e584 DEATH IMPROVED. and honour you now, but I shall meet you in heaven, I g to my God and your God, to my Saviour and your Saviour*. Would one think there could be so much pleasure in the dying chamber'of a beloved friend ? Surely this makes good the words of my text; if we are christians, death is ours. ü this is a divine entertainment that refreshes our spirits! And while sorrow trickles from our eyes for the lose of a depart- ing christian-friend; there is a sympathy of joy that works powerfully at the heart, and the heaven within us breaks out and shines throughour tears. Then, with a Wondrous mixture of the painful and the pleasant, with a sweet confusion ofpious passions, ,. we bid our dying brother, " Farewell." At such a season as this, our thoughts are led upward to heaven, and forward to the great resurrection. We open the eye of faith, and see the holy soul ascending to God ; we behold the weak and languishing body rising glorious out of the grave, shaking off the dust, and putting on its immortality : While our faith attends the spirit of our departing friend toheaven, we grow willing and desirous to be gone too ; and being brought so near to the gates of glory, we would fain take our leave of mortal things, and accompany the expiring saint to the joyful worldof spirits. The memory of such a scene, and such a, hour, will dwell upon our thoughts long, and support our ownhopeof vic- tory, when we shall be called to conflict with the same enemy. Having such a witness gone before us, we shall not only run our race with patience, through all the stages of it, butfinish our course withjoy. There is a sacred courage derived many times to a weak be- liever, by attending the last moments of a dying saint ascending to the upperworld. " I was afraid of death, says a feeble chris- tian, till I saw my neighbour die : He was,once a sinner as well as I, and he had his imperfections and failings in this life, as I have mine ; I humbly hope I havepractised the samerepentance as he has done, I have trusted in the same Saviour, I have ven- turedmy all upon thesame gospel, and travelled on in the same path : surely thereis forgiveness for me too ; surely the sting of my death shall be taken away also ; and, through grace, I shall join in his triumph ; O death where is thy sting?. Ograve where is thy victory ; 1 Cor. xv. 55. Thisobservation has been most gloriously exemplified in the death ofmartyrs : When the spectators that have been heathens, or but almost christians, have been strangely animated to profess the gospel boldly, whilethey have seen the most amazing courage * These are some of the dying words of the Reverend Mr. Samuel Roaewelt, when, with some other friends, I went to visit him two days before Ms dcatb, and which I transcribed as sooaas I came home, by their assistance*
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