SERMON X. The Hidden Life of a Christian. Cot. iii. 3. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. THE SECOND PART. IT is to the christian converts who were at Colosse,, that the apostle addresses himself, in this strange language : Ye aredead, and yet Ì tell youwhere your life is. This divine writer delights sometimes to surprize his readers, by joining such opposites, and uniting such distant extremes. But can a dead person have any life in him ? Yes, and a noble one too, ye are dead to the world, and dead to sin, but ye have a life of another kind than that which belongs to the sinners of this world : your life is spiritual andholy ; theirs is sinful, and engaged in the work; of the flesh: Your life is heavenly, and seeks the things which are above theirs is derived from the earth, and grovels in the dust : Your life is everlasting, for your souls shall live for in a glorious state, and your bodies shall be raised from death into equal im- mortality and apartnership ofthe same glory ; but their best life is only a temporal one, and when that is at an end, all theirjoys, and their hopes are for ever at an end too, and their eternal sor- rows begin. But this life of a christian is a hidden life. That was the first doctrine I raised fromthe text. Both the operations and the springs of it, are a secret to the world, and the future glories of it, when it is mostproperly called eternal life, are still agreater secret; and much more.unknown : Yet, saith the apostle, Ican acquaint you wherethe springs of it lie, andwhence all the future glories of it are to be derived ; theyarehidden in God, with our Lord Jesus Christ. NoW by giving so short a hint, in aword or two, where this our life is hid, he has said something greater, and brighter, and more sublime, concerning it, that if he had shewn us, from a high mountain, at noon-day, all the kingdoms of this world, with all the dazzling glories of them, and then pointed downward, "there your life is. " Let this therefore be the second doctrine, and the subject of our present meditations, thatthe lifeof achristian ishidden with Christ in God. It is hidden in God, as the firstoriginal and eternal springof it, and entrusted with Christ as a faithful Medi-
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