tainment and delight; all-all will be eminently holy. Nor can it be otherwise, when we remember that this new world will be the eternal residence of Deity. Where he sheds abroad the beams of his unsullied purity, every thing above, beneath, and around must reflect his spotles simage. No virtuous being can conceive, nor can he desire, a heaven without holiness. There might be beauty to delight the eye, and music to ravish the ear, and all the pleasures of society and companionship; and yet, if there was not entire conformity to the Divine likea perfectly sanctified mind, there could be no taste for the grandeur, nor response to the melody, of the celestial Paradise. Here the great festival, denominated the marriage supper of the Lamb, will be held, and all who celebrate it shall be called, and chosen, and faithful.

ness

Such will be the final state of the redeemed. The anticipation is most gladdening to the heart of the Christian mourner. It will often soothe his sorrows, and raise his song, in the house of his pilgrimage. When compared with the endless duration of the age which shall succeed death and judgment, the time of our present separation from departed kindred is only a point in the wide expanse of being. It will soon be past; and then we shall meet in that new world of light and joy, which is to be the reward of the Redeemer's mediation, and the scene of our personal glory and social happiness.

CONCLUSION.

Ere long, when sovereign wisdom wills,
My soul an unkown path shall tread,
And strangely leave, which strangely fills,
This frame, and waft me to the dead.-
O what is death! 't is life's last shore,
Where vanities are vain no more;
Where all pursuits their goal obtain,
And life is all retouch'd again;

Where, in their bright result, shall rise

Thoughts, virtues, friendships, griefs, and joys.

GAMBOLD.

WE have sympathized in the sorrows of the

mourner,

and urged upon him the duties arising out of his condition. We have attempted to relieve him of the painful feelings under which he labours, and to direct him to those never-failing resources which the gospel exhibits for support and comfort. We have instructed him as to the probable advantages of his affliction, and as to the spirit which he ought to cultivate under it: and we have shared in his present consolations, and his future hopes. Some few reflections, chiefly of a practical tendency, which naturally arise out of the subject, and yet could not be embodied with it, shall conclude the work.

FIRST. The universality of death strikingly illus

trates THE GREAT EVIL OF SIN.

Death has been called a debt due to nature; but it is the penal consequence of sin. Man, as he sprung from the hands of his Maker, was the child of Divine complacency, and the heir of immortality. The members of his body, and the high-born faculties of his mind, partook of the holy character of him who had created them; and so long as our great progenitor retained the image of God in which he was fashioned, he was placed beyond the reach of toil and want, accident and pain, disease and death. The material world, by which he was surrounded, presented a scene of beauty, peace, and life; and paradise has become the name by which all that is gratifying to the senses, or felicitous and ennobling to the mind, has, in every age, been characterized. In describing heaven itself, the sacred writers have fetched from Eden their happiest figures of illustration; and, in the loveliness, serenity, splendour, and fruitfulness of this terrestrial garden, they have found a resemblance to the habitation of the just.

And yet man, being in honour, abode not. He transgressed the commands of the righteous Governor of the universe, by eating the forbidden fruit; and no sooner did he become a sinful, than he became a mortal creature. His title to life was suspended on his strict and holy obedience; and when that title was forfeited, his soul became the seat of depra

vity, guilt, and remorse, and his body the subject of sickness, decay, and death. He lost at once his virtue and his happiness, and was doomed, henceforth, to labour with the sweat of his brow, until he returned to the dust from whence he was taken. He was degraded from all his honour and hopes, brought into a state of deepest humiliation, compelled to endure every variety of suffering, and to terminate an existence of toil and sorrow in the cold and loathsome grave.

In the fall of our first parent, the happiness of all his posterity was involved. By virtue of the constitution made with Adam, his numerous descenddants have lost the original state of righteousness in which he himself was placed, and suffer, more or less, in consequence of his fall. On this subject the language of Scripture is express: we may attempt to controvert, but we cannot deny, the fact. "As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." "In Adam all die." "Through the offence of one, many be dead." "The judgment was by one to condemnation." "By one man's offence, death reigned by one." "By the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation.” "By one man's disobedience many were made," that is, were constituted, or treated, "sinners." These statements, plain and unequivocal as they are, receive additional weight from the circumstance, that they form part of a most interesting parallel drawn by

the apostle between the effects of our first father's apostacy, and the benefits arising to believers from the perfect obedience and efficacious sacrifice of Christ. So far as it regards temporal death, the penalty is not only inflicted on those who have sinned actually, but even on such as have “not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression." The events of every day, and the faithful record of some thousand years, present abundant proof of this mysterious fact.

And what now is the history of man? He comes into the world in a state of helplessness and destitution, and feebly utters the cry of pain and suffering. For many months he seems to live a kind of dying life; and should he survive the diseases of infancy, and pass into childhood, how do his pains increase, and his sorrows multiply! By far the greater part of his species expire in the cradle, or on the knees of a tender-hearted and deeply-afflicted mother; and if he arrive at youth, it is only to struggle with new temptations, and encounter fresh evils. Perhaps, the blossom which had begun to shed so sweet a fragrance is nipped, before it sets and ripens into fruit; and the slender stem that bare it droops, withers, and perishes; and with it also perish parental hope and fraternal expectation. Or, should the boy become a man, every stage of life is marked with care, disappointment, sickness, and threatening death: and should he survive those calamities which hasten many to their graves, and