in their beds before the storm of God's wrath burst in all its fierceness upon that guilty and doomed city, and ere there were seen yet, even as specks in the distant horizon, the Roman eagles gathering eagerly to the prey. Nor could it be a violent death, by sword or falling tower, like that of the Galileans or the people of Siloam; for we cannot suppose, with any show of reason, that all the enemies of Christ among the Jews, who did not perish by the Roman war, died by some other pain ful end. Nor could it be any mere death of the body that he intended, for he speaks of it as something which repentance, and repentance alone, could enable them to avoid. Now, from the death of the body, repentance does not save the man. The penitent must enter the shroud and the coffin as well as his ungodly neighbor. But the evil from which repentance does save us, is eternal destruction; and this, therefore, our Saviour intends when he uses the word " perishing." It is the eternal ruin that awaits the dying sinner.

Death, although often used but in that narrow sense, includes more than the corruption and decay of the body. We are in arrears to a violated law. The dissolution of the body is but the first instalment of our debt. Death is often spoken of as the debt of nature. More justly it might be termed the debt of sin; for our nature, whilst sinless, as it came from the Maker's plastic hand, was not mortal. The destruction of the body, then, is but a partial satisfaction of the debt which sin owes to the justice of God. And if you observe the margin of our text, you will perceive that a literal rendering of the word is: "Were they debtors more than others?" The diseases and pains, the decay and dissolution of the body, are but the earlier instalments of the vast pen alty. Behind it comes the loss of the soul when in the resurrection the body has been revivified and re-united to the soul, its old associate in sin, and both are cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, and with it eventually sinners" perish" by a ruin, endless, remediless, and hopeless.

The death of the body is but a transient act, the portal through which we pass into the far eternity beyond. It puts, indeed, an indelible imprint on a man's character. It leaves the filthy eternally filthy, and the holy unalterably holy; stripping the one of all hope, as it exempts the other from all fear, of a change. It snaps for ever the bond that binds the believer, while on earth, to care, and temptation, and conflict; and it also sunders the ties of opportunity, mercy, and hope, that surrounded and held up the unbeliever, while in this world of probation. Death is not, as the journalist, too often, in the case of the suicide, terms it, “a termination of existence." This is phraseology said to have come in upon us, with the Atheism of the French RevoluMan, at death, it may rather be said, but begins to exist, in the highest sense of that word. His being is developed, and he has higher powers, and wider knowledge, and keener feelings, when made a disembodied spirit. And when skepticism would write, as did Revolu

• President Dwight.

tionary France, over the gateway of the cemetery, the inscription: "Death is an eternal sleep," the saddened eye of faith reads, in its stead, the more true but melancholy sentence over the graves of those who have lived and died without hope and without God in the world: "And I looked and beheld a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” On the dissolution of the body, follows, in the case of the ungodly, Hell with all its trooping terrors, though its fulness of anguish and its last torments may be reserved for the day of judgment.

How awful is the exchange which the sinner makes at death! "In that very day his thoughts perish;" his vain expectations of worldly enjoyments, of impunity in sin, and of a final season and space for repentance; his earthly plans; and all his rivalries, hopes and fears, which regarded exclusively the life that then suddenly closed its gates on him and closed them for ever. For his pleasures he has endless pain. During life, nothing could utterly extinguish hope within him; now, during eternity, nothing can rekindle it. From a world of religious privileges, and sacred times, and gracious invitations, he goes to a world that has no Sabbaths, no mercy-seat, no Advocate, no influences of the Spirit, not a promise, not a hope. On making the sad exchange, how must his forfeited and vanishing blessings brighten in his view, as they take their everlasting flight. How strangely contrasted, though drawn by the same hand, would be the two pictures of this world drawn by the sinner's spirit, when as yet without, and again when passed within, the veil that hides the eternal world. While yet in the body, and on this side the intervening barrier between the world of sense and show, and the world of reality, sense and self were all; time was as eternity, and eternity was brief and valueless as time. But now, entered on the further world, and when both are known by experience, eternity appears in its true infinitude, and time shrinks and dwindles into its proper littleness. Now Heaven and Hell are no longer dreams, and Christ is recognized as really a Saviour, King, and God; but a God now alienated, a King defied and incensed, whose power pervades all space and permits no escape, and a Saviour whose favor is forfeited irrecoverably and for ever.

Well were it for us if we kept these consequences of death more steadily before us. For this purpose, our Heavenly Father makes the lessons of our mortality so frequent, impressive, and various. The dead are quietly glancing upon the student from the shelves of his library. History is but, in a great measure, spoils won from the grave, or a compilation of the epitaphs of those who have gone before us. Nor is it literature only that is thus redolent of the tomb. Each scene of retired and domestic life has its avenues of memory and regret that lead back to the grave. Every household has its seat by the table and the hearth, now vacant, where once was seen a face now hidden and buried out of sight, and where once was heard a voice now stilled in the

• Rev. vi. 8.

silence of the sepulchre. Who may build himself a mansion, however stored with all that can adorn or gladden life, and say, over this threshold the coffin shall not pass? The funeral hearse rolls on its way past the doors of the ball-room and the theatre. In the pulpit and at the bar, in the Senate chamber or on the main-deck, we see the place of the departed, or the scene, it may even be, of their departure. Thus "Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets; she crieth in the chief place of concourse;" "* and death is made to unroll its solemn commission, and publish its stern testimony in our thronged thoroughfares. Thus, in our own city, the most populous of our graveyards, with vegetation all rank, and a soil fattened by the accumulated corpses of a century, draws its sad length beside our most crowded street, as if it would throw out a dyke to stem the torrent of frivolity and fashion, each day rushing by; and the field of death looks down from its silent eminence, upon the long line of banking-houses, and the street of our busiest trafficking, as if a skeleton hand were beckoning from the spirit land to our merchant princes, and bidding them with all their gettings to get wisdom, and to consider their latter end that they may be really wise.

