his support, that instant our life becomes extinct. As creatures, it is in him we live, and move, and have our being; and as Christians we are like branches, dependent on the true vine for life and growth; cut off from thence, we die and perish. Beside, to affect independence incurs guilt. Shall a child be independent of his parent, a servant of his master, a subject of his sovereign, a creature of his Maker? Our moral sense, and our innate perception of right and wrong, rise up against these propositions. Pride and assumed independence are the radical sins of human beings; they sever man at once from duty and from bliss. Every where, however, there are persons, both among the young and among the aged, the poor and the rich, the ignorant and the learned, the governed and the governors, who impiously demand, as king Pharoah didwho Jehovah is, that they should hearken to him? and who the Lord is, that they should obey him? Oh how unreasonable! Oh what temerity! Oh how awful the ultimate consequences! Oh ye young persons who hear me, I am anxious for you, that ye would deeply consider, and devoutly acknowledge, your dependence on God, who is your rightful and beneficent Sovereign, for ye are only strangers and sojourners on the earth.

2. From our state of dependence on the great Sovereign of the Universe, we infer, in the second place, the reasonableness of obedience. It is manifest that during man's sojourn on earth, he is left to obey or disobey without immediate reward or punishment. But to the degree that his mind is enlightened in the knowledge of his Lord's will, his disobedience makes his conscience less or more uneasy, and his life unhappy. And hence there are wicked servants, who imagine that voluntary ignorance of the Lord's will may excuse disobedience. But how futile is this imagination: for is it not the duty of a servant to use every proper means to ascertain his master's will? not to do so is already an act of disobedience. And, further, it is the duty of every good servant to inform, to the utmost of his power, his fellow-servants of the master's will. Some object to Christian Missions, on the fallacious sup

position, that by enlightening other nations in the knowledge of the will of God, we shall make their condemnation the greater. But it is our duty to communicate to our fellow-residents in this transitory world, whatever we know of our Lord's will, and it is their duty to receive it; and instead of serving them, by keeping them in ignorance, as the supposition presumptuously and impiously supposes, we shall only, by so doing, involve ourselves in the guilt of disobedience, disloyalty, and inhumanity; for our Lord's will is full of mercy and of kindness to all his creatures. To seek to know his will, and yield entire obedience to the whole of it, is our most reasonable service, and the only way to be happy.

3. A third inference that we draw is, that during our sojourn on earth, contentment with the allotments of our gracious Lord is incumbent on us. A proper sense of his goodness and his wisdom, viewed in connexion with our own sinfulness and ignorance, will invariably lead to a spirit of contentment; not only when our concerns are prosperous, but likewise in adversity.

4. And again, in the fourth place, allied to this contentment is resignation; when our afflictions are more than we think conducive to our good. There are beautiful examples of this becoming temper of mind recorded in Holy Writ. You remember the exclamation of one who was greatly afflicted, "It is the Lord, (said he,) let him do what seemeth him good." And another, whilst greatly distressed, cried, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Oh how suitable and exalted were their conceptions of the goodness and the wisdom of God. These experienced holy men resigned to God, with devout confidence, their case and their cause during the few and evil days of their earthly pilgrimage. Oh how unbecoming are the murmurings of discontent, and the aspirings of a never-satisfied ambition to be rich, or to be distinguished among men. Happy they, who from holding intercourse with Heaven, are contented in obscurity and poverty, and resigned in the midst of an afflicted sojourn on earth! But when we reflect how the great Lord of all has provided

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for this world's sojourners, a vast supply of all that conduces to comfort and delight; and for sinful creatures has furnished all the glorious blessings of the everlasting Gospel; we ask not only for a spirit of dependence, obedience, contentment, and resignation, but also of

5. Gratitude, which is our fifth particular. The unholy, the proud, the disobedient, the discontented, the rebellious murmurers and complainers, are also ungrateful and unthankful. The mind that is convinced of its own demerits, will, in the midst of the most afflictive circumstances, see abundant reason for gratitude, to God. Humility and thankfulness, pride and ingratitude, go together. Blessed are the poor in spirit and the grateful; but the proud and thankless sinner God knoweth afar off. You perceive, my young friends, that most of these inferences, which I draw from our condition on earth, being that of strangers and sojourners, refer to the duties which are exercised in the mind or heart; for unless our hearts be right with God, we are altogether wrong. The Lord looks directly at the heart. If in the heart there be a humble sense of our dependence on Him; awe and reverence, and devout admiration and contentment, and resignation and gratitude, for all that He is to us, and has done for us, as our Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer, happy are we! Then will our actions and external behaviour be in obedience to his holy, and righteous, and merciful commandments.

