at death, you will assuredly find that meeting, awful as it is, full of comfort, hope, and peace. When flesh and heart fail, God, and this will be your joy and triumph, God will be the strength of your heart, and your portion for ever more.

Fourthly; prepare to meet thy God at his final tribunal.

That will, indeed, be a most solemn and important interview; and it well becomes those who are expectants of this awful scene, and who are most deeply interested in the transactions which will then take place, seriously to consider in what light their character will then appear, and with their utmost diligence and circumspection, to prepare themselves to meet their Lord and Judge.

This appearance of God, to call reasonable beings to account, to reward them according to their deeds, and to treat them ultimately in exact correspondence with their real characters, is perfectly agreeable to reason, and to the moral phenomena of the human mind, though reason and

philosophy never did nor could discover it. Revelation, however, and especially the Christian revelation, have placed the fact beyond the possibility of doubt, to all who admit that Jesus was a teacher sent from God.

The scriptures contain various representations of those interesting scenes, all of which are calculated to arrest the attention, and to affect the heart. Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence; a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him; and the heavens shall declare his righteousness, for God is Judge himself."

The Christian scriptures reveal the interesting fact, that the Lord Jesus Christ will be the delegate of his heavenly Father, to hold the grand assize, and to occupy the seat of judgment on that all-important day; of which delegation God hath given the fullest assurance, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

If then we rightly understand the sacred oracles, which, however, may ultimately

be accomplished, in a manner far surpassing our feeble conceptions, we seem warranted to conclude that the Lord Jesus Christ will receive a commission from his heavenly Father to bring to their proper and final close the dispensations of God's moral government to mankind; in the execution of which commission, he will descend in person to raise the dead, to judge the world, and to render to every man according to his works. But in all these stupendous transactions, the Son will act in perfect subordination to the will of his heavenly Father; whose servant and delegate he is; so that to appear at the judgment seat of Christ, will be to stand at the tribunal of God.

Happy they who are duly prepared for this great event! To such it shall be a scene of awe, but not of dismay; of wonder, but not of terror. They may view the wreck of universal nature with composure, and wait with intrepidity the issue of the tremendous commotion. To the wicked it will be a scene of inexpressible anguish.

We are all deeply interested in these momentous transactions. We must all go forth to meet our God in judgment. The grave shall give up her dead. And all the myriads of mankind must appear at the dread tribunal; to pass the solemn and impartial trial, and to hear the irrevocable sentence: Come, ye blessed; or, Depart, ye accursed.

Prepare then, O thou anxious and frail expectant of these awful scenes, to meet thy God on his throne of judgment. Flee from the wrath to come; and never rest. satisfied till by faith, by repentance, and by the practice of universal virtue, thou hast made thy peace with heaven. Keep that day, and all its interesting transactions, continually in view; and in all the engagements, in all the cares, and in all the vicissitudes of life, let this be thy first, and last, and supreme concern, Prepare to meet thy God.

SERMON XVI.

THE FUTURE LIFE OF THE RIGHTEOUS A SOCIAL

STATE.

1 THESS. IV. 17.

And so shall we ever be with the Lord.

IT has been judiciously remarked, as a presumptive evidence of divine authority that the Christian revelation enters into no detail of the particulars of a future life. Impostors and enthusiasts love to expatiate on the subject; and to hear some men talk, one would conclude that, like the apostle Paul, they had been taken into the third heaven, and had been permitted to disclose what it was not lawful or possible for him to reveal. But what do the scriptures themselves teach, concerning the life to come? They reveal the doctrine; they exhibit the evidence; they unveil so much of the happiness and of the misery of a