are conspired against them, and unite their forces to render them miserable, in order to prevent greater misery from spreading through the universe. Impenitent sinners! even the unbounded love of God to his creatures is your enemy. Love, under the name and form of justice, which is equally love stiil, demands your execution; and to suffer you to escape would not only be an act of injustice, but an act of malignity and hostility against the whole system of rational beings. Therefore repent and be holy, otherwise divine love will not suffer you to be happy. God is love; therefore will he confine you in the infernal prison, as a regard to the public welfare in human governments shuts up criminals in a dungeon, and madmen in Bedlam.

II. May we not hence conclude that all the acts of the Deity may be resolved into the benevolent principle of love God is love; therefore he made this vast universe, and planted it so thick with variegated life. God is love; therefore he still rules the world he has made, and inflicts chastisements and judgments upon it from every age. God is love; therefore he spared not his own Son, but made him the victim of his justice. God is love; therefore he requires perfect holiness, perfect obedience from all his subjects. God is love; therefore he has enacted such tremendous sanctions to his law, and executes them in their full extent upon offenders. God is love; therefore he has made the prison of hell, and there confines in chains of everlasting darkness those malevolent creatures, that would be a nuisance to society, and public mischiefs, if suffered to run at large. In short, whatever he does, he does it because he is love. How amiable a view of him is this! Therefore,

III. We may certainly conclude that if God be love, then all his creatures ought to love him. Love him, O all ye inhabitants of heaven! But they need not my exhortation; they know him, and therefore cannot but love him. Love him, all ye inhabitants of the planetary worlds; if such there be. These also I hope need no exhortation, for we would willingly persuade ourselves that other territories of this immense empire have not rebelled against him as this earth has done. Love him, O ye children of men! To you I call: but O! I fear I shall call in vain. To love him who is all love is the

most hopeless proposal one can make to the world. But whatever others do, love the Lord, all ye his saints! You I know cannot resist the motion. Surely your love even now is all on fire. Love the Lord, O my soul !

Amen.

SERMON XIX.

THE GENERAL RESURRECTION.

JOHN V. 28, 29.-The hour is coming in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of dam

nation.

EVER since sin entered into the world and death by sin, this earth has been a vast grave-yard, or burying-j place, for her children. In every age, and in every country, that sentence has been executing, Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. The earth has been arched with graves, the last lodgings of mortals, and the bottom of the ocean paved with the bones of men.* Human nature was at first confined to one pair, but how soon and how wide did it spread! How inconceivably numerous are the sons of Adam! How many different nations on our globe contain many millions of men even in one generation! And how many generations have succeeded one another in the long run of near six thousand years! Let imagination call up this vast army: children that just light upon our globe, and then wing their flight into an unknown world; the gray-headed that have had a long journey through life; the blooming youth and the middle-aged, let them pass in review before us from all countries and from all ages; and how vast and astonishing the multitude! If the posterity of one man (Abraham) by one son was, according to the divine

No spot on earth but has supply'd a grave;

And human sculls the spacious ocean pave.-YOUNG.

promise, as the stars of heaven, or as the sand by the sea-shore, innumerable, what numbers can compute the multitudes that have sprung from all the patriarchs, the sons of Adam and Noah! But what is become of them all? Alas! they are turned into earth, their original element; they are all imprisoned in the grave, except the present generation, and we are dropping one after another in quick succession into that place appointed for all living. There has not been perhaps a moment of time for five thousand years, but what some one or other has sunk into the mansions of the dead; and in some fatal hours, by the sword of war or the devouring jaws of earthquakes, thousands have been cut off and swept away at once, and left in one huge promiscuous carnage. The greatest number of mankind beyond comparison are sleeping under ground. There lies beauty mouldering into dust, rotting into stench and loathsomeness, and feeding the vilest worms. There lies the head that once wore a crown, as low and con temptible as the meanest beggar. There lie the mighty giants, the heroes and conquerors, the Samsons, the Ajaxes, the Alexanders, and the Cæsars of the world! there they lie stupid, senseless, and inactive, and unable to drive off the worms that riot on their marrow, and make their houses in those sockets where the eyes sparkled with living lustre. There lie the wise and the learned, as rotten, as helpless as the fool. There lie some that we once conversed with, some that were our friends, our companions; and there lie our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters.

