SERMON LXIV. Preparation for Death. GOD, creator and lord of our lives, without whom we should not be, without whom we could not continue for a moment, on whom our existence, our lives, our deftinies depend, with thee is the number of our months, the number of the years, of the days, of our fojourn as strangers and pilgrims upon earth. Thou haft fet a bound to every one of us, which we cannot pafs. When thou fayft: Come again, ye children of men, our body returns to the duft, from whence it was taken, and our spirit to thee, who gavest it. And that awful mandate may even to-day go forth to us from thee, in whofe hands are all our ways, with whom are the iffues of life and death, and that fummons no mortal is able to refift. Sooner or later it will certainly be iffued to us, and then retributions await, then reward or punishment awaits us. God, what importance fhould this idea communicate to our life and our death, to our mortality and our immortality! How terrible would be that fummons, fhould it surprise us unprepared, in an unreformed condition, as flaves of fin and vice, fhould we then not not be and not have done, what we are here appointed to become and to do! What unavailing remorfe, what dreadful profpects in futurity would in that cafe torment us! Ah God, may however for none of us fuch scenes of anguish and terror in the last days and hours of life and fuch a lamentable destiny in the future world be prepared! May we all immediately make ready for that important revolution in our state, delay not an instant our repentance and converfion, and constantly fo think and live, that we may hereafter cheerfully obey thy fummons, and pafs into eternity in the fure and certain hope of a better life! God, we are here met together to meditate on these awful concerns with a quiet mind, Blefs then our meditations. Let them disperse our levity, and shew us the subject in as ferious a light, as it ought to be seen by mortals who are in pursuit of immortality. Oh may the prefent moments be bleffed and foothing to us; by the lafting impreffions they make on us, even in the hour of death! Hear us, merciful Father, and grant our requests! We implore it of thee as votaries of thy fon Jefus, and addrefs thee further in his name: Our father, &c. ISAIAH XXXviii.' 1. Thus faith the Lord: Set thine house in order; for thou SHOULD fhalt die. an angel, my pious hearers, or a prophet, of whofe divine miffion we had no doubt, bring to us the fame meffage, which Isaiah in our text delivered to king Hezekiah; if we heard him fay to us in a folemn tone of voice: Thus faith the Lord, the Allpowerful, the mafter of thy life and thy destinies, fet thy house in order, for thou fhalt die, this sickness will terminate in thy death, this week will be the last week of thy life upon earth, this day thy last day, fet thy affairs immediately in order, make ready without delay for the greatest, the most important change, that can happen to thee what impreffion would this meffage make upon us? The distress into which it would throw the greater part of us in cafting about for comfort and deliverance, would be perhaps not lefs than that felt by the jewifh monarch. How many perhaps like him would in the anguifh of their hearts chatter like a crane and mourn as a dove! How few would perhaps receive these unwelcome tidings without difmay and proceed with calmness and compofure to comply with the meffage! How gladly however should we do all that lay in our power in order to alleviate this fad but unavoidable process, and pass with ease into a better, blissful life! Men, christians, are we then in want of a meffenger from the courts of heaven, or the warning voice of a prophet, for informing us, that we are mortal, that we are not fure of the continuance of our life for one moment, that every day, every hour may be the last to us? Does not now our own experience, now that of others, does not the frail and perishable nature of all furrounding objects, daily call aloud to us: us: Set thine house in order, for thou fhalt die; the longest life upon earth is fhort, and but few attain to the extreme term of it? And as christians know we not with equal certainty, my dear friends, that the confequences of death are moft ferious and exceedingly different, that it will hereafter appear to us in a tremendous or in a foothing form, that it will translate us into a happy or into an unhappy ftate! And therefore under this extreme uncertainty of our life, ought we not to make ourselves ready for it without delay! Should we not prepare. ourfelves for fuch an awful change in our condition! In what however may this preparation for death confift? How are we in this view to fet our house in order? What is that frame of mind, what that fort of conduct which can deprive death of his ter rors and make him to us a harbinger of peace? To iaform you of this and excite you to it, my pious hearers, is the purport of my prefent difcourfe, Accept it, employ it in fuch manner as behoves men who are daily in danger of death, who foon or late. will most affuredly die, and who wish to die com fortably and happily, Preparation for death confifts not, my pious hearers, in abandoning the affairs of our calling, throwing off all connections with others, bidding adieu to all innocent gratifications, in retiring from human converfe, and fhutting ourselves up in the folitude of a cell and paffing our days in barren and unprofitable fpeculation, in praying and reading, inmeditations meditations on death, in folemn exercifes of devotion or in auftere penances and mortifications. It confists not in vifiting the manfions of the dead more than the manfions of the living, in traverfing the dark and noisome vault where mortality dwells in the pomp of ruin, in meditating among the tombs, in following the triumphs, the traces of death and corruption, and as it were wrapping ourselves in a winding fheet and all the beauties of nature in the fable garb of woe. It confifts not in daily and hourly as it were delineating to our minds in vivid flashes of imagination the awful fcene of bidding a laft farewell to relatives and friends and all connection with the living world, in rehearfing the pangs and convulfions that will probably precede the diffolution of the human form, in piercing the funereal gloom, prying into the fecrets of the charnelhoufe, viewing the fallen body in all the periods of its decay, the mouldering and crumbling and numberlefs tranfmutations of the conftituent parts of this earthly tabernacle, the lonefome, obfcure and filent fojourn in the fepulchre, in calling up to the fancy the region of fhadows, the land of forgetfulnefs, the wide dominion of the dead, when the long night has closed over the azure sky in its darkest and deepest fhade, and making these fad ideas the conftant companions of our lives. This would withdraw us from life altogether; and by indifpofing us for its business and enjoyments, would be inconfiftent with the true end of our creation, with the |