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SERMON VII.

I CORINTHIANS XV. VERSE XXXI.

I protest, by your rejoicing, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.

THUS it is that the apostle brought daily before his mind the consideration of his death; of that period which was to terminate the good, and evil, of his days; and to bring him before his Saviour, and his Judge: He exerted his ardent imagination to banish the consciousness of life, and health, to summon up images of sorrow, and to draw a true portrait of that solemn, and suffering day. Let us see, after the example of this great minister of the gospel, if there be not some wisdom in cherishing,

and dwelling upon, these occasional feelings, and in spreading this gloom over the soul; a gloom which, like the shadow of Peter's body, gives life, and strength, to whateverit obscures. The general subject, then, of my discourse, will be a consideration of the utility which is to be derived from the meditation on death; for there is a sorrow, the end whereof is joy; and eternal laughter leadeth to destruction. It is better, sometimes, to steal from the gladness of the feast, to stop the joy of the harp,-to quench the splendor of the lamp,-to put off the wedding garment,-and to speak of the wretchedness of the grave. The time must come, when this soul, and body, shall be rent in twain,—I must lay on my last bed; and the darkness of death shall hide me from my beloved companions. The day must come, but I know not when; the feet of them, which have buried my kindred, are at the door;-it may be, they shall carry me out.

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One great advantage of the meditation on death is, that it teaches us to value all earthly things aright; and perpetually

corrects the fallacy of our calculations, by reminding us of the period to which they apply; it discourages those schemes of fraud, injustice, and ambition, the fruits of which are distant, by reminding us, that that distance we may never reach,—that death, which cuts short the enjoyment, leaves us with the whole load of guilt, because that depends on the design; whereas, it gives the freest scope to virtuous exertions, because they have their full merit with our Heavenly Judge, however they may be interrupted by the uncertainty of human life. See what we sacrifice every day to wealth, and power, for want of due meditation on death; and how apt we are to forget, that the fruits of our crimes remain but for the passing moment;-when comfort, and peace of mind, and proud integrity, are all yielded up, we cannot enjoy even a few years of tranquil corruption;-we have yielded up all, and it is now time to yield up the ghost;-secure to me, for whole centuries, the wages of iniquity,-stop in me the gradual waste of life,-guard me from the stalking pestilence,-place me on the pinnacle of power, and shew me,

beneath my feet, all the pleasures of the world; and then ask me to pawn my soul unto sin;-but if I do the thing which is evil to day, to-morrow thou canst not save me from death,-and the wasting fever may not leave me one moment of guilty renown.

Meditation on death improves the mind, by destroying in it trifling discontents, and by blunting the force of all the malevolent passions; the feelings of malice, jealousy, and hatred, cannot coexist with the prospect of the last hour, with the notion of a new world, and the terror of a just God ;-the thought of an eternal parting subdues hatred, and produces, in miniature, all the effects of a real scene of death; it diminishes the importance of the offence we have suffered, awakens that candor which self-love has set to sleep, and makes us think, not of the trifling scenes which are past, but of the awful events which are to come. Such a disposition of mind severs, at once, all the little and unworthy attachments to life, and prevents us from grieving at small evils, from the lively representation which it makes, that they cannot endure

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