194 THE DEATH OF MANKIND IMPROVED. [SEEM. XLI. ful part of God's lower creation, and is sending thou- sands daily, to the pit ofcorruption and noisome darkness. It is sin has filled our nature with diseases, and sowndig, poisonous seeds of mortality and death in every son and daughter of Adam. A malignant and fatal poison, that has destroyed all the nations upon earth, ,and buried them under ground, heaps upon heaps, in above a hun- dred successions ! But I now go on to another distinct lesson, that the death of all mankind teaches us. 3. It informs us, in a very sensible and affecting man- 'ner, that we Ourselves must shortly die, and awakens the soul to actual preparation for its departure. Heb. ix. 27_ " Itisappointed for all men once to die, and after death the judgment :" Joshua and David, saints and kings, tell us, they " go the way of all the earth :" " The grave is the house appointed for all the living;" Job xxx. 23. When we behold one after another, made of the same flesh and blood as we are, going down to the dust in a long continual succession, we have a solemn warn- ing, that we must shortly follow : There is no ransom in . this case, no hope ofsafety, no door of escape, and as Solomon expresses it, " there is no discharge---in this war ;" Eccl. viii. 8. A:true christian takes notice of this with a pious awe upon his spirit; and when he is ready to grow drowsy and secure, the sight ofa funeral, or a grave, shall rouse him out of his sleepy temper, and awaken religion into life again : When he hears of a neighbour's death, he asks his own soul, " Art thou ready ? For the next summons may come to call thee away into the world of spirits, to stand before God the Judge ofall." Thus the child of. God reaps some advantage by the spreadingempire of death over all mankind ; he makes -a sacred, improvement of the terrible waste that the king of .terrors has made over all the earth : He learns the vanity and emptiness of man in his best estate : He grows hum- ble and dependant on the eternal God : He reads the dreadful evil of sin on every tomb - stone The death of every man calls hifn aloud to prepare for his own, and to be in actual readiness for his entrance into the invisible world: Happy souls, who take this warning, and stand ever prepared! 4
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