212 THE PEOPLE WITNESSING, AND THE PEOPLE BLESSING. earth, we shall rejoice to go forth to meet our Lord! And when our joy commences to be complete-when the palace and the throne, the kingdom and the crown, the palm of victory and the golden harp of song, are the bridal presents bestowed on us-our chief delight and happiness, our eternal glory and joy, shall be to see the Prince, and more than King in His beauty; to go no more from His presence, to possess His love for ever, and to hymn His everlasting praise. THE "MARRIAGE FEAST." How rich are the provisions of the Gospel! A feast, indeed, becoming the bounty and Majesty of the King of heaven, and proportionable even to the love which He bears to His own Son, in honour of whom it is made. How wonderful is the grace which calls us to the participation of these provisions; us who were originally "sinners, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise." Yet has He graciously sent His messengers to us, and invited us to His house, yea, to His table, with the additional hope of yet nobler entertainments in reserve. May none of us reject so condescending a call, lest we turn His goodness into righteous indignation, and "treasure up to ourselves wrath against the day of wrath." Let us also remember that it is not every one who professes to accept the entertainment, not every one who talks of Gospel blessings and seems to desire a share in them, that will be admitted to it. No; in order to our "partaking of the inheritance of the saints in light," it is necessary that we be "made meet for it" by the holiness both of our hearts and lives. This is the wedding-garment, wrought by the Spirit of God Himself, and offered to us by the freedom of His grace. And it is so necessary, that without it we must be separated from the number of His guests and friends, and, even though we had "eaten and drank in His presence, must be "cast out into outer darkness." Frequently let us think of that awful day when the King will come in to see His guests; when God will take a most exact survey of every soul under a Christian profession. Let us think of that speechless confusion which will seize such as have not on the wedding-garment, and of that inexorable severity with which they will be consigned to "weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth." To have seen for a while the light of the Gospel, and the fair beamings of an eternal hope, will add deeper and more sensible horror to those gloomy caverns; to have heard those "glad tidings of great joy," and to hear them as it were, echoed back in accents of final despair, how will it wound the ear, and pierce the very heart! May God prevent it, by "fulfilling in us all the good pleasure of His goodness, and the work of faith with power; that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in us, and we in Him," when the marriage-supper of the Lamb shall be celebrated, and all the harmony, pomp, and beauty of heaven shall aid its solemnity, its magnificence, and its joy!-DR. DODDRIDGE, on Matt. xxii. 1-14. A Christian Estimate of Life and Death. A FUNERAL SERMON FOR MRS. CUNLIFFE. "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain,”— Phil. I. 21. WE are not preachers of death, because we have so much to say about death. We must speak of death because the world is so full of death-death passes upon all men; 66 we must needs die and be as water spilt upon the ground;" death is the universal law of earthly life. Life is a march to the grave; strength is ever diminishing to dissolution; family relationships ever maturing to their disruption; we are every step advancing to the house appointed for all living; "the living know that they must die;" the hand that we clasp to day, the eye into which with glad and mutual recognition we look are cold and glazed to-morrow; all things live to feel death; death hath reigned from Adam till now-the last victor over all that is earthly in men—the last enemy that only Christ in the future world can destroy. Our only uncertainty, our only solicitude is concerning the time and circumstance of death. Who will die first? Whose will be the first vacant place by the fireside, whose will be the widowed heart? And our selfishness struggles with our love, we would fain be spared the sorrow of those left behind; and yet our love reproaches us for wishing that our loved ones might feel it. It tells us that it is part of the self-sacrifice of affection, to be willing to bear even the sorrow of bereavement so that they may be spared it. It would be strange indeed if the religion of Christ had nothing to say about death : "That shadow feared of man." Death that enemy before whom all life falls, who invades every home, and wrings every heart, and often makes the living wish to die. It has a great deal to say about death, more than any other religion, SERMON XXIV. Y more than any philosophy. But although it has so much to say about death, it is not a preacher of death, any more than the physician is a preacher of disease, the philanthropist a preacher of prisons, and slavery, and sorrow. It speaks of death only to proclaim a great antidote to it, only to declare it conquered, only to assure us that all that was most terrible in it-its mystery, its curse, its destruction have been taken away by Christ," who hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light by his gospel." All other preachers are preachers of death, they tell us only of death, its inevitableness, its sorrows, its hopelessness; the world is full of such preachers of death-moralists, philosophers, and the dumb preachers of nature— when leaves fall and winter snows bury them; when suns set and darkness like a pall is spread over the earth; when we pass out of waking life into unconscious sleep the sister of death. Natural preachers of death are set up at every street corner, proclaiming that All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of grass, the grass withereth, the flower thereof fadeth away: surely all flesh is grass." And experience is the loudest preacher of all. Where is the houshold in which there has not been one dead? Where is the old man whom death has forgotten? Where is there one escaped to tell of the myriads who lived two centuries ago? Parents, children, husbands, wives every bond has been snapt, every heart wrung, every house darkened, every accustomed place left vacant. These are the world's preachers of death. But not like theirs is the Christian preacher's sermon. He preaches death, but it is as giving birth to a new and unexpected life; it is as of the "seed corn falling into the ground and bringing forth much fruit ;" it is not so much as an end as a beginning; not so much as a dissolution; as a birth; having its darkness, its struggle, its anguish, but then its new and transcendant and glorious life. For the first time in the thought or history of men, it is demonstrated that death is a "gain;" that life comes out of death, soars above it, a glorious and immortal thing. The Christian gospel does not speak of death as a separate thing; it connects it with life—with the life that went before it, with the life that comes after it; it permits no severance of the two. If it tells us that "in Adam all die," it instantly adds, "even so in Christ shall all be made alive." And thus putting both together, death and life, it boldly proclaims the startling doctrine, that instead of being loss as the world had hitherto thought and taught to "die is gain." Can this Christian estimate of death be justified? It seems all calamity and destruction and sorrow; it makes us writhe in anguish; we wail in our misery as we stand by open graves, and return to our solitary homes. Is the Christian preacher justified in speaking these startling words to our sorrow? in doing such violence to our broken hearts, when we are full of the sense of loss, when all things seem failing us, when our "houses are left unto us desolate ?" Let us see. J. Let us first try to justify this Christian estimate of life and death. 