صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

me respectfully and affectionately ask you, Do you find these blessed fruits to be the ornament and comfort of your old age? Examine, I beseech you, and see. Would to God you may not any of you find yourselves defective or weak in any of these connected and essential graces. Like the limbs of the body, they have a vital connexion; if one be absent, the rest languish, and probably die.-You will permit me to remark, that in the aged should be found the highest degrees of christian character; and will not the final Judge expect to find them? For you have had a long life of privileges, and have been long in the finer's fire, and should now appear as silver"seven times purified." What evenness of temper, and benevolence of disposition to all around you, should now appear! No sufferings, to which you may be called for the trial of your faith, should be allowed to provoke complaint or an impatient feeling, or strike from you a spark of anger. Your gentle manners should win the reverence, and be the example of all around you. In the personal virtues you should excel. You have lived too long not to have seen the fatal effects of intemperance, and a neglect of self government. Avarice has been thought the peculiar vice of age. It is strange, if it is. Why should they covet what they cannot hold; and grow more than ever attached to what they are on the point of leaving? If it be the vice of age, guard against it. Remember that one essential virtue in the crown of the hoary head, is a diminished esteem of the world, and of its objects. Let me earnestly exhort you to improve your time

to the benefit of others. The exhortation of the Apostle is peculiarly suited to you-" Let your conversation be always with grace." One word of profaneness or of levity grossly misbecomes your age. What! shall those lips be opened with an oath, which shall soon be sealed in death? Rather let your speech be like that of aged Moses—“ My doctrine,” says he,“shall drop as the rain, and distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass." In a word, your whole deportment should be more heavenly than earthly. The language, the affections, the devout employments of the blessed in heaven, should be yours. Keep the blessed gospels open before you continually, those precious mirrors, which reflect the image of Jesus, to which you must be conformed. Let him, in all his offices, be precious to you, as he will, if you believe; and desire nothing so much as at last to sleep in Jesus, and obtain a part in the first resurrection. And now, my aged friends, possibly it is the last time I may address you all. God grant that you may bear much and precious fruit in old age; and be gathered in, as a shock of corn, which is ripe unto the harvest. Farewell. I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among them which are sanctified. Amen.

SERMON XII.

TRANSLATION OF ELIJAH.

II. KINGS ii. 11, 12.

And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that behold there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof." And he saw him no more; and he took hold of his own clothes and rent them into pieces.

The event related in these words is one of the most memorable and important in the Old Testament history; and was doubtless to answer highly important purposes. It has pleased God, not only to give intimations of a future state in the early ages of the world, but a sort of demonstration and exemplification of it, once in the patriarchal age by the translation of Enoch, and again in the period of the Levitical church, by the translation of Elijah. So in the brighter day of the gospel, when the doctrine of immortality and the re

surrection of the body were distinctly taught, this same species of demonstration was given, and that in a more glorious manner, and to many witnesses, in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, in his appearance to his disciples, his conversations with them, and ultimate instructions to them during forty days, and then in his visible ascension into heaven, a cloud of glory receiving him out of their sight. This practical connexion of earth with heaven, this visible transition of human beings from the one to the other, is interesting in the highest degree to mortals, and convincing too, as the apostle confidently concludes "As Jesus died and rose again, even so them, who sleep in Jesus, will God bring with him.”

We have a very interesting, and, I pray God, it may prove an edifying subject in the passage of sacred history before us. The conduct of Elisha on the occasion answered to the extraordinary nature of it. He said little, and what he uttered was in short and broken sentences. His emotions were evidently unutterable— My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof." Let us consider this passionate exclamation of the prophet, in connexion with the concise history of this memorable event, and conceive, if we can, the impressive considerations which called it forth.

66

As the prophet was the favored spectator of all the circumstances of Elijah's ascension, and also was forewarned of the event, it may be supposed that he exclaimed,

1. From an exulting persuasion of the immortal and blessed state, to which he was rising.

Although life and immortality, in a manner the most incontestable, were brought to light by Jesus Christ, in the gospel, it seems strange that any should have embraced the opinion that the scriptures of the Old Testament supply no substantial testimonies of the future state. Waving to mention texts, obvious to all who are familiar with the Bible, I may venture to rest the point on the translation of Enoch and Elijah. This distinction of those two men from all others, cannot have been designed merely as the reward of their faith and piety. Why then did it please God to translate them, "that they should not see death," as the writer of the Hebrews mentions? May we not confidently say, to give assurance of a future state? I believe it will be readily conceded, that in no other way could the important truth be so convincingly taught. Enoch's translation is related in few words. It is probable, however, that they were witnesses of it, and that it was the subject of much remark at the time, as the faith of the event was preserved in the world by tradition, and the record of Moses. This signal event was a merciful appointment of God at that particular time. The fruits of the first transgression had been manifested by death, and the early world was overspread with increasing guilt. Something seemed necessary to revive the drooping spirits of the righteous, and to encourage them to stem the rising torrent of corruption. No method could be so efficient, to call their attention to a future world of retri

« السابقةمتابعة »