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with Christ," he lives to God, and dies to God. He has a true relish for the heavenly things to which he is hastening.

He goes as a beloved son to the house of a kind father, with joy. He delights, on the bed of death, to be thinking, and talking of the love of his God, and expressing his desire to be at home. Whatever good thing, in life, he has been enabled to do, he will find none of it to be lost, when he arrives at heaven. For we shall all be rewarded according to our works. But he eyes Christ alone as the door of eternal life.

Now whatever appearance of good, in their death, wicked men may have, this intercourse of love with God, as a father, this sweet view of heavenly things, they cannot have. They go to God merely as a judge, against whom, at bottom, their hearts are at enmity. Therefore they are all "driven away in their wickedness."

If, then, brethren, persons who have visited sickbeds, and taken notice of the consequences of different doctrines, can discern such an evident difference in the deaths of those who build on Jesus for all their righteousness and sanctification, and of those who build on their own false repentance, or what is wrongly called a well-spent life; if the first die in love, in joy, and in liberty, and the latter in terror, in stupidity, or at least unwillingly; has not God set a mark on his own doctrines, to teach what is truth and what is not? If dependance on ourselves, either in whole or part, cannot give solid peace in death, what may be expected from it but destruction after death? Ought men to be content with it while in health?

The application of the whole is obvious, and shall be short. Men and brethren, consider yourselves as dying, and ask what you build on for eternity? Have you gotten a perfect righteousness, "Christ in you the hope of glory?" How will How will you face death without it? How can any thing of your own, all imperfection at best, stand before a holy and sinhating God? Ponder this truth. God hath given his son, that we might live through him. Turn ye then to him while there is hope, and receive him for your all. So shall you die in true peace, and have that prospect, and that relish for heavenly things which shall make death delightful. But if ye will not receive him for your all, you receive not the real Christ. You build on the law, and "the law worketh wrath," and will send you, after death, to everlasting destruction.

I beseech you, brethren, to consider what has been said, with a serious view of death and judgment before you. Then you may both understand and receive the record of God, that he hath given you "eternal life, and this life is in his Son." Then may you have "Christ in you, the hope of glory." When this is accomplished, you will be delivered from the inordinate love of this present evil world, and from the fear of death. You will be enabled to meet your last enemy without dismay, and find, not a difficult, but an abundant entrance administered unto you, into the everlasting kingdom of Jesus Christ.

SERMON X.

SAINT PAUL'S DETERMINATION TO KNOW NOTHING ELSE, SAVE JESUS CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED.

1 Cor. ii. 2.

For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

THIS

HIS is the determination of the Apostle of the Gentiles. It requires, indeed, wisdom and strength more than human to be brought to such a resolution. There were many things besides Jesus and him crucified, to which a mind like the Apostle's would be tempted to cleave. In proportion as the endowments of the mind are rich, and various, this temptation is strong and inviting. The philosophy of the Pagans would solicit his penetrating understanding. Their poetry, their rhetoric, and their elegant taste, would be apt to seduce his warm and vigorous imagination. The Jewish politics, antiquities, and ceremonies, would quite fall in with the habits of his youth, his early imbibed prejudices, and his natural spirit and ambition; especially as he had made a proficiency in them from his youth, above many his equals. But from the time that the Lord had met with him in his way to Damascus, he conferred not with flesh and blood: The Son of God was revealed in him; and he saw such a sweetness,

suitableness, and glory in the discovery, that he "counted all things but loss and dung in comparison." In the cross of Christ he found the true solid refreshment of his spirit; however contrary to this world's taste, spirit, wisdom, and righteousness. Though of all things the most unpopular, the most contrary to this world's course of things, he found it meat indeed, and drink indeed. He knew no other pleasure but the cross of Jesus, and it was the capital theme of all his ministry among the Corinthians, though it was "to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness."

And, brethren, to this day, all who are just and righteous in their own eyes have no idea of being saved by the grace that is in Jesus; and all who are wise in nature's light, and on that depend for their instruction in the way to happiness, see nothing tempting in Christ crucified. So far is this from being in their eyes the most glorious and refreshing discovery of the wisdom and goodness of God, they can see nothing in it desirable, or pleasant; and it is the last thing they think of going to for pleasure, joy, liberty, and happiness.

Here is, then, a subject which will try us what manner of spirit we are of. Undoubtedly if we mean to be christians indeed, and not to content ourselves with the name and form, our taste ought to be the same with the Apostle's. Every minister of Christ should, in his ministry, have the same theme at heart; and he is likely to go on with little pleasure, or spirit in it, unless his own soul feel the same relish for the cross of Christ. Every private person, also, who means to travel to heaven, should be like

minded. "Know ye how ye are affected toward Christ Jesus?" Let this question go round the congregation. If, indeed, "Christ crucified" be your delight and your glory, you will make sure of him as such. You will know where to seek in times of difficulty and trial: You will go and find him the very thing that you want. Happy are they with whom this is the case! They prove, indeed, that they "live by the faith of him," because they use him as a Saviour.

But if you make no use of "Christ crucified," either in worldly troubles, or in your religious; but lean on an arm of flesh for the first, and on a round of duties for the second, Christ is only a name with you, a name without power. Deceive not yourselves. You are not in the faith, nor do you yet know the way to God by him. You are in the darkness of a heathen nature, and the "sun of righteousness" has not arisen upon you" with healing in his wings."

Oh! that my audience were now brought to fair and honest dealing with themselves! Were I to say no more than what has been said, it would be a useful Sermon. For if indeed "Christ crucified" be our grand object: If it be the fire that kindles our love, the medicine that relieves our guilty souls, the balm that heals our corruptions, and the refreshment that cheers our spirits, what ail our hearts that we cannot know that it is so? Ought not many, who have no earnestness in religion, or, if ever earnest, are never brought to Christ for comfort, to know that Christ and they are not united by any means? Let such persons say, "I need to be made a new creature, and this must be in Christ Jesus. O cruci

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