23 I?I:'ATI4 A BLESSING TO THE SAINTS. [SEItM. XLIII. ject of discourse with various inferences, of which soma may be called doctrinal, and others practical. The doctrinal inferences are these : Inference L How different is the judgment of sense, from the judgment of faith ! The eye of, sense looks upon death as a sovereign and cruel tyrant, reigning over all nature and nations, and making dreadful havoc among mankind, as it were, after his own will and plea- sure; but faith beholds it as a slave subdued to the power of Christ, and constrained to act under his sovereign in- fluence for the good of all his saints. Sense teaches us to Iook uponourselves, as the possession and food of death ; but faith assures us, that death is our possession, and a part of our treasure. Death is yours, O christians, for all things are yours. When sense has the ascendant over us, we take death to be a dark and dismal hour; but in the speech and spirit of faith, we call it a bright and glorious one. Sense esteems it to be the sorest of all afflictions, hut faith numbers it among the sweetest of our blessings, because it delivers us from a thousand sins and sorrows. It has been reported, that Socrates called " death a birth-day into eternal life." A most glorious thought, and a very inviting name ! But it is strange, that a hea- then. philosopher should ever hit upon it, it is so much like the dialect of the gospel, and the language of faith. He had learned to talk more nobly than the sensual world, though he was not favoured with the light of the gospel. It is so much the more shameful for christians, to talk and live below the character of this philosopher. O when shall we get above this life of sense ? When shall we rise in our ideas and our judgment of things? When shall we attain to the upper regions of christian- ity, and breathe in a purer air, and see all things in a' brighter and better light ? When shall we live the life of faith, and learn its divine language ? Death is like a thick dark veil, as it appears to' the eye of sense; when shall our faith remove the veil, and see the light, the immor- tality, the glory that lies beyond it? Death, like the ri- ver Jordan, seems to overflow its banks, when we ap- proach it, and divides and affrights us from the heavenly Canaan : When shall we climb to the top of Pisgah, that we may look, beyond the swelling waves of this Jordan,
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