longer?" He sees no longer, do you say? He sees no longer I grant, by means of those visual rays which were formed in the retina of the eye; but he sees as do those pure intelligences which never were clothed with mortal flesh and blood. He hears no more through the medium of the action of the æthereal fluid, but he hears as a pure spirit. He thinks no longer through the intervention of the fibres of his brain; but he thinks from his own essence, because, being a pure spirit, the faculty of thought is essential to him, and inseparable from his nature.

SERMON XI.

On the Fear of Death.

PART II.

HEBREWS ii. 14, 15.

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their life-time subject to bondage.

IN discoursing from these words we observed, that death is rendered formidable to man, by a threefold consideration, and that three considerations of an opposite nature strip him of all his terrors, in the eye of the believer in Christ Jesus. Death is formidable, 1. Because of the veil which conceals from the eyes of the dying person, that state on which he is about to enter: 2. From remorse of conscience, which the recollection of past guilt excites: 3. From the loss of titles, honours, and all other earthly possessions.

In opposition to these, the death of Christ, 1. Removes the veil which conceals futurity, and constitutes an authentic proof of the immortality of the

soul: 2. It is a sacrifice presented to divine justice for the remission of sin: 3. It gives us complete assurance of a blessed eternity. These are the considerations which disarm death of his terror, to the dying believer.

We have finished what was proposed on the first particular, and have shewn, 1. That the doctrine of of Jesus Christ fully establishes the soul's immortality; and, 2. That the death of Jesus Christ is an irresistible proof of the truth of his doctrine.

But to no purpose would it be to fortify the mind against the apprehension of ceasing to exist, unless we are delivered from the terror of being for ever miserable. In vain is it to have demonstrated that our souls are immortal, if we are haunted with the well-grounded apprehension of their falling into the hands of that God who is a consuming fire. In this case, what constitutes a man's greatness would constitute his misery. Let us endeavour,

II. In the second place, to dissipate the dreadful apprehension which a guilty conscience awakens in the prospect of judgment to come. Having considered Jesus Christ as a martyr, who sealed with his own blood the doctrine which he preached, and his death as an argument in support of the immortality of the soul, taught in that doctrine: let us contemplate our divine Saviour as a victim, which God has substituted in our place, and his death as a sacrifice offered up to divine justice, for the expiation of our offences.

One of the principal dangers to be avoided in controversies, and particularly in that which we are go

ing to handle, is to imagine that all arguments are of equal force. Extreme care must be taken to assign to each its true limits, and to say, this argument proves thus far, that other goes so much farther. We must thus advance step by step up to truth, and form, of those arguments united, a demonstration so much the more satisfactory, in proportion as we have granted to those who dispute it, all that they could in reason ask. On this principle we divide our arguments into two classes. The first we propose only as presumptions in favour of the doctrine of the satisfaction. To the second we ascribe the solidity and weight of demonstration. Of the first class are the following.

1. We allege human reason as a presumptive argument in support of the doctrine which we maintain. We do not mean to affirm, that human reason derives from the stores of her own illumination the truth of this doctrine. So far from that, we confidently affirm, that this is one of the mysteries which are infinitely beyond the reach of human understanding. It is one of the things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, 1 Cor. ii. 9. But we say that this mystery presents nothing that shocks human reason, or that implies a shadow of contradiction. What do we believe? That God has united the human nature to the divine, in the person of Jesus Christ, in a manner somewhat resembling that in which he has united the body to the soul, in the person of man. say that this composition, (pardon the expression) this composition of Humanity and of Deity suffered

We