1. And first we remark that in order to a correct estimate we must not separate the life from the death, both must be taken, in their A. CHRISTIAN ESTIMATE OF LIFE AND DEATH. 215 relations to one another. In itself death is a loss, a loss of many precious things, a loss to him who dies, a loss to those who are bereaved. He who dies leaves all the good of life that he has enjoyed, all his wealth and power, all the comforts of his home, all the tender relationships of his life; he exchanges farewells with those dearest to him; he clasps parting hands; he looks unutterable love for the last time; and then enters the dark valley alone, leaving weeping friends at its entrance whom he shall see and commune with no more. This is loss. Those who are left suffer loss-the loss of all that intelligence and affection constituted and ministered; the most precious thing of our life is taken away, the thing that we cherished in our very heart of hearts is torn from us, we are left with mutilated affections, torn and bleeding, to cry and pray and live alone-this is loss. Solitary individuals may be found, so destitute of home and friends, whose life is so full of trial, disappointment, and misery, that they long to be rid of it, and blindly yearn for death. "I am weary of my life, what good shall my life do me.' But this is only a blind sense of present misery without thought of what it is exchanged for. "all The generality of men have a different experience; they enjoy life and the things of life, even though they may have many sorrows and disappointments in it; they love life for its own sake, that a man hath he will give for his life:" they shrink from death, from the shock, the pain, the dishonour of bodily dissolution, from the cold, inanimate, corrupting clay, from the pall, the charnel house, the dead, eternal silence. Whatever their life may be they deem death a loss. They may be men of pleasure, seeking every luxury of sense, every variety of gratification, their motto "Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." Death is the end-the loss of all this. They may be men of wealth, vain of their commercial success, elated with their prosperity and with their power, with being the architects of their own fortune, and with being able proudly to call almost fabulous wealth their own. Death is the end-the loss of all this. They may be men of ambition eager in acquiring power over their fellow men, finding their gratification in bending other wills to theirs. Death is the end-the loss of all this. They may be men of social habits, enjoying the society of their fellow men, delighting in good companionship, in gaiety, conviviality, and wit. Death is the end-the loss of all this. They may be students and scholars having no joy so great as that of acquiring knowledge, of wringing out the secrets of nature, of meddling with all knowledge. Death is the end-the loss of all this. And thus the entire circle of human life might be traversed, and whatever the pursuits and experiences of life might be, men would unanimously regard death as a loss, a calamity, the disturber and destroyer of all human good. With the Christian man it is directly the reverse; he is not unconscious of the value of these things of life, he enjoys their 216 A CHRISTIAN ESTIMATE OF LIFE AND DEATH. possession-wealth, power, social friendship, the precious hearts, and things of home. He sorrows over their loss, nature demands that he should, grace does not forbid it; a high estimate and love of life is part of his religion. Still on the comparison of what he leaves and of what he realises, death is a gain. What is it then that gives to death this new, this surprising character? It is solely that to "live is Christ." It is the life that constitutes the character of death: preceded by any other kind of life death would be an infinite loss; only in proportion as the life is Christ will it be gain to die; only Christ, Christ possessed by us, Christ in us, Christ manifested by us, Christ our Saviour and sanctifier can make death a gain; to a Christless life death can be only loss, utter eternal loss. The two cannot be separated. 2. Secondly we remark that this estimate of life and death is common to all Christian men, just in proportion to their Christianity. Exactly as in their lives they realize Christ and are Christlike, death will be a gain, and they will feel death to be a gain. This has sometimes been represented as an estimate of life and death peculiar to the apostle, or restricted to such as he. "It is " it has been said "the sentiment of a heart that had either outlived the objects of affection and favourite pursuit; or else had loved little while capable of loving much, and was unattached to the scene of human existence except at the point of duty," "because he had so few treasures of life to love," he felt death to be a gain, or else because he had become so absorbed in his religious faith, that through sheer lack of interest in this life he wished translation to a better. "Having no deep root here he could suffer translation without pain.” "He was at all times ready to gather up his feelings and begone;" that every where this life was a scene of such toil and disappointment, and persecution and affliction, that he could look for peace only in the grave:-That this therefore was a sentiment perfectly natural to Paul in the loneliness and sorrow of his life, but that "taken up by Christians as a feeling essential to every disciple, is an insincere and mischievous parody on the sentiments of the apostle.” If this really be sc, if this estimate of life and death be proper only for Paul, or for a man disgusted and disappointed with life, it is important that we should know it. But is not this an utter misrepresentation of the apostle? First in his feelings about life. Where do we find any countenance for the notion that he was misanthropic or morose in any social feeling? Where do we gather that, even his intense love of Christ, his intense realization of spiritual things, his visions of Paradise even, had produced in him disgust with life? Do we not always find him genial and generous, full of warm sympathies, cherishing deep human affections; "with an eye for whatever was beautiful in life, and a heart for whatever was loving?" Next in his actual experiences of life. It is true that for Christ he had suffered the loss of all things, his high position as a Pharisee, wealth, luxury, social honour, political power, and sacerdotal influence, these he "counted loss for Christ." But simply because |