation of death in a variety of its characters and effects, and to the consideration of those practical lessons which these are calculated to teach us. And may that great Being who "takes away our breath, when we die and return to our dust," enable us to meditate on these things with becoming seriousness, to apply them impartially to our own case, and to derive from them those advantages, whether

of warning, of improvement, or of comfort, which they are fitted to afford.

I. In the first place, we observe that death disorganizes and destroys our corporeal frame. This is a part of the subject on which it would be painful to dwell. The words of the text are distinguished by a combination of delicacy and emphasis; for they tell us that when God "takes away our breath, we die and return to our dust." They describe not the intermediate and humbling process which our bodies undergo, before they dissolve into their primary elements. They merely announce the execution of the original sentence, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Yes, my friends, this is the end of all flesh. You see man walking in the majesty of strength, or in all the charms of gracefulness and beauty; you see the cheek blooming with health, and the eye beaming with intelligence, and altogether you might suppose him a god in this lower world, incapable of decay and dissolution. Look again, and God has taken away his breath;—and strength and beauty and intelligence are gone, and a cold, pale, lifeless corpse, is all that remains. Look yet again when a few years have elapsed, and behold his very bones are consumed, and you cannot distinguish him from the earth in which he was laid, and you cannot even tell that it was a human being whose remains you are contemplating. O this is the fate of all the children of mortality. The fairest form that ever kindled admiration in the eye of man, or made his heart beat and melt with love-the most stately and vigorous and godlike frame that ever wielded the instruments of battle, or attracted the gaze of a multitude,—must cease to be beautiful or strong, and lie down in the grave, and say to corruption, "Thou art my father, and to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister!" What a lesson of humility and abasement does this consideration teach us! How foolish, with such a prospect before us, to cherish one feeling of vanity or pride! How inconsistent with our known destiny to live as if we were

ethereal beings, and our very bodies were to be immorO young man, why boast thyself in a robust constitution and an athletic form, why so anxious to pamper its appetites and minister to its gratification, since disease may deprive thee of all thy strength, and death will certainly bring thee to weakness and to dust. O, young woman, why count upon thy personal charms, since death will soon 66 consume thy beauty like a moth," and why so careful to adorn thy fair but fading tabernacle, which must ere long be shrouded from the eye of those who now admire and love thee, and be laid in the cold darksome grave, and moulder away unheeded into its kindred earth? But while death thus teaches us to be humble, as to all that is connected with our mortal part, it, with no less emphasis, directs us to the care of our imperishable souls. Our souls surviving the dissolution and corruption of the body, and designed for an eternal existence, rightfully demand that care which corresponds with their spiritual nature, and has a tendency to fit them for their future destiny. Death sends the body to the dust from which it was taken, but the spirit unto God who gave it; and that spirit must be prepared for appearing before him, by being clothed in the righteousness of the Redeemer, and adorned with the graces of Christianity. O then let us look beyond the comfort, and indulgence, and well-being of our frail and fading tenement of flesh and blood, and devote our chief attention to the health and improvement of the soul which inhabits it, so that when death comes we may resign ourselves to the dust, in the expectation of a blessed immortality. Nor are we left without hope even as to the body. It must, indeed, become the prey of worms and corruption. But it is "sealed to the day of redemption," which draweth nigh. The Son of Man, when he comes the second time, shall call it forth to the resurrection of life. He shall glorify it by making it "like unto his own glorious body," and "this corruptible having put on incorrup