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THE
DEATH
OF
MANKIND
IMPROVED.
[SEEM. XLI.
ful
part of
God's
lower
creation, and
is
sending thou-
sands
daily,
to
the
pit
of
corruption
and noisome darkness.
It
is
sin
has filled
our nature
with diseases, and sown
dig,
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_
"
Itis
appointed
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
of
safety,
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
of
a
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 of
all."
Thus
the
child
of.
God reaps
some
advantage
by
the
spreading
empire
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!
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