with calmness and composure: -some shrink from its approach with disgust; others await it with patience, and welcome it with serenity:-by the wicked it is regarded as an enemy; by the righteous as a friend. I propose in the following discourse to consider the causes of these sensations, so different in different men; and thence to infer the justice of the exclamation in the text, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!"

That worldly men fear to die, is a fact of which daily and general experience may convince us that they should fear to die, needs not excite astonishment.

For, 1st, death deprives them of all those worldly honours, riches, and possessions, in the enjoyment of which the happiness of the carnal man consists. To enjoy these things at his pleasure, he esteems his delight to be deprived of these, and that too beyond all hope of recovery, is in his estimation to be unhappy. Alas, he thinks within himself, while he enumerates in his

thoughts, and surveys with his mind's eye, the various particulars of that felicity, on which his heart has been perpetually dwelling; must I now depart for ever from all my honours, all my treasure; my treasure; from my country; from my friends; my riches, my possessions, my worldly pleasures, which are my joy and heart's delight? Must I go down to the grave, and will "none of these things follow me?" Of all that I have gathered, and of all in which I have. taken delight, must nothing be any longer mine, but a miserable shred to infold my body, and a poor nook of ground for that body to occupy, where "the worms will be spread under me, and the worms shall cover me?" Alas, alas; that ever the day should come, when I must bid farewell to all my enjoyments at once, and never hope to be delighted with one of them again! -To him whose happiness centers in the things of this world, that must needs be no pleasing visitor, which deprives him of his happiness, by depriving him of all which this world can give: and what the wise Son of Sirach saith, is as true as it is affecting; "O Death, how bitter is the remembrance of

thee to a man that liveth at rest in his possessions; unto the man that hath nothing to vex him, and that hath prosperity in all things: yea, unto him that is yet able to receive meata!"

But 2ndly, even to those, who are not endowed with this world's goods, on whom the sun of fortune doth not shine, but who are beaten with the storms of adversity, poverty, and distress; even to them the sentence of death, although at a distance it may seem acceptable, yet when it draws near, becomes an object of apprehension and alarm: partly because of that attachment, with which we naturally cling to life, and of that abhorrence, with which we naturally regard the dissolution of soul and body; partly because of those sicknesses and diseases, of those strong pangs and agonies in the flesh, which commonly forerun, or at least accompany, dissolution.

But there is a third, and a more reasonable, and more powerful motive to the

fear of death in the worldly man, than the loss of his present enjoyments, and the abhorrence and pain of his dissolution. When that dissolution has been effected, and the soul is now separated from the body, the immortal from the mortal part, whither is it to go? Is the soul also to die? is the whole man to be destroyed and annihilated? or does he not go hence to another life, to another state and condition, wherein the loss of his worldly enjoyments, and the fears and agonies which in this world he suffers will sink into nothing on a comparison with those excruciating torments, which are prepared for the unbeliever and the sinner? This is that "second death," which the holy scriptures of truth denounce upon all them, who have their affections fixed on things in this world, and who are removed from this world without repentance and amendment. This is that "second death," which, however the carnal man may have pretended to despise it in the hours of thoughtless enjoyment, he now shudders to contemplate; and recoils from the prospect of it with alarm, and amazement, and horror.

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This is that "second death," which, as it is, so it ought to be, most feared and dreaded; for it is an everlasting loss, without remedy, of the grace and favour of God; and consequently of all joy, pleasure, and happiness for ever it is not only the loss of all positive enjoyment, but it is also the condemnation of the whole man, both body and soul, without redemption, to the everlasting pains of hell where the ungodly and the uncharitable shall dwell with everlasting burnings, with the worm that dieth not, and the fire that never shall be quenched and where the recollection of former enjoyments shall serve only as an aggravation to present misery; and all the kingdoms and glory of this world, could they be possessed, would be gladly exchanged for a drop of "water to cool the tongue tormented” in inextinguishable flames.

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These are the principal causes, which make death an object of apprehension and terror to the carnal man he fears to be deprived by it of those things, on which his heart and all his affections are fixed