ing our souls with vain imaginations of future success, I am desirous rather of improving this occasion to elevate your minds and my own, above the fallacious pleasures of earth, to those joys which are satisfying and eternal. Instead of using the circumstances of our present condition to produce a feverish excitement, or of wantonly playing upon each other's sensibilities, I would give such a direction to the train of our thoughts, and so turn the current of our emotions, as will make our hearts permanently better and happier. I would open before us the prospect of those scenes, which lie beyond the present life, and on which we are commanded to look with cheerfulness and hope. To the unbeliever I can, indeed, promise nothing that will give satisfaction. His prospect must necessarily be bounded by the narrow limits of the world. All beyond is impervious to his eye. Death is coming to him enveloped in clouds. Darkness hangs over and around his tomb; and doubt, appalling doubt, like some fiend of despair, stands within the door of his sepulchre. The man who professes to receive the revelations of God as true, but still indulges himself in sinful gratifications, and cannot be persuaded to repent, and does not yield his heart in love to him who made him, and to him who died to redeem him, will perhaps derive scarcely any greater consolations from the visions of eternity. Fear may agitate his breast, and distort the objects of his sight, as he gazes in upon the land where spirits dwell. He knows that the current of his soul must be changed, or he can find no home, no happiness there. The pleasures of earth are the sweetest that have ever met his taste; they are all that he dares with confidence to expect. When worn with the cares, and wearied with the toils, and heart-sick with the disappointments of the world, he looks not to heaven as the sure restingplace of his soul, he looks not to the grave as the bed of repose; but shudders to think that when overcome at last by the burdens of the day, he may lie down to a restless, feverish night, a long, fearful night, without any star, and without any dawn. But the sincere disciple of Jesus, every one who is willing to confide in a Redeemer's love, and, by patient continuance in ways of well-doing, seeks for glory, honor and immortality, cannot fail to be consoled, refreshed, and made better, in the saddest hour, by the prospect which reason and revelation unitedly unfold to his mind. Sweet fields, delightful views to the eye of faith, stretch far away into the eternal distance beyond the world. The Saviour has already passed through the darkness of the intervening valley of death, and illumined the path; and from the bright region beyond, a well known voice is heard, "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." I. Let us observe, then, in the first place, that when the Christian, like his Master, has overcome the world, he will live in another and pleasanter place. But as I hope I am a Christian, and standing in the midst of an assembly composed chiefly of Christians, or of those who, I trust, will become such, may I not, for once at least, without fear of misapprehension, indulge my feelings with more freedom, and changing the abstract form of my proposition, bring home its promise to our own hearts, and say to you, my friends, when we, like our Master, have overcome the world, we shall live in another and pleasanter place. We shall still live. our nature to expect it. on continued and unending existence. age and in every clime, if his mind were so far developed as to be conscious of his superiority to the brutes, man has always been unwilling to think that he shall ever cease to be. Nothing is so repulsive to his feelings, nothing so opposed to his spontaneous aspirations, nothing to his simple perceptions so absurd, as the idea that he will one day be blotted out of existence, however distant may be the day or moment of such a catastrophe. It is only because conscious guilt has darkened the understanding, and confused its vision, and filled the soul with forebodings of future retribution, that, with much ingenuity and false philosophy, any have attempted to reason down their natural anticipations, and repress their longings after immortality. When we awake to sober and unbiassed consideration, and look out upon the earth and sky, the beast and bird, - all unite to convince us that the hope of living for ever, which still springs afresh in every breast, is no delusion. The whole world, which was evidently made It is in the constitution of We are formed to presume for man, bears testimony that he who made it, has not lavished such stores of riches, and put forth such wisdom and skill, merely for a creature of a day. So natural is the expectation of continued life, so much in accordance with all our instinctive anticipations, and our best desires and hopes and aims, and with our simplest reasonings, and the plainest indications of the world around us, that, if sin had not beclouded our mental sight, and mingled fears with our expectations, though we might not be able to demonstrate, that we shall always live, we should not, I think, doubt it, or suffer any uneasiness respecting it. We should presume upon it with as much satisfaction as we presume that the sun which shines to-day, will shine to-morrow. He who came to retrace the inscriptions of nature upon our hearts, and open the light of revelation upon our minds, has removed all uncertainty, and clearly brought life and immortality to light. "Whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. He that believeth in me," says he, "shall never die. My sheep hear my voice and I give unto them eternal life. The righteous shall go into life eternal." The star of eternal life is bright upon every page of the gospel. There is no longer a shadow of doubt. We shall live for ever. may smile on the flower of spring, and see it fade and wither beneath our smiles. We may look to the hills, and be admonished that they shall be plucked away. We may look out upon the broad ocean, rolling majestically from its unmeasured We depths, and believe that its waters will be dried up by the hidden fires which are destined to consume the earth. We may lift up our eyes to the sun, shining in splendor as he hath shone since the foundations of the world, and upon the stars glittering in combined grandeur where they have stood since they first gleamed on the eyes of the father of men; and we may be assured, that this sun shall be darkened, and those stars shall fall. But we retire within ourselves. There is a living, thinking, feeling, moving spirit here, which shall survive them all, and live on, and still live on, immortal as the Spirit who made it. We shall live in another place. This earth, we are told, shall be burned up; and before such assurance was given, instinctive nature, almost always true, had proclaimed that our present residence is not the spirit's home. We expect another abode for the blest. If we continue to exist, we must exist some where. None but the infinite Spirit who pervades all space, and lives every where, can exist but in some definite place. Each finite spirit must dwell within his appropriate sphere. The savage looks beyond the "cloud-capt hills; the heathen philosopher and poet gaze after an Elysium, framed and fixed by their own reasonings and their own imaginings; but the Christian looks to heaven. It is a real local habitation, fit for spirits and for spiritual bodies. There our Saviour dwells, clothed in that body which was raised from the dead. There, too, is the venerable patriarch, who |