ture, however grievous for a time to us, may be an immediate blessing to them; for an apostle has taught us that, with regard to the individual, it is far better to be with Christ than to fill the highest seat of usefulness and honour upon earth.

Whether they wake or sleep, it is well with them, for they are in the arms of Omnipotent Mercy. We are following them with the never-failing step of Time.

And they await our arrival-God having provided that without us they should not be made perfect.

Hear, then, Christian mourners! for the living and the dead hear the words of the Comforter"Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you; and I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also."

THE INTRINSIC AUTHORITY AND VALUE OF THE GOSPEL.

[THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.]

RELIGION is the highest law of our being-ought

it not therefore to be one of the first objects of our inquiry? Christianity comes as the immediate communication of God to man; and when God speaks shall man refuse to listen? We are moral beings made in the image of our Creator, intrusted with

and

valuable talents, owing much to God and man, bearing a high responsibility; Christianity proffers a complete and unerring rule of life; what instructor so valuable, what guide so important? We are eager in the pursuit of happiness; it is our anxious inquiry, who shall show us any good? Christianity proffers counsels on this subject, which are infallible; and discloses the only true and inexhaustible sources of happiness, where we may drink it pure. We find ourselves exposed to trouble; our powers are limited, our nature is frail. We are broken by disappointment, wasted by sickness, racked with pain, desolated by adversity. This world can impart nothing to relieve our agony, or to scatter our despair. But the consolations of Christianity are ample; and they have breathed fortitude and resignation into the bosoms of the most wretched. The hand of time presses heavily upon us; our sun has passed its meridian, and is descending rapidly. Our limbs totter under the infirmities of nature, and the decay of age. We are called to weep over the triumphs of death, and to deposit in the grave, one after another, the objects of our affections and our hopes; blasted, often, in all the promise of youth and health, vigour and beauty; the conviction of our own mortality forces itself home upon our hearts; to whom shall we go but unto Jesus? with whom but him are the words of eternal life?

"The world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." Visit the chamber of sickness and death. Spread before their wretched victim all the glittering objects

of human ambition: show him the treasures of his wealth; they cannot purchase the alleviation of a single pang sound in his ear the loud notes of fame; it is all discord to him: tell him that the banquet is prepared, and the revel begun ; to him it is all vanity and vexation of spirit. This world is all a fleeting show; it is Christianity alone, which, by disclosing to us its connection with another life, gives it any value. To the Christian, the objects of earthly ambition appear in their true character, transient, perishable, vain;-he looks far beyond the limited horizon, which bounds the mere earthly view; and taking his stand at the broken and emptied sepulchre of Jesus, it is there he gets a prospect of the promised land; and amidst all the desolation of time, and all the ravages of death around him, he feels that he has lost nothing.

In Christianity, we have a religion which comes thus clothed with divine authority; which imparts instructions thus useful and necessary; which inspires hopes thus consolatory and transporting; which proffers to us a system of duty and happiness, in which as yet the world has detected no error, has found nothing deficient, and nothing superfluous. We appeal then with confidence to every intelligent and reflecting man, and ask only, what subject has claims upon his study and investigation in any degree comparable to the Gospel?

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION, A PLEDGE

OF A FUTURE LIFE.

[REV. DR. CHANNING.]

HERE is one method in which Christ's resur

THE

rection gives aid to our faith in another life which is not often dwelt on, and which seems worthy of attention. Our principal doubts and difficulties in regard to that state, spring chiefly from the senses and the imagination, and not from the reason. The eye, fixed on the lifeless body, on the wan features and the motionless limbs,—and the imagination, following the frame into the dark tomb, and representing to itself the stages of decay and ruin, are apt to fill and oppress the mind with discouraging and appalling thoughts. The senses can detect in the pale corse not a trace of the activity of that spirit which lately moved it. Death seems to have achieved an entire victory; and when reason and revelation speak of continued and a higher life, the senses and imagination, pointing to the disfigured and mouldering body, obscure by their sad forebodings the light which reason and revelation strive to kindle in the bereaved soul.

Now the resurrection of Christ meets, if I may so say, the senses and imagination on their own ground, contends with them with their own weapons. It shows us the very frame on which death, in its most humiliating form, had set its seal, and which had been committed in utter hopelessness to the tomb, rising, breathing, moving with new life, and rising, not to

return again to the earth, but, after a short sojourn, to ascend from the earth to a purer region, and thus to attest man's destination to a higher life. These facts submitted to the very senses, and almost necessarily kindling the imagination to explore the unseen world, seem particularly suited to overcome the main difficulties in the way of Christian faith. Reason is not left alone to struggle with the horrors of the tomb. The assurance that Jesus Christ, who lived on the earth, who died on the cross, and was committed, a mutilated, bleeding frame, to the receptacle of the dead, rose uninjured, and then exchanged an earthly for a heavenly life, puts to flight the sad auguries which rise, like spectres, from the grave, and help us to conceive, as in our present weakness we could not otherwise conceive, of man's appointed triumph over death.

So ample and sufficient are the preparatory mea

sures which Christ has taken for the final extinction of death, that he speaks of it in terms of comparative disparagement and indifference. So effectually is it disarmed and mutilated, and so completely at the disposal of Christ, that he speaks of it as if it were not. "Whosoever believeth in me "If a man keep my sayings, he

shall never die."