They reft from their labors, from their toils, from their fins, from their temptations, from their fervices, from their fufferings in the world-their works follow them as the foundation of their eternal felicity in the kingdom of Heaven.

I. In the first place, the happiness of the pious in the future flate may be confidered as a delightful reft from the neceffary evils and fufferings of the prefent life.

The pilgrimage through which man is deftined to pass, is befet with dangers, and exposed to almoft continual caufes of affliction and pain. However we may attempt to exagerate the enjoyments of the world, or paint them in the delufive colouring which the imagination is prone to give to the pleasures of sense; certain it is that the moft virtuous, and the most happy of men, are agitated with innumerable folicitudes, and have innumerable miseries to deplore, before they fubmit to death the laft of human miferies upon earth. Youth, which is ever fanguine and full of hopes, may not feel-profperity, which is too often blind and delirious, may deny the reallity

of this representation; but time will verify it to all men.-Has not time verified it already? Who is there who can say that he is happy? He only hopes to be fo. It is hope, not poffeffion, that forms the principal happiness of life. Were we cut off from the resource, and, may I not call it, the fallacious folace of hope, the world would have little left by which to attach us to it. When we confider how much we fuffer in the present flate, from the errors and the weakness of the understanding-from the heart, that anxious feat of fo many irregular appetites, and tumultuous paffions-from want-from the hatred or contempt of others-from the lofs, or the afflictions of our friends-from reverses of fortunefrom disappointed expectations-from pains and diseases that prey upon the bodyfrom fecret griefs that undermine and con fume the health-from the murderous weapons of avowed enmity-from the arrows shot in the dark by envy, calumny, and perfidious friendship-What a wretched habitation is the earth? What a defirable retreat is the grave? Death yields us, at last, a delightful reft from fo many evils. It

breaks from man the fetters by which he is enchained to his miferies.

As thefe miferies flow from fin as their primary cause; so fin itself is esteemed by a good man, the greatest of his evils. From its hated and lamented tyranny, he finds in death a complete and eternal reft. He is delivered from temptations that fo frequently harraffed him, that put his virtue to the most painful proofs, and often fhook it to the foundations-he is freed from the errors and prejudices that had covered his mind with diftreffing clouds, which perplexed and obfcured to him the law of his duty -he is forever purified from those frailties and corruptions which, notwithstanding his fanctification, fill adhered to him in this world, wounded his peace, and daily penetrated his heart with grief at the throne of grace. In the he grave puts off this body of fin and death, and his foul, admitted to its heavenly reft, has no more pains to endure, no more conflicts with the world, and its own rebellious paffions to maintain, no more imperfections to fill it with regret or to cover it with fhame, no more wants to fatisfy, no more evils to fuffer,no more tears to fhed.

No more fhall he offend God, infinitely holy and good, whom he adored and loved, even in those moments when the frailties of his nature led him into fin. No more fhall he be exposed to the fecret fnares, or open affaults of temptation, nor to those invitations and opportunities fo dangerous to the paffions. Freed from the irregular impulses of the fenfes, of the imagination, of the heart, and delivered from an impure and imperfect nature, he fhall fin no more.From an elevated point of view, looking back on all the journey of life,contemplating its evils, and its dangers, which he has juft efcaped-its follies, its offences, and its falls which have fo often diffolved him in repentance before the footftool of divine mercy, with what unfpeakable fatisfaction will he fee himself arrived at a state of everlasting repose from all his fufferings, and his fears, and placed, by the power and grace of God, in a happy and eternal impotence of finning!

I add, that the believer in dying, forfakes this wretched world, in which he had lived, in fubmiffion to the will of God, as in a strange land, and arrives at

his proper home; that land of peace and reft which he had fo long fought to find, and to which he was continually tending in the affections and defires of his heart.The earth, to a good man, is a state of exile from all that he moft fervently loves, and from the fources of his dearest pleasures. He is furrounded with all the fatigues, and anxieties, the diftreffes and wants which accompany that afflicted condition; and from them all he gains, at death, a delightful repofe in the bofom of his heavenly country. The children of this world, enflaved to their appetites, whofe pleasures do not rise above its fenfual and corrupted fphere, cannot enter into these ideas. The prefent life bounds their enjoyments and their wifhes; and this world in which they would be willing to live forever, they cannot regard as a place of exile. But thofe righteous fouls who thirst after immortal perfection, and continually aspire after nearer accefs and conformity to God, feel themselves to be only pilgrims and Strangers upon earth, and while they pass through this vale of tears, they figh for a better, that is an heavenly country-for that city that hath eternal foundations, whofe