prayers and praises before the throne of mercy; you are doing that which is eminently fitted to increase your spiritual strength; and when you return to your dwellings, you will find the Bible there, which you can read and study for yourself: there, too, you may find the closet of prayer, where the gentlest whisper, or even the silent outgoings of the soul, are sure to find a domestic altar, from which a grateful offering ascends to Heaven, morning and evening: and when you go out into the world, you meet with others who are bound heavenward, with whom you can take sweet counsel, and who are glad to greet you as fellow-helpers unto the kingdom of God. In short, leaving out of view the special influences of God's Spirit, which are pledged to the Christian, you have all the external aids in the religious life that you could desire; and they are present with you always, so that you can use them at your pleasure. Can you contemplate these gracious assistances, Christian, without feeling strong? In the hour of temptation, in the hour of sorrow, in the hour when arduous duties press, what say you of the encouragement that you gather from looking to the closet, to the sanctuary, to the communion table, to all the means of grace, and reflecting that God has ordained them for the very purpose of insuring to you help, victory, salvation?

5. Christianity appeals to our gratitude by the beneficence which it exhibits. None but the frozen, the adamantine heart can be insensible to the bestowment of great favors. Who is that that has just gone away from your door pronouncing your name gratefully and with tears? It is a poor woman, to whom you have given a piece of bread to carry home to her half-starved children. Who is that individual whom perhaps you never saw before, who is pressing up to you with the face of a stranger and the heart of a friend, and who is struggling against his own emotions as he attempts to speak to you? It is one whom your charity rescued from the deepest degradation, and surrounded with advantages for intellectual and moral culture, which, by being faithfully improved, have made him a man-a useful man-perhaps even a great man. And who is that son of Africa, upon whose face sunbeams are playing while tears are streaming, as he falls at your feet and acts out feelings which his tongue cannot express? Why he is a man whom you have redeemed from slavery; and as you could not see him separated from his wife and children, you have redeemed them also; and he has come himself, and brought them along with him, to stand before you as the monuments of your generous interposition. And what is there, or rather what is there not, to awaken this same principle in the heart of the true believer toward his heavenly Benefactor? Christian, thou wast that slave;

and yet not that slave, but one whose bondage was infinitely more degrading and terrible. Thou wast a slave to thine evil passions; a slave to the false maxims of the world; a slave to the very prince of darkness; and yet thou wast willing to remain in slavery, although it must have its issue in an eternal death. God so loved thee that he gave his Son to redeem thee; and that redemption has involved the death of the cross; and now, instead of being a slave, thou art one of God's freemen; thou art walking at liberty even in this vale of tears; and the heavens will open soon to announce to thee that thy redemption is complete. Here, Christian, lies the grand secret of your strength. It is the love of Christ that constrains you. You look to the cross, and you say, "What do I not owe, what shall I not owe forever, to that all-gracious, all-suffering, Benefactor?" Your heart beats to loftier purposes, and your hands are strung with fresh vigor. I wonder not now at the triumph of martyrs. The love of Jesus is stronger than the consuming fire. That crucified, enthroned Saviour is the glorious object upon which their eye fastens; a sense of the blessings of his redemption overwhelms their grateful spirits, and their tongues move in rapture to his praise so long as they can move at all. Oh, they were never so strong as in the act of dying! and the reason is, that they never before had such a sense of what it was for their Redeemer to die for them.

6. And lastly: Christianity appeals to our holy emulation by the examples which it records. It results from the constitution of our nature, that examples, either good or bad, exert a prodigious influence; and no small part of what men do, or neglect to do, is in consequence of the examples with which they are brought in contact. Hence parents who look well to the interests of their children, endeavor, as far as possible, to surround them with good examples; and hence, too, our gracious Master has surrounded us, his weak and too often wayward followers, with many illustrious models of Christian character, that they may have their influence in helping us forward in our religious course. These examples show us in the most impressive manner what it is to which we are to aspire: they give us the practical embodiment of the great principles of our faith, and then they assure us that a commanding spiritual stature is attainable, inasmuch as it has already been attained. And finally, they seem to call upon us, perhaps from their daily walks of labor, perhaps from the silence of their graves, or the glory of their thrones, to rise up continually to a more vigorous tone of spiritual action. There are eminent saints now on earth, some no doubt within the range of your daily observation, whose example appeals to you with mighty power as often as you contemplate it. There is a yet greater

multitude in heaven: there are Abraham and Moses, and Isaiah and Paul-all the prophets and all the apostles, and a multitude who have gone since their day, some from the rack and the stake-all from a world of sorrow-all in a chariot of glory. All these are your examples, Christian; but I am not yet at the end; for above all and over all, is the incarnate Son of God himself, part of whose errand into the world was, to set us an example, that we should walk in his steps. And can we

keep these examples in our eye; can we look around us upon the devoted on earth, or look above us to the glorified in heaven, without earnest desires and diligent efforts to become like them? Hear what encouraging words the great apostle hath spoken-"Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us; looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of the throne of God."

