our grief is allayed, and we journey on through life consoled. No longer now do our thoughts wander to that mound of earth where their remains have been deposited. We look upward beyond this sphere. A happy meeting, a reunion for eternity hovers before us like a star, illumines our path, and leads us forward in joyful hope. No where does the Bible look with cold indifference on human misery. So adapted is it to human sorrows, that its precious counsels and promises are scarcely intelligible, and never appreciated, except by those who are "chosen in the furnace of affliction." Go up with me to that chamber of sorrow. It is not the dwelling of a pagan. It is not the couch of some deluded disciple of Mahomet. Nor yet is it the abode of a mere nominal Christian. "This I know by experience," said she, "the days of ease and worldly prosperity are seldom to Christians their better days. So far from it, that to the praise and glory of God's holy name would I speak it, I have substantial reason to call these my better days-these days and nights of pain-these days of almost absolute confinement and solitude are not only my better, but my best days; because the Saviour condescends to be more present with me in them; to manifest himself to me as he does not unto the world; to stand by my bed of affliction, and speak kindly to my heart.”* *Life of Mrs. Hawkes, O, how dark are the shadows which human reason and vain philosophy cast upon such scenes these! There is no such relief from sorrow as is found in the Bible. I have spoken of the consolations furnished by the Bible in trial and in view of the death of others. But we must penetrate yet deeper sorrows than these. There is an hour when we ourselves must die. If we find death an evil when we mark its advances upon those around us, what will it be when he comes up into our own chambers? Who can trifle with this monster then? When he invades our own pillow, which of us will not recoil from his approach, and shrink from the ravages of this king of terrors? "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law." Death is an hour which never fails to bring with it the consciousness of guilt, and a sense of the righteousness of that pure and holy law which men have violated, and by which they are condemned. Nor is there any thing to quiet the apprehensions and soothe the alarm excited in the breasts of those who know not God, at the approach of this dread destroyer. Men who never drank into the spirit of the Bible, feel then that every thing on which they built their hopes, is about to be swept away, and that, "in that very day," their thoughts, their treasures, their grandeur, their honours, their little world, all perish. They have lived at a distance from that God who now draws near in his displeasure, and tremble at the thought of appearing be fore him who is so holy that he cannot look on sin. No knowledge of the Redeemer's person and work comforts them; no welcome impressions of his saving mercy are left upon the soul, and it departs in doubt and darkness, if not in despair. So full of darkness were the views of Socrates, one of the wisest and best of the heathens, that just before he took the fatal hemlock, he said, "I am going out of the world and you are to continue in it; but which of us has the better part, is a secret to every one but God." Volumes might be written depicting the scenes of anguish and horror which have been exhibited at the death-bed of those who have rejected the Bible. What multititudes of dying men, burdened with the load of unpardoned sin, and tormented by the accusations of a guilty conscience, have exclaimed with one with whose closing history many of you are familiar, "O, that I might come to that place of torment, that I may be sure to feel the worst, and to be freed from the fear of worse to come!" Not so the dying Christian. To him death has no sting; over him the grave boasts no victory; nor has the second death any power. "He knows whom he has believed." His "life is hid with Christ in God." He has unshaken confidence that every thing is safe in the hands of Jesus Christ. Often have I seen him at that momentous hour, and heard him as his quivering lips commended his spirit to "him who loved him, and washed him in his own blood." Time would fail me to tell of Ignatius, of Polycarp, of Augustine, of Hilary, of John Huss, of Jerome of Prague, of Luther, of Melancthon, of Beza, of Patrick Hamilton, of George Wishart, of John Knox, of Tindal, of Bradford, of Cranmer, of Bunyan, of Bacon, of Robert Bruce, of Samuel Rutherford, of Claud, of Harvey, of Ralph Erskine, of Locke, of Baxter, of Matthew Henry, of Whitefield, of Edwards, of Brainerd, Dwight, Halyburton, Payson, Evarts, and a host of men of whom the world was not worthy, all of whom "died in faith,” and sung the songs of salvation as they bid adieu to their earthly pilgrimage. The history of the church is filled with testimonials to the worth and blessedness of the Bible which have flowed from lips, which though pallid in death, have glowed with praise. What but this Book of God enables the child of faith, "when flesh and heart fail,” to say, "Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fulness of joy, and at thy right hand there are pleasures for ever more?" What but this prompts him to sing, "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me in that day, and not to me only, but to all them that love his appearing?" What but this Book of grace and consolations, when death's icy hand chills his frame, and the grave unfolds its darkness and solitude, in spires the triumph, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" Not more distant are our thoughts from the thoughts of God, or earth from heaven, than are all the consolations of reason and philosophy from the consolations of the Bible to a dying man. There is one more topic which gives emphasis to the thought which I am endeavouring to illustrate, which I wish it were in my power to present in its native force and richness. The source and fulness of created good is THE KNOWLEDGE AND ENJOYMENT of God. "Give what thou wilt, without thee, we are poor, The mind of man is like a ship which the storm has dragged from her moorings and driven out to sea. It is tossed upon unknown waves, and has neither peace nor safety until it can renew its communication with the shore. No sooner did it apostatize from God, than it was torn from its pro per element, and separated from its proper object. Without the knowledge of God, mankind are like children deprived of a father, driven along, the sport of accident, with no hope for the future, and no security that their present happiness would endure, or their present misery end. Darkness would overshadow their path from the cradle to the grave. Admit, for the sake of the illustration, that our race were deprived at once of all knowledge of God, where would be those hopes which |