6. And, we mention, as a sixth inference, that we sojourners on earth ought to enter cheerfully and zealously into a co-operation with the declared intentions or designs of our great Lord, both with regard to ourselves, and to our fellow inhabitants of the world. He is the great Benefactor of all; and it has pleased him to constitute some persons a sort of stewards in the great family. The possession of justly acquired power or affluence, or superior talents, is given for the good of the whole company of sojourners, and not for the sake only of the individual possessors. To do good and to communicate, is a precept binding on all, to the extent of their means; and of course it applies both to body and to mind, to the whole man;

self: took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. He cheerfully gave himself a sacrifice for us. He was made a curse for us, that he might redeem us from the curse of the law. He bore for us what was equivalent to everlasting perdition.

I have not mentioned that he revealed to men fully the law of God-that he brought life and immortality to light; for my mind was led away to the great work of making atonement for our trangressions. For what would it have availed to have made known to us the law of God, if it only showed to us more clearly our crimes and our guilt? What would the knowledge of immortality have availed, if we were to have been immortally miserable? But Jesus died that we might live. And what are his relations to us? He is our Surety; he is our Shepherd to feed us, and to lead and guide us; he is our elder Brother; by faith in him, we are received into the family of God: Yea, we are bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.

And what is his fulness? His fulness is inexhaustible. In him there is a fulness of power, of wisdom, of goodness, of grace, but I enumerate them not; the Book of Inspiration has said more than the mind of man can conceive of his fulness; for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

Wherefore consider, my Christian brother, the relations in which Jesus stands to thy soul. Who he is, what he has done, and the fulness that is treasured up in him. I say, consider it, and believe it, and say if there be reason for your heart to be troubled.

Is there not in the faith of Jesus enough to raise our minds far above, as far as the heavens are above the earth, and to make us move as undisturbed as the celestial orbs amidst all the convulsions that rend the solid world. Let us pass on to the

Second thought that is suggested for our consolations. Our Saviour says, In my Father's house are many mansions. I wish you, my brethren, to realize what Is your state whilst in this world, viz. That of strangers and pil

government, and would have men live as atheists in the world.

O ye Christians-ye loyal subjects of Zion's King—ye true worshippers of the God of the Bible; who is the great Lord of our present, and of our eternal residenceand who declared it to be his will, that Christ's gospel should be proclaimed and taught to every creature-be it your study to co-operate in this divinely benevolent work! And among other motives, the

Second division of our discourse, which is, that

II. Man's sojourn on earth shall inevitably terminate, furnishes not the least. Man is here a stranger, a sojourner, a guest, a traveller, a pilgrim. The Christian pilgrim is going indeed to a holy-place, but not on earth. Here he abides not. This description of the life of man implies another state of existence; the belief of which, as you are well aware, is not peculiar to Christianity, or to revealed religion. The belief of a separate state of existence, different from our earthly one, is found not only among the Mohammedans, who may have derived it from the Christian religion; but it is also found among the savage tribes of America, and the old civilized nations of Asia. There are, however, in different countries, individuals and sects who deny it. There is nothing about it in the books left to the eastern world by the Chinese moralist Confucius; and many of his followers deny it. But, on the other hand, a great majority of the Chinese not only believe that we human beings shall exist after our bodies die, but also that we existed in another state before we were born into this world; and on their supposition we are, in a very striking manner, only "strangers and sojourners," on earth. There is, perhaps, no absurdity in this notion; but we can only say, it wants evidence, and God's inspired servants, who wrote our Holy Scriptures, have not taught it in the Bible. We therefore reject it, as we do every other theory or supposition, which, however plausible, has no proof. But the glimmerings and antici