Now, just review the ground we have gone over, looking at the several points as they have been successively developed, and see whether it is not as clear as the light, that Christianity is the depository of an all-quickening energy. It appeals to our sense of obligation by the authority which it claims. It appeals to our fears by the terrors which it announces. It appeals to our hopes by the rewards which it proposes. It appeals to our confidence by the aids which it proffers. It appeals to our gratitude by the beneficence which it exhibits. It appeals to our holy emulation by the examples which it records. Is it to be wondered at, then, that it accomplishes such mighty results? Does not the Christian stand acquitted of arrogance, when he exclaims with the great apostle, I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me?"

How glorious is the triumph which arises out of our subject to true Christianity! The test by which Christianity offers to be tried, is the power that dwells in it. You have seen what it can accomplish, and what it can resist, and what it can endure; and you have seen, moreover, that it accomplishes nothing, resists nothing, endures nothing without being able to give a substantial reason for it. I will say nothing here of the various forms of Paganism, ancient and modern; for notwithstanding they have often rendered their votaries mighty to suffer, yet it was by means that not only contradict but outrage all the dictates of sober reason; and among ourselves, at least, there are none who will claim for them a divine original. But let Deism, or any other false system, be brought to this test, and see whether the

genuine gospel does not cast it into utter darkness. Reigning spirits of error, we challenge you to show us what you have done, that we may thereby know what you are. Show us your long list of martyrs, who have glorified your systems with their expiring breath, and who have felt that those systems were a cordial to their souls while their bodies lay writhing upon the rack. Show us the great multitude of benefactors to the world who have been found in your ranks; especially those who have counted it a privilege to live and even to die for the spiritual interests of their fellow-men. Show us your missionaries, to whom the exile from country, and the separation from friends, and the exposure to a sickly climate, and all the perils among heathen, are accounted as nothing, in comparison with the grand object of causing the wilderness to blossom, and of bringing many sons unto glory. Show us these fruits of your systems, these monuments of their inherent power; bring forth your men of moral might, your noble army of martyrs, or else acknowledge that you are leaning upon a prop that is nothing better than air. Or rather take refuge in the sanctuary of a pure Christianity; and become yourselves not only the depositories but the channels of divine strength; for then you shall get rid of this degrading weakness, and through Christ shall be able to do all things.

I thank the great Apostle for having penned, and the greater Saviour for having dictated, that noble declaration, "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ;" for here is the point at which all the light, and strength, and triumph of the church are centred. When I feel oppressed with a sense of weakness, hither I can come and feel strong. When I am growing timid in the prospect of danger, hither I can come and feel courageous. When I see the waves of adversity, mountain high, fiercely approaching me, let me station myself beneath the cross, and be as quiet as a child. And there too let me stand, and gird myself for a conflict with the last enemy: if the spirit of the cross may but come over me, to death's terrors I will oppose a serene and triumphant smile. Oh, brethren, the cross is but another word for Christianity itself: by its healing, strengthening virtues, may we all be nurtured for immortality!

THE CHARACTER AND DEATH OF DAVID.*

"David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep."-ACTS 13: 36.

THE essential distinction between the righteous and the wicked,-between those who serve God and those who serve him not-consists in the difference of their governing aims. How widely soever the wicked may differ among themselves, and how much soever some of them may resemble the friends of God, they are all agreed in disregarding his authority and in supreme devotion to their own interests. In native disposition, endowments, education, pursuits, and circumstances, the righteous may greatly differ, but they are all agreed in cheerfully bowing to God's supremacy. They are not governed by a regard to their own interest or pleasure, but to his glory. The influence of those who thus live, when gifted in intellect and elevated in station, is like that of angels, in their visits to our world, commissioned to scatter blessings among its sinful, perishing population. Such was the predominant influence of the patriarch David :—such was that of the venerable servant of God, whose remains are now before us, who bore the name, and the prominent traits of whose character strikingly resembled those of the sweet psalmist and king of Israel. On this occasion, therefore, it cannot be irrelevant, and I hope it will not be unprofitable, briefly to contemplate the statement in our text, concerning the life and death of David, of whom honorable mention is often made in God's holy oracles.

His character is given in the short but comprehensive

Funeral Sermon of the late Dr. Porter, of Catskill, N. Y.