your life in ficknefs and pain, in poverty and difgrace, in abortive schemes and disappointed pursuits, what a ferious calamity, what an huge affliction is this in your esteem? What is there in the compafs of the universe that you are so much afraid of, and fo cautiously fhunning? Whether large profits or loffes in trade be not a mighty matter, ask the busy, anxious merchant. Whether poverty be not a moft miferable state, ask the poor that feel it, and the rich that fear it. Whether riches be not a very important happiness, ask the poffeffors; or rather afk the restlefs purfuers of them, who expect ftill greater happiness from them than thofe that are taught by experience can flatter themselves with. Whether the pleasures of the conjugal ftate are not great and delicate, confult the few happy pairs here and there who enjoy them. Whether the lofs of an affectionate husband and a tender father be not a most afflictive bereavement, a torturing separation of heart from heart, or rather a tearing of one's heart in pieces, afk the mourning, weeping widow, and fatherlefs children, when hovering round his dying bed, or conducting his dear remains to the cold grave. In fhort, it is evident from a thousand inftances, that the enjoyments, purfuits, and forrows of this life are mighty matters! nay, are all in all in the efteem of the generality of mankind. Thefe are the things they moft deeply feel, the things about which they are chiefly concerned, and which are the objects of their ftrongest paffions. But is this a juft eftimate of things? Are the affairs of this world then indeed fo interefting and all important? Yes, if eternity be a dream, and heaven and hell but majestic chimeras or fairy lands; if we were always to live in this world, and had no concern with any thing beyond it; if the joys of earth were the highest we could hope for, or its miferies the most terrible we could fear, then indeed we might take this world for our all, and regard its affairs as the moft most important that our nature is capable of. But this I fay, brethren (and I pronounce it as the echo of an infpired apoftle's voice) this I fay, the time is fhort; the time of life in which we have any thing to do with these affairs is a fhort contracted fpan. Therefore it remaineth, that is, this is the inference we should draw from the fhortness of time, that they that have wives, be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they poffeffed not; and they that use this world, as not abufing it, or ufing it to excefs; for the fashion of this world, thefe tender relations, this weeping and rejoicing, this buying, poffeffing, and ufing this world, paffeth away. The phantom will foon vanish, the fhadow will foon fly off and they that have wives or hufbands in this tranfitory life, will in reality be as though they had 'none; and they that weep now, as though they wept not; and they that now rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that now buy, poffefs and use this world, as though they never had the leaft property in it. This is the folemn mortifying doctrine I am now to inculcate upon you in the further illuftration of the feveral parts of my text; a doctrine justly alarming to the lovers of this world, and the neglecters of that life which is to come. When St. Paul pronounces any thing with an unufual air of folemnity and authority; and after the formality of an introduction to gain attention, it must be a matter of uncommon weight, and worthy of the moft serious regard. In this manner he introduces the funeral fentiments in my text. This I fay, brethren; this I folemnly pronounce as the mouth of God: this I declare as a great truth but little regarded; and which therefore there is much need I fhould repeatedly declare this I fay with all the authority of an apoftle, a messenger from heaven; and I demand your ferious attention to what I am going to fay. And And what is it he is introducing with all this folemn formality? Why, it is an old, plain, familiar truth univerfally known and confeffed, namely, That the time of our continuance in this world is fhort. But why fo much formality in introducing fuch a common plain truth as this? Becaufe, however generally it be known and confeffed, it is very rarely regarded; and it requires more than even the moft folemn addrefs of an apoftle to turn the attention of a thoughtless world to it. How many of you, my brethren, are convinced against your wills of this melancholy truth, and yet turn every way to avoid the mortifying thought, are always uneafy when it forces itself upon your minds, and do not fuffer it to have a proper influence upon your temper and practice, but live as if you believed the time of life were long, and even everlasting? O! when will the happy hour come when you will think and act like thofe that believe that common uncontroverted