not be and not have done, what we are here appointed to become and to do! What unavailing remorse, what dreadful profpects in futurity would in that cafe torment us! Ah God, may however for none of us fuch fcenes 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 reyolution in our state, delay not an instant our repentance and converfion, and conftantly fo think and live, that we may hereafter cheerfully obey thy fummons, and pass into eternity in the fure and certain hope of a better life! God, we are here met together to meditate on thefe awful concerns with a quiet mind. Blefs then our meditations, Let them disperse our levity, and fhew us the subject in as ferious a light, as it ought to be seen by mor tals who are in purfuit of immortality, Oh may the present moments be bleffed and foothing to us by the lasting 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 son Jefus, and addrefs thee further in his name: Our father, &c.

ISAIAH XXXviii. 1.

Thus faith the Lord: Set thine houfe in order; for thou

fhalt die.

SHOULD an angel, my pious hearers, or a prophet, of whofe divine miffion we had no doubt, bring to us the fame meffage, which Iaiah 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 deftinies, fet thy house in order, for thou fhalt die, this fickness will terminate in thy death, this week will be the laft week of thy life upon earth, this day thy last day, fet thy affairs immediately in order, make ready without delay for the greateft, the most important change, that can happen to thee what impreffion would this meffage make upon us? The diftrefs 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 jewish 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 dismay and proceed with calmnefs 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 chriftians know we not with equal certainty, my dear friends, that the confequences of death are most serious and exceedingly different, that it will hereafter appear to us in a tremendous or in a foothing form, that it will tranflate us into a happy or into an unhappy ftate! And therefore under this extreme uncer tainty of our life, ought we not to make ourselves ready for it without delay! Should we not prepare ourselves for such 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 terrors and make him to us a harbinger of peace? To inform you of this and excite you to it, my pious hearers, is the purport of my present discourse. Accept it, employ it in fuch manner as behoves men who are daily in danger of death, who foon or late will moft affuredly die, and who wish to die comfortably 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 converse, and fhutting ourselves up in the folitude of a cell and paffing our days in barren and unprofitable speculation, in praying and reading, in meditations

meditations on death, in folemn exercises of devotion or in austere penances and mortifications. It confifts not in vifiting the manfions of the dead more than the mansions of the living, in traversing 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 sheet 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 charnelhouse, viewing the fallen body in all the periods of its decay, the mouldering and crumbling and num berlefs tranfmutations of the constituent parts of this earthly tabernacle, the lonesome, obfcure and filent fojourn in the fepulchre, in calling up to the fancy the region of fhadows, the land of forgetfulness, the wide dominion of the dead, when the long night has closed over the azure sky in its darkest and deepest shade, 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 incon fiftent with the true end of our creation, with the

views of the creator, who has appointed us to a focial and busy life. How contumaciously and ungratefully should we thus act, in clofing up those fources of fatisfaction and pleasure which our benign father in heaven has opened and prepared for our ufe on the earth! How could we then be elated in life? How fulfil its duties? How enjoy its goods and accommodations? How patiently and refolutely bear its troubles? And how foon would both mind and body fink beneath fuch gloomy ideas, and be immersed in a state of total inaction and infenfibility, or in corroding forrow and grief! No, fuch a preparation for death is not fuggested to us by reafon; fuch notions of it have no foundation in the word of God. Thou shouldst indeed, o man, in pursuance of their advice, never be unmindful of thy mortality, frequently confider thy latter end, whether in thy folitary walks or in the filent hour of night, when deep fleep falleth on man, when midnight closes awful all the world, and nought in nature is awake but God and thee, think over the terrors of that house which is appointed for all liv. ing, never entirely banish these serious thoughts from thy mind, but make thyself thoroughly familiar with them and by the light of religion diveft them of that gloomy, terrifying afpect, in which apart from that celestial comforter they cannot fail to appear. But we fhould chiefly endeavour to preserve such a temper of mind and to pursue fuch a conduct, as may be confolatory and foothing when

we