shameth all the philosophy in the world. Many of these ancient philosophers, who reasoned admirably in favour of virtue, and particularly of truth, honesty, and sincerity, are believed to have maintained one eternal Deity in private, and yet most disingenuously complied with the abominable idolatry of the multitude in public; while those who depended on the grace of Jesus Christ, showed an integrity in their zeal for the one true God, which death and tortures could not overcome; they forced their way through all the cruelties that malice could inflict, till they spread the knowledge of the true God and his laws through the known world: whereas, for all the speculations of the philosophers, the world might nave been lying as it was to this day.

Religion prepares us for all events. If we succeed-it keeps our prosperity from destroying us: if we suffer-it preserves us from fainting in the day of adversity. It turns our losses into gains; it exalts our joy into praises; it makes prayers of our sighs-and in all the uncertainties of time, and changes of the world, it sheds on the mind a 66 peace which passeth all understanding." It unites us to each other-not only as creatures, but as Christians; not only as strangers and pilgrims upon earth, but as heirs of glory, honour, and immortality.-For you must separate-it is useless to keep back the mortifying truth. It was the condition upon which your union was formed. O man! it was a mortal finger upon which you placed the ring, that vain emblem of perpetuity. O woman! it was a dying hand that imposed it. After so many mutual and growing attachments, to separate !-What is to

be done here? O Religion, Religion, come and relieve us in a case where every other assistance fails. Come and teach us not to wrap up our chief happiness in the creature. Come and bend our wills to the pleasure of the Almighty. Come and enable us to say, "It is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth him good; the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord." Come and tell us that they are disposed of infinitely to their advantage; that the separation is temporary; that a time of reunion will come; that we shall see their faces, and hear their voices again.

Take two Christians who have been walking together like "Zechariah and Elizabeth in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." Is the connexion dissolved by death? No. We take the Bible along with us, and inscribe on their tomb, "Pleasant in life and in death not divided." Is the one removed before the other? He becomes an attraction to the other; he draws him forward, and is waiting to "receive him into everlasting habitations."-Let us suppose a pious family reuniting together, after following each other successively down to the grave. How unlike every present meeting! Here our intercourse is chilled with the certainty of separation. There we shall meet to part no more; we shall be for ever with each other, and for ever with the Lord. Now affliction often enters our circle, and the distress of one is the concern of all. Then we shall "rejoice with them that rejoice," but not 'weep with them that weep," for "all tears shall be wiped from our eyes, and the days of our mourning shall be ended."

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Come then, my dear friends, and invite the re

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ligion of the blessed Jesus-this one thing needful-this universal benefactor of mankind. has "the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come"-It secures our individual and our relative happiness-It brings peace into our bosoms, and joy into our dwellings. Let us resolve to pursue it ourselves; let us enforce it upon our connexions. Let us dedicate our tabernacles to God; offer the morning and evening sacrifice of prayer and of praise: and whatever be the determination of others, let us say for ourselves, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."

DEATH THE PATH TO GLORY.

DEATH to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his father's house, into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining. O may the rays and splendours of my heavenly apartment shoot far downward, and gild the dark entry with such a cheerful gleam, as to banish every fear when I shall be called to pass through!

HEAVEN OPENED.

THE curtain which overspread the invisible world is at length drawn aside, and we behold our great High Priest entered "into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." We hear the songs of the redeemed, expressive of their gratitude to Him who loved them, and washed them from their sins, in his own blood,

and hath made them kings and priests to God. We see our friends in Jesus from time to time forming the blessed assembly. We hear the voice of their Saviour, and our Saviour, encouraging us "not to sorrow as others who have no hope," informing us, that the resurrection of Christ, attested as it is by the most infallible proofs, is not more certain, than the resurrection of those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. We are assured, that the sickness which has deprived us of the society of our beloved Christian friends, is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby; that believers, when absent from the body, are present with the Lord; that when committing their remains to the dust, we are sowing the seed of a glorious harvest, and that our sorrow shall ere long be turned into joy. Such is the "strong consolation" under all the sorrows of life, which God has given to those "who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before them." "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." To believers it shall be a morning without clouds; for "the Lord shall be their everlasting light; and the days of their mourning shall be ended."

A PICTURE OF A WORLDLY-MINDED OLD AGE

Or all obstructions to a religious spirit, worldlymindedness is the most inveterate. Every day of his life who is under its reigning control, taketh hold on its brother's heel; and they are twins in their undivided pursuits. Night unto night teacheth knowledge, but not of God. Time,

enjoyment, worldly homage, enforce the soul into one full channel, and the sluices towards heaven are left dry. And of all habits this is the meanest and most unworthy of man's immortal lights. How undignified the old age of such a man! The old hills are renewed with verdure. Even the lava-courses are hid in time beneath vineyards. The dismantled tower of ages gains in veneration what it loses by literal decay. The pious old man bears on the venerable tablet of his forehead shadowed glimpses of the coming heaven. The old worldling-alas! it is he; of him is the contrast. There is no redeeming symbol or circumstance in his old age: The eye of cunning still at its post almost outliving decay : The old hand almost conquering by its unabated eagerness the palsy of years-trembling in both; still closing over gain; mocking, in the stiffness of its muscles, the being's protracted delight to count over so much money his own, or sorrow to give so much away.

If we follow him still-there is something more imposing in that dead face of his, than if it bore the tread of majestic armies going out to conquer for him a kingdom and wealth beyond that of the famed Lydian king. It belongs to Eternity, and worlds could not re-purchase it to live. His worldly hand hath gained an involuntary majesty it belongs to the resurrection day: it hath taken the carnest of futurity, and closed solemnly over it.

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We have passed an intermediate stage, the approach and advent of death;-the day of God's Spirit, mighty in extremity, tearing up old habits of the mind;-or as a probable issue of a worldly life, and worthy of its tenor, the doomed being