glory, which cannot descend after him to illuminate the solitary cell. The inside of the royal sepulchre is as dark to the interred king, as the intermingling mould is to the meanest corpse; and mortality is preached alike from both. None have a glorious passage through the vale of the shadow of death, but such as walk in the light of his countenance, whose beams dispel the glooms of death, and guide them through the darksome step to bright eternal day!

Again, in this man (and a few days will realize the scene) I see myself dead, buried, and forgot. And however fond our friends may be of us when alive, yet when we breathe our last, we must be buried out of their sight. O to have an interest in that best of friends, in that sweetest love, who, when the whole world casts us out, will receive us to himself.

MEDITATION XXX.

THE DEATH OF THE WICKED.

THE wicked and the righteous live a different life,

and die a different death. Have not mine eyes beheld the melancholy scene?-one posting into the unseen world, unprepared and thoughtless, unless conscience, though a long slumbèrer, be unwelcomely awaked at last. But perhaps he may sleep on in carnal security, till, stripped of flesh, he plunge into the raging flames! Have not mine eyes seen a dying person (methinks I see him still) tossing and tumbling under the gnawing pangs of some acute disease; sleep debarred from his eyes, on whose lids sat the

shadow of death, calling often, and in a melting manner, for help from his physician, but in vain! Every power is invaded, every part besieged, and death denies a moment's respite from the war. Yet we hear not one word of his eternal state, of his immortal soul; nor one request for mercy, from God as reconciled in his Son. The world, when well, was all his care; nor can he alter, when sick, his favourite schemes. As he listed he lived, and as he lived he dies. As the tree grows, so it falis. Then máy I live to God, and die in God;-grow to grace, and fall to glory!

Friends and spectators are very much concerned to see him writhing under the agonies of death, and sympathize with every groan; but for the most part look no further, nor pity his soul, that is in a little to fall into the hands of the living God. But the combat is increased, the attack is visibly more stout, and strength to resist is sensibly decayed. His friends, careful but too late, call mightily for prayer now; as if God could be forced into friendship with the man, at his last moments, who has been all his life his foe, or heaven won for him who never sought for it; yet prayer is our duty at the last, but dangerous to delay to the last. At length, amidst insupportable agonies, he yieldeth up the ghost, and is no more. Attending friends pour out their sorrows in a flood of tears, yet are not a little glad to see his suffering body lie at rest; and then they dress his stiffening limbs, and wound his lifeless clay. They are fondly ignorant of the state of his soul, and gladly hope the best. But will ye talk deceitfully for mercy, to the injury of adorable justice? At death, shall heaven be his possession, who would not have a gift of it on earth?

Shall he dwell with God in eternity, who walked contrary to God in time, nor repented at death?

All is hushed, and those concerned are quiet again; the tears dry up, and it is irreligious boldness to look beyond the grave. But mine imagination follows him. Forbear, presumptuous thought, and mind thine own concerns! Ah! I must peep into eternity, and, through the telescope of revelation, see him brought before the bar, and found to have lived and died without God! Oh! his fearful doom! vengeance awakes against him, the vengeance of eternal fire, and he is thrown into the flaming gulf of hell, where deep he sinks, below my venturous thought. His friends. refresh themselves, and comfort one another, till they recover their wonted mirth and jocundity; but not a drop of water to cool his scorched tongue! The ensuing night shall partly repay the watching and wakeful nights they have had about their friend; but his eyes shall never shut, but keep open with ghastly stare, looking for the wrath, however much he feel, which is still "the wrath to come." Their sorrow gradually abates, but his anguish is ever on the inOur remembrance of him rots into oblivion, as his clay crumbles into corruption; but wrath never forgets its prey, vengeance never forgets to afflict.

crease.

Still my sympathy would penetrate the dark abyss, and look with pity on my damned acquaintance. Poor soul! where is all thy usual mirth and merry jests? are they now for ever fled, and thine uninterrupted exercise, unceasing howlings, and unavailing complaints? Now thou art where sympathy avails thee not, where pity cannot enter; no purgatory this, through which thou shalt one time or other pass; it is thy final doom, thy fixed eternal state. My trou

H

bled thoughts are weary among the shriekings of the damned, nor longer can abide among these shades of horror. Yea, now I am not bound to sympathize with the eternal, irreconcileable enemies of Jehovah and the Lamb. The day of grace is past, the hour of mercy over; sin is finished, and hath brought forth eternal death; despair is final, enmity consummate, and the breach is wide as the sea of eternity; who can heal it?

Let me turn, then, my voice unto the sons of men, A few moments, and your state, like his, is fixed; will ye, then, adventure not only to sport, but to sin away your time, which is so precious, and in which you are to make sure an happy eternity? There are no offers of salvation beyond the grave; there is no godly repentance in the pit. Now your misery has the heavenly balm of God's mercy, and here mercy rejoiceth against judgment; but there your misery shall not, even in its longest duration and highest degree, excite mercy, but rather awake fiercer wrath; while in your agonies you blaspheme the awful avenger, who in the destruction of mercy-despisers shall rest satisfied. Then give your eyes no sleep, nor slumber to your eye-lids, till you find a dwelling in your heart for God, and a chamber in his promise, an interest in his Son for your soul, that you may be hid in the day of visitation, and in the desolation that shall come from far.

MEDITATION XXXI.

THE TRAVELLER.

GENTLEMEN of taste go frequently abroad; and

it is so much in vogue to wander over some part of the world once in life, that he is hardly accounted an accomplished gentleman that has not spent a part of his time in climes and countries remote from that which gave him birth; whence he returns rich in observations, and mightily improved, having made an accurate survey among whatever people he came, whether as to the genius, stature, complexion, religion, laws, government, rites, and dress of the natives; or the merchandise, produce, rivers, soil, air, language, &c. of the country. And does this render men more agreeable company, to have glanced from head to foot, as it were, over only one page of the great volume of creation? for what is our earth in comparison of God's handy works ?

His observations must be few, since the shortness of his life forbids him to stay long abroad, unless he intends to drop his dust in the tour; which unhappy event has many a time sent sorrow across the seas, for the dear youth that shall see his native land no

more.

Now, to compare earthly things with heavenly, how accomplished must the soul be, that shall be an eternal searcher into the perfections of God, an entranced beholder of the beauties of paradise; that shall take a tour through the fields of bliss, and be a traveller in the region of glory! If this mole-hill heap be surprising for many things found therein, as mountains towering to the clouds, volcanoes vomit