190 'THE DEATH OP MANKIND IMPROVED. (SEAM. XLI. First, The death of mankind in general shall be made profitable to believers. The death of all the sons and daughters of Adam, shall promote the improvement of the children of God, in knowledge, grace, and holiness ; for it instructs them in three most useful lessons. 1. It gives them a most powerful and sensible lecture on the vanityof man. A burying-place filled with tombs, is a lively book of human frailty: It repeats the melan- choly lesson in every leaf. Each little grave-stone be- comes a preacher of vanity to the living, even in the profound silence of the dead. This is the doctrine of every rising hillock, this is the universal theme : And every stately monument there strikes the beholder with the same mortifying truth ; though perhaps it swells with many pompous titles and images of honour. And this lesson ofvanity stands written there still in fair and inde- lible characters, though the name of the dead, and 'all their praises be quite worn out. Dust and ashes, even without an inscription, and without a monument, are si- lent but powerful teachers. Alas, what is man in his best estate! A poor mortal dying creature ! When we read the histories of past ages and foreign nations, and find that those whole nations and ages are all dead, and mingled with the dust, and even those, who once made a great bustle and figure in this world, are now but an empty name, we cry out, What vain creatures we are !" When we behold our neighbours and our acquaintance on the right-hand, and on the left, dropping away all round us; when we see one following another daily down to the grave of silence, it is a very natural and just reflection_; " Alas ! how frail is man !" When we behold the young, the healthy, the fair, and the strong, the rich, and the powerful, together with the poor, the feeble, and the slave, all yielding to the cómmon law of death, and turning into earth and rotten- ness, we have just occasion to cry out, " What a vain empty thing is human nature, 'evenrhe best of it: A piece. of pretty mouldering clay : These bodies of ours are fine and curious engines but made of the dust, and to dust they return again.," This is the common state, situation, and viewof things in all seasons, and in every' generation. But when we
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