iJS Tlì$ AEAT1i OF MANKIND 1,1\1PROVED. [SEAM, XLI. a year, and buy, and sell, and get gain ; whereas ye knew not what will be on the morrow ? For what is your life? It is even a vapour, thatappeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away ; for that ye ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live to do this or that ; James iv. 13-15. And it is the same inference that holy David makes more than once upon a survey of the mortality of man, in the Psalms just before cited. " Lord, what wait I for ? My hope is in thee ; Ps. xxxix. 7. Happy is he that bath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God, who keepeth truth for ever;" Ps.. cxlvi. 5, 6. " The Lord is an everlasting friend, he lives when creatures die, and fulfils his word of truth, when the words of princes perish with their breath." 2. The death of mankind in general sliews us the dreadful evil and.. desert of sin. It discovers to us the awful holiness and terrible Majesty of God ; and it teaches us what a sublime value he puts upon his own law, and how fearfully he avenges the violation of it. I join these three things together, because they stand sp nearly connected in the divine economy. (1.) The universal .death of mankind shews us, what a dreadful and heinous evil there is in sin, and, what wide destruction it has deserved. By one man sin entered into the world; and death by sin, and so .death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; Itoni. v. 12. For the wages of sin is death, Rom. vi. 23. Man was made innocent, and while he continued obedient, he was immortal : Transgression and death came in together: A formidable pair ! Two dreadful names, big with mischief and ruin to human nature. When we see tbe..dying agonies of poor mankind, our fellow-creatures, our brethren in flesh and blood, let us remember the sin of our common father, that first sub- jected him and all his posterity to death; and let us reflect upon the dreadfirl evil that is contained in the nature of every sin ; for it deserves death at the hand of God. Alas, how often has the best of us deserved to die, for our transgressions have been multiplied without number. (2.) The.death of all mankind makes a solemn disco- very to us,pf the terrible Majesty of God and the justice that attends his government. He will not pass by the guilt of his rebellious creatures, without a due resentment 1
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