east-it is the day-spring from on high hath visited us! it is the Sun of Righteousness, coming with healing in his beams! it is the fulness of the Godhead, shining now not as under the Law, but in the meridian strength of Gospel-revelation, shedding the day! For as the incarnate Saviour walked in Jewry at the approach of evening, and when the mountain-shadows were taking an ampler range, he cried to the assembled multitudes, "I am come a light into the world; he that believeth in me shall not abide in darkness, but shall have the light of life." Come ye under his rays. They are vivifying: let but one of them be introduced to the soul, and instantly the sentence of death is cancelled, the hand-writing is blotted out, and sin in its penal consequences, "shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace." They are vivifying: a resurrection from dead works to serve the living God, the implantation of holy principles, securing a blameless life; and they are enlightening: for their brilliancy exposes Satanic snares, points out the paths safest to be trodden through life, dissipates the darkness of the tomb, and across the obscurity of the future tracks out a milky way up to heaven's eternal seat. "Awake," therefore, "thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;" fear nothing; "Christ shall give thee light."

23.

THE FIRST GRAND AIM.

But seek first the kingdom of God.-Matt. vi. 33.

WE perceive in the discourses of our Lord Jesus Christ a new and extraordinary mode of teaching and enforcing moral duties, so much superior to that pursued by heathen sages, or under the Old Testament dispensation, as to overwhelm us with an awful and grateful surprise, and leave us, with the Jewish crowds that hung upon his lips, exclaiming, "Never man spake like this man." This mode consisted in bringing to bear upon the subject the sanctions of a future state. "You know," said Socrates to his disciples, in the near prospect of death, "that I have an expectation after my decease of going to good men; but of this I will not speak with too much confidence." And in other places he talks of immortality, as a something rather desirable than certain. Cicero, who had studied the best Greek philosophers, and was himself inferior to none of them, discovered here the same hesitation of deciding; else how are we to understand the following passage:-"Prove to me," says this illustrious Roman, "that souls live after death, if you are able: the task is difficult." It is no wonder, then, that these individuals and their associates, who took the lead in guiding the lives of

men, should, in their systems of ethics or moral rules, have taken but little notice of an hereafter, which they looked upon as a question very much involved in darkness. Their precepts regarded only the present existence, and professed no higher aim than the preservation and advancement of states, harmony in the social relations, and a long and happy life to the individual. Beyond this paddock they never looked; their summum bonum, or chief good, was fixed in this world, was to be enjoyed here, and expired with the last groan of the bursting heart. Hence the views, and hopes, and fears of mankind, under such directions, were rivetted to the earth.

In the divine economy, moreover, of the Israelites, the doctrine of a future state did not possess a prominent situation. If this truth was taught by the Law and Prophets, it was only in an incidental manner; if it may be ascertained from them, it is generally by long and elaborate deductions of reasoning. Hence the Sadducees, one of the two learned sects which ruled the opinions of the Jews, though they professed obedience to the temple-worship, and reverence for the inspired Book on which it was founded, declared that the writings of Moses did not warrant the belief of a resurrection, or of angel, or spirit. The Law chiefly held out to its observers temporal benefits: as, rich and fruitful lands, abundance of cattle, victory over enemies, and a long and peaceful life, with a numerous pos

terity to preserve their name. Thus, in Deut. xi.: "If ye will hearken diligently to my commandments, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart, and with all your soul, I will give," says Jehovah, "the rain of your land in due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and wine, and oil, and I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full." Again, in the 28th chapter of the same book, the consequences of piety are stated in the following manner: "Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field; blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep; blessed shall be thy basket and thy store; thou shalt be blessed when thou comest in, and when thou goest out." The favour of heaven upon godliness being very much represented by prosperous circumstances in this life, and its wrath upon sinners by calamities of a temporal kind.

But when He that should come,-the Desire of Nations, who was to teach all things, and introduce a dispensation more perfect than the Law,-when Christ appeared, he begun his instructions by drawing aside the veil which hung over a future state; by describing, with singular perspicuity and force, an everlasting duration beyond the grave; a heaven of inconceivable blessedness reserved for righteous persons, and a hell of misery, where the worm dieth

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not and the fire is not quenched, for the wicked; by pointing to a resurrection, when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality, connecting with it the judgment then fixed for the trial of the world. Here he dwelt; upon this he largely insisted; and, reminding men of the shortness and uncertainty of life, and of the awakening truth-that no space for repentance is afforded beyond the time of our present existence, but as the tree is cut down so it lieth, he laboured to draw men from too great an estimation of riches, honor, ease, and other worldly emoluments, and to engage them in the pursuit of treasures laid up where moth and rust cannot corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal, and to fix them through life in daily preparation for the momentous scenes to be realized after the death of the body. This life, was the sum of all his admonitions, this life, viewed but as a probationary state for another. Be not taken up with things of time and sense, but follow after virtue; believe on me and keep my sayings, not so much for present advantage, as for enabling you to meet with joy the important crisis to which you are hastening: for the little which the body requires, trust to my Father's providence working for its nourishment, but not with misplaced anxiety: "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Behold the fowls of the air: they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Consider the lilies of the