crown that we expect to obtain. By bending our minds to serious and religious meditation, by frequent and fervent prayer, by unremitting acts of kindness towards our fellow-creatures, our souls will acquire that elasticity and liveliness of action, which will prevent their flagging, or drooping, or growing weary in their course.

I have said before, that the unsuccessful candidates in the Grecian games ever looked upon their failure with shame and sorrow, feeling themselves to be the objects of contempt and disgrace, although no blame could reasonably be attached to them, so long as they were conscious that their defeat was owing, not to their own want or prudence and exertion, but to the superior strength and skill of their antagonist. What then, brethren, must be the disgrace of the Christian who fails of obtaining the promised reward? He will have nothing but his own negligence and folly to censure, if he falls short of success. To every one who fights manfully the good fight of faith, the crown will assuredly be awarded; and

therefore they who are rejected, will suffer a defeat that must cover them with the bitterest degradation.

"Therefore," saith the apostle, "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast away,' or (as the original word might be more familiarly rendered) rejected. If St. Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, the firm, the fearless, and the bold maintainer of the Christian faith, the powerful and eloquent preacher of the gospel-if he dreaded the possibility of yielding to temptations which might deprive him of his reward, what cause have not we, Christian brethren, to fear this great disgrace? we who are beset with all the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil?-who meet with obstacles at every step, and are surrounded by allurements on every side, to draw us from our course?

Yet, hard as the task may be, and toilsome the journey, we have an arm to support and uphold us, we have a light to guide and direct us, by which, if we are not want

ing to ourselves, our labours must be brought to a happy issue. There is the good providence of God holding its shield over usthere is the omnipotent grace of the Holy Spirit to strengthen and enlighten us, so that we may neither faint nor stumble in the way.

Let us then be assured, that the prize is certainly our own through the merits of Jesus Christ; and let this hope cheer and support us in the race. So that "having fought the good fight, having finished our course, having kept the faith," we may receive from "the Lord the righteous Judge, the crown of righteousness" which is laid up for us; "and not for us only, but for all who love his appearing."6

6 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.

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SERMON III.

1 THESSALONIANS iv. 13.

But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

IT is a feature peculiar to the didactic parts. of the sacred writings, that with one principal object in view, they are so contrived as to answer several subordinate though highly important ends. Thus, in the first epistle to the Thessalonians, the chief design of the apostle appears to have been, to furnish them with a series of arguments tending to establish the divine origin of the gospel, and prove

the fact of its being a revelation sent immediately from God: and the last of these arguments, being drawn from the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, (thereby proving him to be the Son of God, and affording an assurance to all who believe in him of their own resurrection through him,) St. Paul takes occasion to correct some erroneous opinions which his converts had entertained upon that subject, and to instruct them in the true means of moderating their sorrow for the departed. He exhorts them, therefore, not to indulge in that excessive grief which was conspicuous among the heathen, who had no certain hope of a future state, no expectation of again meeting with their departed friends; but to make their faith in the resurrection of Christ the groundwork of their consolation. "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep." "Where