And shall they lie there always? Shall this body, this curious workmanship of Heaven, so wonderfully and fearfully made, always lie in ruins, and never be repaired? Shall the wide-extended valleys of dry bones never more live? This we know, that it is not a thing impossible with God to raise the dead. He that could first form our bodies out of nothing, is certainly able to form them anew, and repair the wastes of time and death. what is his declared will in this case? On this the matter turns; and this is fully revealed in my text. "The hour is coming, when all that are in the graves," all that are dead, without exception, "shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth."

But

And for what end shall they come forth? O! for very different purposes; some to the resurrection of life; and some to the resurrection of damnation."

And what is the ground of this vast distinction? Or what is the difference in character between those that shall receive so different a doom? It is this, "They that have done good shall rise to life, and they that have done evil to damnation." It is this, and this only, that will then be the rule of distinction.

I would avoid all art in my method of handling this subject, and intend only to illustrate the several parts of the text. "All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done well, to the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of damnation."

I. They that are in the graves shall hear his voice. The voice of the Son of God here probably means the sound of the archangel's trumpet, which is called his voice, because sounded by his orders and attended with his all-quickening power. This all-wakening call to the tenants of the grave we frequently find foretold in scripture. I shall refer you to two plain passages. Behold, says St. Paul, I show you a mystery, an important and astonishing secret, we shall not all sleep; that is mankind will not all be sleeping in death when that day comes; there will be a generation then alive upon the earth; and though they cannot have a proper resurrection, yet they shall pass through a change equivalent to it. We shall all be changed," says he, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound," it shall give the alarm; and no sooner is the awful clangor heard than all the living shall be transformed into immortals; and the dead shall be raised incorruptible; and we, who are then alive, shall be changed, 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52; this is all the difference, they shall be raised, and we shall be changed. This awful prelude of the trumpet is also mentioned in 1 Thess. iv. 15, 16. "We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them which are asleep ;" that is, we shall not be beforehand with them in meeting our descending Lord, "for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangels, and with the trump of God;" that is, with a godlike

trump, such as it becomes his majesty to sound, and the dead in Christ shall rise first: that is, before the living shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and when they are risen, and the living transformed, they shall ascend together to the place of judgment.

My brethren, realize the majesty and terror of this universal alarm. When the dead are sleeping in the silent grave; when the living are thoughtless and unapprehensive of the grand event, or intent on other pursuits; some of them asleep in the dead of night; some of them dissolved in sensual pleasures, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage; some of them planning or executing schemes for riches or honors; some in the very act of sin; the generality stupid and careless about the concerns of eternity, and the dreadful day just at hand; and a few here and there conversing with their God, and "looking for the glorious appearance of their Lord and Savior;" when the course of nature runs on uniform and regular as usual, and infidel scoffers are taking umbrage from thence to ask, "Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." 2 Pet. iii. 4. In short, when there are no more visible appearances of this approaching day, than of the destruction of Sodom on that fine clear morning in which Lot fled away; or of the deluge, when Noah entered into the ark; then in that hour of unapprehensive security, then suddenly shall the heavens open over the astonished world; then shall the all-alarming clangor break over their heads like a clap of thunder in a clear sky. Immediately the living turn their gazing eyes upon the amazing phenomenon; a few hear the long-expected sound with rapture, and lift up their heads with joy, assured that the day of their redemption is come, while the thoughtless world are struck with the wildest horror and consternation. In the same instant the sound reaches all the mansions of the dead, and in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, they are raised, and the living are changed. This call will be as animating to all the sons of men, as that call to a single person, Lazarus, come forth. O what a surprise will this be to a thoughtless world! Should this alarm burst over our heads this moment, into what a terror would it strike many in this as