SERMON III.

THE WEAKNESS AND THE POWER OF MAN.

1 Cor. XV.

56, 57.

The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In these words, we have at once the weakness and the power of man set before us; -his weakness through transgression,his power through the efficacy of Redeeming Love. The sting of death is sin;→→ that which gives death the power of annoyance, and renders it a bitter enemy to human nature, is our disobedience to the commands of God. The strength of sin is the law;-that which makes our disobedience of so heinous a nature, and so destructive to us, is, the righteous law of a wise and good God, whose holiness can

not consist with the permitted, unpunished, violation of that law. And thus, both from the sinful nature of man, and the infinite perfection of God, death obtains dominion in the world. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Death still holds a sway over man in consequence of the first transgression. The just award of God must still have its course; for,-" in the day that thou eatest of" the tree of the knowledge of good and evil "thou shalt surely die," was the denunciation of one whose words cannot " pass away." But the sting of death has been removed. It has its power to hurt and to vex, but not to destroy us. It is limited to this world only. Its sceptre is broken and its crown is cast to the ground. It bears, indeed, all the semblance of a triumph over human nature, so far as this world is concerned. But we are assured that this triumph is only temporary, and illusive. Our Lord Jesus Christ has bruised the head of the serpent-tempter, and taken away that venom which could produce in its

victims an eternal sleep; and thus gained for us a decisive, ultimate victory over death and sin.

Such is the general sense of the expres sions employed in the text. Their interest demands from us a more exact consideration of them.

I. First then, we are told, that the sting of death is sin. How opposite is this information to the notion generally and practically received in the world respecting the event of death! How little are we accustomed to regard death as a moral punishment! From the current of human sentiments and actions, it would appear as if death were only a natural evil-an evil which must inevitably ensue in the mere course of nature-and which is appalling to flesh and blood, only as it is a termination of all connexion with the present scene of things, and a melancholy entrance on the shadowy regions of the unknown future world. We practically forget, that death is a sentence pronounced upon us by a Righteous Governor, whose majesty we

have offended by transgression of his will. We regard it rather as a consequence of our being born into a world full of successive productions and dissolutions,-fromwhich common observation tells us the body of man presents no exception,—than as the execution of a decree which is gone forth from the lips of One, who is "not a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent." The text corrects this vain apprehension. It teaches us to consider the end of our mortal life, in its true relation to the moral perfections of God and the sinful nature of man-in a word, as the punishment annexed to sin.

Now, all punishments are intended, not only to inflict pain on the offender for his: transgression, but to do him good at the same time as correctives of the fault; and to prevent a repetition, either by himself or others, of the crime for which he suffers. Punishments differ from arbitrary or vindictive inflictions of evil in this important, respect, that they have a moral intention -they have a good end in view;-whereas the latter are only the outgoings of some:

prevailing passion. A just punishment has no passionate feeling accompanying it, but on the contrary is full of charity to the transgressor. Thus is death designed by God, to be, at once, a retribution for past offences, and a guard against those offences which incurred it. Its moral use, therefore, is overlooked, when we do not perceive that sin is its sting-when we dwell intirely upon the accidental circumstances of terror and pain which attend upon it, and turn our eyes from that real terror of the Lord, which renders it a chastisement of mercy.

The importance and the comfort of thus regarding sin as the sting of death, will appear, if we contrast-the apprehension of death as a mere natural evil to which we are destined by the doom of mortalitywith a conviction of its being the just and merciful award of transgression. If death be regarded as a grievance of nature alone, or, as it is sometimes termed in ordinary discourse-a payment of the debt of nature -there is then no means of abating, still less of averting the evil, which is in this