truth, that the time of life is fhort? Then you would no longer think of delays, nor contrive artifices to put off the work of your falvation; then you could not bear the thought of fuch negligent, or languid, feeble endeavours in a work that must be done, and that in fo fhort a time. This, I fay, my brethren, the time is fhort; the time of life is abfolutely fhort; a fpan, an inch, a hair's breadth. How near the neighbourhood between the cradle and the grave! How fhort the journey from infancy to old age, through all the intermediate flages! Let the few among you who bear the marks of old age upon you in grey hairs, wrinkles, weakness, and pains, look back upon your tiresome pilgrimage through life, and does it not appear to you, as though you commenced men but yesterday? And how little a way can you trace it back till you are loft in the forgotten unconfcious days of infancy, or in that eternal non-existence in which you lay before your creation! But they are but a very few that drag on their lives through feventy or eighty years. Old men can hardly find cotemporaries: a new race has ftarted up, and they are become almoft ftrangers in their own neighbourhoods. By the beft calculations that have been made, at least one half of mankind die under seven years old. They are little particles of life, fparks of being juft kindled and then quenched, or rather difmiffed from their fuffocating confinement in clay, that they may aspire, blaze out, and mingle with their kindred flames in the eternal world, the proper region, the native element of spirits. And how ftrongly does the fhortnefs of this life prove the certainty of another? Would it be worth while, would it be confiftent with the wifdom and goodness of the Deity, to fend fo many infant millions of reasonable creatures into this world, to live the low life of a vegetable or an animal for a few moments, or days, or years, if there were no other world for thefe young immortals to remove to, in which their powers might open, enlarge, and ripen ? Certainly men are not fuch infects of a day: certainly this is not the laft ftage of human nature: certainly there is an eternity; there is a heaven and a hell-otherwife we might expoftulate with our Maker, as David once did upon that fuppofition; Wherefore haft thou made all men in vain? Pfalm lxxxix. 47. In that awful eternity we must all be in a fhort time. Yes, my brethren, I may venture to prophecy that, in less than feventy or eighty years, the moft, if not all this affembly, muft be in fome apartment of that ftrange untried world. The merry, unthinking, irreligious multitude in that doleful manfion which I must mention, grating as the found is to their ears, and that is hell! * and the pious, peni Regions of forrow! doleful fhades! where Peace Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed With ever-burning fulphur unconfum'd. tent, MILTON, tent, believing few in the blifsful feats of heaven. There we shall refide a long, long time indeed; or rather through a long, endless eternity. Which leads me to add, That as the time of life is fhort absolutely in itself, fo especially it is fhort comparatively; that is, in comparison with eternity. In this comparison, even the long life of Methuselah and the antediluvians shrink into a mere point, a nothing. Indeed no duration of time, however long, will bear the comparifon. Millions of millions of years; as many years as the fands upon the fea fhore; as many years as the particles of duft in this huge globe of earth; as many years as the particles of matter in the vafter heavenly bodies that roll above us, and even in the whole material univerfe, all thefe years do not bear fo much proportion to eternity as a moment, a pulse, or the twinkling of an eye, to ten thousand ages ! not fo much as a hair's breadth to the distance from the fpot where we ftand to the fartheft ftar, or the remoteft corner of the creation. In fhort, they do not bear the leaft imaginable proportion at all; for all this length of years, though beyond the power of diftinct enumeration to us, will as certainly come to an end as an hour or a moment; and when it comes to an end, it is entirely and irrecoverably paft: but eternity (O the folemn tremendous found!) eternity will never, never, never come to an end! eternity will never, never, never be past! And is this eternity, this awful all-important eternity, entailed upon us! upon us the offspring of the duft! the creatures of yesterday! upon us who a little while ago were less than a gnat, lefs than a mote, were nothing! upon us who are every moment liable to the arreft of death, finking into the grave, and mouldering into duft one after another in a thick fucceffion! upon us whofe thoughts, and cares, and purfuits, are fo confined to time and earth, as if we had nothing to do with any thing beyond! O! is VOL. II. M this |