to give his death, his grave, and his rising again, their appropriate part in the expression of praise which we address to our Redeemer, our Lord, and our God.

How far, or whether at all beyond man, the effects of Christ's resurrection will be displayed in the times of the restitution of all things, I do not now inquire; nor what may be the meaning of the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, nor what the earnest expectation of the creature that waiteth for the adoption, to-wit, the redemption of the body. It is enough to remark, that the earth teems with trophies of Christ's victory over death and the grave; since every human being who hath laid his body in corruption, shall through him be raised in incorruption. And if the presence of Moses and Elias with Christ formed no insignificant part of the manifestation of his sovereignty, when the Apostles saw his glory; and if the bursting of the graves of certain of the saints, and their appearing in the holy city, was not a light testimony to the divinity of Him in whose retinue they appeared, and not a little assurance to ourselves of the efficacy of his resurrection,surely nothing shall exceed the splendour of that pageant, and the glory of that exercise of sovereign and almighty power, which shall be displayed before the eyes of all men and angels, when all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and they that hear shall live.

And the greater the present destruction, the greater the future glory and blessing. And if the very surface

of the globe appear but a vast resultant of mortality and dissolution, with so much the more numerous a host shall the surface of the new earth be trodden,

.

and the regions of the new heavens be traversed. Death, considered in itself, and in its immediate consequences, is certainly an evil: we are made to consider it such by instincts which reason cannot repress, and which religion only professes to moderate; and yet even in death we may now see something of the wisdom and of the large benevolence of our Creator; since the race of men that departs in one generation, retires only for a while to give place to another, for whom there had else been no room on the earth; and so, many generations have been born to an eternal existence, and sown as the seed of an eternal harvest of life, where else but a few could have lived. Here is good, an eternal and positive good, out of a temporary and comparative evil. Let us receive this as an indication of the perfection of the moral government of Almighty God, presented in a case of difficult intelligence; and let us hence learn to impute to Him the same perfection in matters utterly inscrutable : and as we here find Jesus Christ triumphing over evil, and over our last enemy, which is Death,-let us thankfully confess his power and will to convert every evil into good, and to procure for himself the victory, while he purchases immortal existence for all, immortal happiness for his saints.

z 2

356

SERMON XX.

THE LIFE EVERLASTING.

MATT. xv. 46.-These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.

THE word life, in its first sense, which is common both to theology and ordinary language, signifies that condition of being which involves in it the most eminent of the endowments, such as consciousness and sensibility, which we possess in common with all animated nature but in its highest theological sense, the word life designates a vast addition to the life before mentioned, and a much nobler qualification of some of the creatures of God; those alone being capable of it who possess reasonable and accountable souls; and those alone possessing it who maintain their souls in the due exercise of their highest powers.

* There is an artificial and metaphysical, and not wholly inconvenient, though not, I think, wholly correct, reference of these two different kinds of life in man,-life natural and life spiritual,-the one to an union of his body with his soul, and the other to an union of his soul with God. Expressed in this juxtaposition and balancing

This spiritual life we share not with any creatures beneath us in the scale of being; for they have no reasonable souls wherein it can consist: we share it not with the fallen angels; for though indeed they be spirits, and though they continue in the first sense of the term to live, yet is their life but a living death, and as distinguished from spiritual life, a spiritual death: nor, moreover, do we share the life of which we are now speaking with any but the truly virtuous; for of all others it is said that they are dead while they live, seeing that they are indeed involved in that very spiritual death, which is the condition and punishment of the angels that kept not their first estate; the only privilege of their humanity being, that whereas those fallen spirits are already lost in eternal death without hope of release, they are for the present only, absolutely involved in the same death; but for the future their life or death depends on the condition of their repentance or continued wickedness. This spiritual life, then, is the privilege of the good among men, and of the angels in heaven who are still blessed and obedient; and though, so long as we are in this world, which is a state of probation, we cannot, in ordinary cases at least, enjoy so great an assurance as the elect angels, yet do we, so long as we are faithful and obedient, partake in the same spiritual and eternal life with the angels, in the same sense in which the wicked,

of similar terms, this method of defining the natural and spiritual life cannot convey strictly just notions, unless the union of the body with the soul is of the same kind with the union of the soul with God. Andth is none can know, and I suppose none will assert.

while they are unrepentant, partake of the spiritual and eternal death of the rebellious spirits: and when our earthly course is concluded, if we have still continued faithful, our souls are breathed into the hands of God, and our bodies are committed to his keeping, in sure and certain hopes of a resurrection to eternal life, in the highest sense of these terms.

Our natural life, then, is that which, in this world, in paradise, or in the eternal world of happiness or of torment, we share with all living creatures, whether material or spiritual, whether terrestrial or heavenly : spiritual life is an addition to the former life of whatever is necessary to constitute a true moral happiness, which necessarily includes faith and obedience : and so infinitely more important is this life than any other to our highest welfare, that in Scripture the word life is very frequently used to signify this state of high spiritual existence and enjoyment. Whenever Whenever any note of additional privilege is added, as when it is called eternal life, it is always used to signify the spiritual life. In this sense it is used in the text, The righteous shall go into life eternal; and also in the last article of the Apostles' creed, I believe THE LIFE EVER

LASTING.

But since the state of the wicked is also a continued existence, and that in a conscious possession of life; and since it is as truly a subject of divine revelation and since it as much concerns us to be assured ; of such a fate impending over the wicked, as to be assured of an eternity of bliss prepared for the right