Further. No man dieth to himself. If we die, wwe are the Lord's. How absolute soever the dominion of one man over another may be, there is a moment in which both are on a level; the moment comes when we die. Death delivers a slave from the power of a tyrant, under whose rigor he hath spent his life in groans. Death terminates all the relations, that subsist between men in this life. But the relation of dependence, which subsists between the Creator and his creatures, is an eternal relation. That world, into which we enter when we die, is a part of his empire, and is as subject to his laws as that into which we entered when we were born. During this life, the Supreme Governor hath riches and poverty, glory and ignominy, cruel tyrants and clement princes, rains and droughts, raging tempests and refreshing breezes, air wholesome and air infected, famine and plenty, victories and defeats, to render us happy or miserable. After death he hath absolution and condemnation, a tribunal of justice and a tribunal of mercy, angels and devils, a river of pleasure and a lake burning with fire and brimstone, hell, with its horrors and heaven with its happiness, to render us happy or miserable as he pleaseth.

These reflections are not quite sufficient to make us feel all our dependence. Our vanity is mortified, when we remember, that what we enjoy is not ours: but it is sometimes, as it were, indemnified by observing the great means, that God employs to deprive us of our enjoyments. God hath, in general, excluded this extravagant motive to pride. He hath attached our felicity to one fibre, to one caprice, to one grain of sand, to objects the least likely, and seemingly the least capable, of influencing our destiny.

On what is your high idea of yourself founded?

On your genius? And what is necessary to reduce the finest genius to that state of melancholy, or madness, of which I just now spoke? Must the earth quake? Must the sea overflow its banks? Must the heavens kindle into lightning and resound in thunder? Must the elements clash, and the powers of nature be shaken? No; there needs nothing but the displacing of one little fibre in brain!

your

On what is your high idea of yourself founded? On that self-complacence, which fortune, rank, and pleasing objects, that surround you, seem to contribute to excite? And what is necessary to dissipate your self-complacence? Must the earth tremble? Must the sea overflow its banks? Must heaven arm itself with thunder and lightning? Must all nature be shaken? No; one caprice is sufficient. An appearance, under which an object presents itself to us, or, rather a color, that our imagination lends it, banisheth self-complacence, and, lo! the man just now agitated with so much joy, is fixed in a black, a deep despair!

On what is your lofty idea of yourself founded? On your health? But what is necessary to deprive you of your health? Earthquakes? Armies? Innundations? Must nature return to its chaotic state? No; one grain of sand is sufficient! That grain of sand, which in another position was next to nothing to you, and was really nothing to your felicity, becomes in its present position a punishment, a martyrdom, a hell!

People sometimes speculate the nature of those torments, which divine justice reserves for the wicked. They are less concerned to avoid the pains of hell, than to discover wherein they consist. They ask, what fuel can supply a fire, that will never be extinguished. Vain researches! The principle in

my text is sufficient to give me frightful ideas of hell. We are in a state of entire dependence on the Supreme Being; and to repeat it again, one single grain of sand, which is nothing in itself, may become in the hands of the Supreme Being, a punishment, a martyrdom, a hell in regard to us. What dependence! Whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord's. This is the primitive condition of a christian.

II. Our text points out the engagements of a christian. Let us abridge our reflections. Remark the state in which Jesus Christ found us; what he performed to deliver us from it; and under what conditions we enter on and enjoy this deliverance.

1. In what state did Jesus Christ find us, when he came into our world? I am sorry to say, the affected delicacy of the world, which increaseth as its irregularities multiply, obligeth me to suppress part of a metaphorical description, that the holy Spirit hath given us in the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel. Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an. Hittite, saith he to the church. When thou wast born no eye pitied thee, to do any thing unto thee; but thou wast cast out in the open air, to the loathing of thy person, in the day that thou wast born. I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, and I said unto thee, when thou wast in thy blood, Live. I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness; yea I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, and thou becamest mine, ver. 3, &c.

Let us leave the metaphor, and let us confine our attention to the meaning. When Jesus Christ came into the world, in what state did he find us? Descended from a long train of ancestors in rebellion against the laws of God, fluctuating in our

ideas, ignorant of our origin and end, blinded by our prejudices, infatuated by our passions, having no hope, and being without God in the world, Eph. ii. 12. condemned to die, and reserved for eternal flames. From this state Jesus Christ delivered us, and brought us into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, Rom. viii. 21. in order to enable us to participate the felicity of the blessed God, by making us partakers of the divine nature, 2 Pet. i. 4. By a divine deliverance so glorious, doth not the deliverer obtain peculiar rights over us?

Remark, further, on what conditions Jesus Christ hath freed you from your miseries, and you will perceive, that ye are not your own. What means the morality that Jesus Christ enjoined in his gospel? What vows were made for each of you at your baptism? What hast thou promised at the Lord's table? In one word, to what authority didst thou submit by embracing the gospel? Didst thou say to Jesus Christ, Lord! I will be partly thine, and partly mine own? To thee I will submit the opinions of my mind: but the irregular dispositions of my heart I will reserve to myself. I will consent to renounce my vengeance: but thou shalt allow me to retain my Delilah and my Drusilla. For thee I will quit the world and dissipating pleasures: but thou shalt indulge the visionary and capricious flow of my humor. On a christian festival I will rise into transports of devotion; my countenance shall emit rays of a divine flame; my eyes shall sparkle with seraphic fire, my heart and my flesh shall cry out for the living God, Psal. Ixxxiv. 2. but when I return to the world, I will sink into the spirit of the men of it; I will adopt their maxims, share their pleasures, immerse myself in their conversation; and thus I will be alternately cold and hot, Rev. iii. 15. a christian and a hea

then, an angel and a devil. Is this your idea of christianity? Undoubtedly it is that, which many of our hearers have formed; and which they take too much pains to prove, by the whole course of their conversation. But this is not the idea which the inspired writers have given us of christianity'; it is not that, which, after their example, we have given you. Him only I acknowledge for a true christian, who is not his own, at least, who continually endeavors to eradicate the remains of sin, that resist the empire of Jesus Christ. Him alone I acknowledge for a true christian, who can say with St. Paul, although not in the same degree, yet with equal sincerity, I am crucified with Christ s nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life, which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me, Gal. ii. 20.

Consider, thirdly, what it cost Jesus Christ to deliver you from your wretched state. Could our freedom have been procured by a few emotions of benevolence, or by an act of supreme power? In order to deliver us from our griefs, it was necessary for him to bear them; to terminate our sorrows he must carry them, (according to the language of a prophet) to deliver us from the strokes of divine justice he must be stricken and smitten of God, Isa. liii. 4. I am aware, that one of the most deplorable infirmities of the human mind is to become insensible to the most affecting objects by becoming familiar with them. The glorified saints, we know, by contemplating the sufferings of the Saviour of the world, behold objects, that excite eternal adorations of the mercy of him, who loved them, and washed them from their sins in his own blood, and made them kings, and priests unto God his Father, Rev. i. 5, 6. but in our present state