cannot see age and infirmities steal upon them without regret: but, in reality, that is a selfish feeling, which would detain them longer in a state of sorrow and of temptation.

Their removal is a melancholy event for the world. In their successive departure, the pillars of the universe are thrown down, one by one. Nor is it less melancholy, that the world is not sensible of this solemn fact. The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.' The last tempest is gathering, in which all created nature shall go to wreck: and the storm is suspended only until the servants of God are sheltered, and placed beyond the sphere of its influence. They are the salt of the earth,' preserving the entire mass from putrefaction; and when they are gone, corruption only will remain, and destruction must ensue. They are the lights of the world;' and 'yet a little while the light is with you :' but as they are extinguished, darkness prevails; and the blackness of darkness for ever' will follow their removal. Alas for the world, when the last saint shall be gathered home!

Their death is affecting to us. We are deprived of their company, their counsel, their example, their prayers. Their warning voice has often given the timely alarm on the approach of

danger, and in the hour of temptation. They have often pleaded for us, and prayed with ustheir effectual and fervent prayers availed much;' and we caught from their fervour a portion of their devotional spirit. They often consoled us in the hour of sorrow, and soothed us on the bed of languishing. But death silences both the preacher and the parent; the well-known voice ceases from the pulpit and from the parlour, and desolation of heart succeeds. We go to their grave 'to weep there.' We take up the lamentation of Elisha, and cry, My father, my father! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!'

-But death is necessary and advantageous to them. It is necessary, because they could not otherwise become qualified for the celestial state. I do not presume to affirm that God could not so transform them, without dying, as to make them meet for the inheritance of the saints in light; for he has already shown his power to this effect on the persons of Enoch and Elijah, who must have undergone a change equivalent with death, to fit them for glory. But he chooses to perfect his people by dying: and this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption'-therefore death is necessary; and it is so absolutely necessary, that those who shall be alive at the coming of Jesus Christ, shall

undergo a similar transformation-they shall be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.' Death is also tageous to the servants of God.

infinitely advanThey get rid of

all that they abhorred, and obtain more than can be conceived; for to them to live is Christ, and to die is gain.' The holiest and the wisest are most deeply sensible of the imperfections attending their present state of being. While some sin 'with greediness,' others habitually and insensibly, others carelessly and without remorse, these 'groan being burdened,' waiting to be emancipated from 'the bondage of corruption.' To them, death is the angel of deliverance. The spirit instantly enters into the glorious liberty of the children of God,' while the body rests securely until the times of the restitution of all things;' and when it shall be raised, it will leave all its infirmities in the sepulchre. The moral leprosy was in the mortal garments; but it is clothed upon' with immortality, and the body and being of sin are destroyed.

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'Cheerful in death I close mine eyes

To part with ev'ry lust;

And charge my flesh whene'er it rise

To leave them in the dust.

How would my purer spirit fear

To put this body on,

If its old tempting pow'rs were there,
Nor lusts nor passions gone."

It is the last act of paternal kindness on the part of our Heavenly Father, the consummation of the mercies accompanying our pilgrimage, that he 'sends death to kill sin.' And what ineffable and inconceivable bliss shall fill the soul, when, passing the boundaries of time into the regions of eternity, attending angels shall hail their new companion, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished!'

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2. The death of a servant of God is a most interesting scene.

It shows the malignity of sin; and is allowed for this great purpose. He who remitted the penalty of eternal condemnation, could also have included in the covenant of salvation the remission of temporal death. The merits and atonement of the Lord Jesus were adequate to every end for which they were ordained. But it pleased God to retain the penal sentence, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return;' that in all ages, and until the end of time, men might successively learn the evil of sin, by the calamity to which every one is destined to submit; death being horrible in itself, even where guilt is pardoned, and heaven anticipated. In the midst of his depart and to be with Christ,'

earnest 'desire to

which is far bet

ter than to abide in the flesh,' St. Paul was not insensible to the revoltings of nature from the final struggle, nor indifferent to the affecting circum

stances of dissolution. Could the heavenly state be reached, except through this dark passagecould eternal life be obtained, except by dyingeven an apostle would have been willing to be spared from the closing conflict: 'not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.' But the present garments must be laid aside, before the celestial robes are put on. The divine justice requires this evidence of the deadly qualities of that offence which man committed against his Creator. And the malignity of sin displays itself in the fixed and dim eye, the labouring breast, the convulsive tremours of the frame, the deep and lengthened groan.

The death of a servant of God manifests the triumphs of religion. When the mind retains its powers in the midst of bodily decay, and is calm even in the agonies of dissolution, we have a striking pledge of the immortality of the soul, and a noble example of the influence of religion. The eye, sightless to external objects, is lighted up with an internal radiance; and in its very fixture, seems to look at something beyond this world. The retreating spirits, insensible, in that dreadful hour, to all human affairs, rally when the promises of the gospel are whispered by those who weep around, and return to signify the interest of the departing saint in the consolations thus