lasting reward and punishment when this life is at an end. There is a thick cloud which hangs over the close of life, and which renders the objects that lie beyond it dark and invisible. He, who yesterday exulted in his strength, to day lies numbered with the dead. He is no longer reckoned among the sons of men.-Does he continue to exist somewhere else? Or, are those passions and affections which in the present life are so interesting; those thoughts and understandings which wander through eternity, those boasted powers of reason and conscience for ever lost and swallowed up in the womb of nothing? Let us hear the voice of nature, and then let us attend to the still louder voice of revelation. Mankind, in every age and nation, led by instinctive feeling, or by a native desire of immortality, have had some expectation and belief, that, the present life was not the whole of our duration, but, that, it was only an introduction to an eternal existence in a more perfect state of being. There are many facts in human nature which give some confirmation to this hope. When men contemplated the extent of their faculties, and the great dignity of the human soul, it must have been

with great difficulty they could ever bring themselves to believe, that, they were to share the same fate with the beasts which perish. They could not think it consistent with wisdom and goodness to suppose, that, such a being as man was made, only to pass a few days in frivolous pleasures and occupations, (and the life of most men amounts to nothing more,) and then to drop insensibly out of existence.When they viewed this world, and saw the unequal distribution of good and evil which took place in it when they compared this with the notions, even the imperfect ones which they had formed, of the Governour of the universe, they presumed, that, there would be another scene of things, wherein happiness and misery would be exactly proportioned to virtue and vice. This presumption was, still, farther strengthened by those anticipations of punishment, and those horrours of conscience felt by bad men, even when out of the reach of justice, in their moments of solitude and retirement; by that principle of the mind, curiosity, which perpetually leads us on to new and farther discoveries in knowledge, and, by the soul's continual progress toward perfection. But all this amounted, only, to probability

and hope. About the existence of a future life, men were still in great doubt and uncertainty. It was not sufficiently clear and plain to have much influence on their conduct. The joys and sorrows of a world which was invisible, and distant, and uncertain, could never have weight sufficient to overbalance those pleasures and objects of sense which were seen, which were near at hand, and which, strongly, solicited their acceptance. Something, in short, was wanting to confirm the wishes and expectations of nature. This aid was received from the light of the gospel. Jesus has dispelled the doubts and fears of mankind: he has established the belief of a future life upon a foundation no less certain and stable than that of the rock of ages whereon his religion itself is built: he has assured us, upon the authority of God, who cannot lie, that, though death may destroy our viler part, yet it dare not touch the image of God, that we are immortal, and that spirits formed by the breath of heaven cannot be extinguish

ed. We may add, that Jesus Christ has exemplified a future state, if the expression be allowable, has made it a matter almost of demonstra

tion, and has submitted it to the testimony of our senses, by his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension into heaven. Before Jesus, the future world was an undiscovered country, for those whom Jesus had raised up from the dead during his life, not acting in the prophet-ick character, had no authority to reveal what they had seen or heard while separated from the body. But Jesus returned from the land of the grave, and revealed to men the secrets and wonders of an unknown region. He sojourned upon earth, after having entered the mansions of death; and was translated into the invisible world before the very eyes of his disciples. Than this no evidence could be more certain, except, perhaps, that which St. Stephen received, who saw the heavens opened, and the Son of man sitting at the right hand of God.

Jesus Christ has farther improved and enlarged our knowledge of a future state, by discovering its true nature. If the heathens were uncertain about the reality of a future state, they were much more ignorant of the different situations of good and bad men in that state. Their Their poets, indeed, had sung of the pains of Tartarus and the blessings of

Elysium: but these were so absurd and extravagant that they were despised, even by the most foolish, and with the wise they brought the whole religion of which they were a part into discredit. But the rewards and punishments which Jesus hath revealed are highly rational, and excellently adapted to operate upon the hopes and fears of mankind. He has assured his followers, that, great is their reward in heaven. Into his Paradise, indeed, he admits not those sensual delights which have tended so much to recommend some other religions to the corrupt passions and desires of men. But, still he has set before them a prize well worth contending for; objects sufficiently great and interesting to animate their exertions, and keep up their courage amidst all the calamities, struggles, and dangers of this mortal life. He hath pointed out a state, which, under the continual influence of the divine presence, consists in the perfection of reason and virtue : he hath promised an inheritance which is undefiled, pure, innocent, and spiritual: he hath offered to his followers a crown of glory which fadeth not away: he hath assured them of being admitted into the heavenly society, which is an assembly of