SERMONXLiüf: gil from his cross and his tomb. Do the saints around us lie down and die ? We should learn to follow them boldly into the dark valley, and to fall asleep in the dust with the same chearful hopes of the joyful rising-day. Does death come near us into our own family, and tear our dear relatives from our arms? Even this may be turned to our advantage too ; it should render the world and the pleasures of it more insipid and worthless ; it should loosen our heart- strings from the fond embraces of the creature fbr it calls our eyes and our souls heavenward and home-ward, and that with a loud and sensible voice, if nature and grace are awake to hear it. If death and the grave be ours, and wemake rio use of this privilege, we are like misers, who have treasure in their posses-. sions but never employ it to any valuable purpose. Has Christ our Lord taken death among his captives, and made it his own property ? Let us look upon ourselves as humble sharers in the victory ; he has appointed it to serve the interest of all his follow- ers : He has put it into the inventory of our treasures. Let its improve it then to these divine purposes, let us seize and enjoy the spoils which Christ, the Captain of our salvation, has taken_ from the hands of the prince of darkness. II. Is death become your possession, O believers, through the graceof the covenant : Fear it not then, but ever look upon it with an eyo of faith as a conquered adversary : Behold it, as reduced to your service ; wait for it, with holy courage and pleasure; it is a messenger of mercy to your souls from Christ, who bath vanquished it in the open field of battle, and reduced it to his subjection. When you labour and groan . under sins and temptations, under pains and sorrows, remem- ber Christ has appointed death to be his officer for your relief, It is like the porter that opens the door of his repository, the grave, where your bodies shall take a sweet slumber till the resurrection-day; and it is appointed also to open the gates of heaven for your spirits and to let them into a worldof un- known felicity. Death has so many things belongingto it, which are afflic- tive to nature, and formidable to the eye of sense, that we have need of all manner of assistance to raise our souls above the fear of it. The very thought of dying makes many a christian shudder, and sweat, and tremble, and awakens all the springs of human infirmity : Omay the grace of faith gain a more glo- rious ascendancy in our souls ! We should often meditate on such doctrines as these, which place that dreadful thing deáth in themost easyand pleasing light ; we should behold it as changed ' from a curse into a blessing, and numbered amongour treasures. Christians should accustom themselves to look at it through the
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