TO THE CONGREGATION Of the Parish Church of Ibstock, AT WHOSE REQUEST THE FOLLOWING PAGES WERE PUBLISHED, THIS SERMON IS INSCRIBED AND DEDICATED, WITH AFFECTIONATE REGARD, BY THEIR ATTACHED AND FAITHFUL FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. A SERMON. REVELATIONS xiv. 13. I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them. In the Scriptures we have innumerable assurances that the faithful in Christ Jesus, who continue to "walk worthy of their vocation" unto the end of their days, shall, in the world to come, be received into everlasting mansions which their Divine Master has purchased and prepared for them. But in no passage of Holy Writ does this assurance come with greater force than in the words of the text.* They were communicated to the beloved Disciple of our blessed Lord in a very solemn manner. Indeed, we cannot but look upon the truths which these words contain as highly important, when we consider that they came down from the imperial throne of the majesty on high. * See the opening of Langhorne's Sermon on this text, Vol. ii. 239. They originated not on the tongue of 66 any mortal here below: they came from heaven-“I heard a voice from heaven." We read too that St. John was expressly commanded to record them in writing. Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." And in addition to these considerations, we find that they were confirmed by the testimony of the Holy Ghost. "Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them." The assurance and comfort, therefore, which these words afford us, are of certain truth and great authority. The immediate occasion and design of them was to animate and strengthen Christians who (St. John foresaw) would be called upon to suffer violent and cruel persecutions, by setting forth, as they do, the great reward of the Saints, who should be careful to preserve the faith and worship of the Christian Religion. But there is no reason why we should limit them to the case of those Christians who suffered persecutions in the early days of the Gospel; for they are certainly capable of a more extended application, and well calculated to encourage the constancy and patience of Christians in every age under all their trials: for as he who realizes in himself the end for which "Christ both died, and rose, and revived,” by living a life of faith and holiness, is said "to live unto the Lord," so every one who continues in that faith and acts suitably to his duty and obligations as a Christian to the end of his days, may be said, when God is pleased to call him from time to eternity, to "sleep in Jesus," and to "die in the Lord." They "who die in the Lord are blessed;" for good men, when they depart this life rest from the labours, the difficulties, the pains, and the sorrows, which they were destined to experience in this life. 66 They rest from their labours." We have reason to believe that the labours here spoken of are not those which St. Paul terms “labours of love:" for we may suppose that in the regions of the blessed all the kindly feelings of good-will, and gratitude, and sympathy, and love, will be interchangeably exercised in an enlarged display of tenderness and affection, emanating, as it were, spontaneously and without exertion from the "spirits of just men made perfect." By the labours here mentioned, therefore, we must understand the troubles and afflictions, the sorrows and the trials of this mortal life. No man, high or low, rich or poor, is exempt from trouble. The sorrows which attach themselves to the heart of man are inseparable from his being; for "man is born to trouble." "There are many sources of trouble which arise from the constitution of the human frame, and the various circumstances of human life. The vanities of youth-the infirmities of age-the loss of friends-injurious treatment—and the calamities of our fellow-creatures, are evils |