For death to the unprepared is the shipwreck of all hopes and the destruction of all happiness. But how shall we be prepared?

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IV. And thus we reach our fourth and closing division. Repentance is our only safeguard. Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."

To prepare for death, the world knows no fitter method than to forget what cannot be evaded, and to drown all serious reflection in the din of business and amid the tumult of revelry. It is like bandaging the eyes to screen us from an exploding battery. The less we reflect, the greater, in fact, our danger of rushing blind-folded into ruin. It is such preparation as Joab gave Amasa when he grasped his beard as in friendly greeting, and asked of his health, whilst seeking the fatal spot where a single stroke would be sure and speedy deatha preparation it is that disarms, indeed, of anxiety and suspicion, and relieves us of intrusive fears, but that, at the same time, robs us of life and seals us to ruin. Not such the method of Scripture. It may alarm, but it alarms to save. It bids you prepare for death by retreating for protection from the impending destruction to that impregnable refuge, the Saviour's cross. There the penitent finds balm for his wounds, pardon for his sins, and life, eternal life, for his death.

For "the sting of death is sin." To remove sin is, therefore, the only mode of depriving the grave of its victory, and rendering the King of Terrors not only harmless but beneficent. How shall sin be removed but by renouncing it; and how can we renounce it but in Christ's strength; or how can our repentance be accepted but through his intercession, or our sins be forgiven but through his righteousness,

Prov. i. 29.

or our bodies, once consigned to the grave, be released from its prison, but as his resurrection becomes the pledge of ours? A true repentance grasps the cross.

Death, then, preaches repentance. What John the Baptist cried in the wilderness, and Jesus of Nazareth in the streets of Jerusalem, this recent visitation of Divine Providence is proclaiming throughout our land, as from its high places of dignity and influence: "Repent ye. The axe is laid at the root of the trees. Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."

Let the community repent, like Nineveh at the preaching of Jonah, and she may escape sore and impending judgments. What woes were those that overtook the Jewish people because they refused the command and repented not? Let a nation be exalted and enriched, as is our own, with physical and moral advantages, with all religious and civil privileges, an impenitent and godless spirit is yet sufficient to squander them all, and leave corruption, disunion, decay and subjection, as her final heritage. Let her, on the other hand, however afflicted and debased, but repent; and God can restore her from the deepest degradation, exalt and bless and establish her, till she that was servant of servants comes to sit as a queen among the nations.

Let the individual sinner repent. It is, by the will and the oath of God, his only hope of escaping the second death and evading the horrible pit of hell, on whose verge his unhappy step already wanders. It assures him of his ultimate deliverance, not only from the fear of death, but from all fears and all care, temptation and sin; and it houses the fugitive, at last, in the bosom of God. Does he ask: How am I to repent? We answer: Not of some sins only, but of all sins. Renounce your idols. Turn to Christ for pardon. Resolve in his strength. Plead his merits and trust his cross. In his name ask for light, and follow it when given. And not only clasp but wear the cross, inaking it your badge before the world, as well as your plea before God; and this done, the earth sinks subjected beneath your feet, hell withdraws, baffled of its aim and spoiled of its prey, and Heaven comes nearer, the nearer you draw to the inevitable tomb.

Are you a penitent? Then, however young and feeble and obscure you may be, you are contributing to avert, as the impenitent is contributing to attract, the clouds and the resounding tempests of God's wrath. Are you careless? Careless amid death and bereavement and danger? Careless amid Sabbaths and Bibles and the Saviour's invitations, and the Spirit's stirrings? Recollect that it is no vain word, no braggart threat, but the stern law of the skies. "He, that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy."

Let the world tell you what it will of natural innocence, and a morality of your own with which God cannot be angry, remember the world is not the law-giver or the judge in this matter. It must itself bide the law and face the Judge. That law is: Turn or perish; Repent and live. It is the fiat of your Creator, Saviour and Judge.

Repent, then, we entreat you, and be saved; for it is mercy that calls, an infinite and divine forbearance that yet waits, and Heaven itself stoops to allure, to welcome and to shelter you.

Thus have we reviewed the lessons of eternal truth our Saviour has annexed to such dispensations of his Providence, as that which we are now remembering. We have seen how each such calamity proclaims man's sinfulness, reminds us of our common and continual exposure to an end as sudden, bids us remember the destruction that waits on the death of the impenitent, and commands us to exercise that repentance which alone saves from Hell and fits for death. Each such dispensation reveals to us, as by a sudden flash, the benighted sea of life which we are traversing, and the dim shores of the eternity we are nearing. It comes from God as on a mission to man, and while it recalls to him his sin and his danger, it also announces his one hope and salvation, and bids the penitent see in the cross and tomb of his Redeemer the gates of Paradise opened anew on Calvary, to a doomed and dying race; while, to the impenitent, it tells of a death of despair, and shows, below the yawning tomb, a lower depth and the lurid fires of its torments. It compresses our business in one world, and our prospects for the next, into three brief words: REPENT OR PERISH

In conclusion, we would remark:

1. First, on the sins of the nation; for each such visitation calls us to remember these. Have we not, in many things, declined from the ways of our forefathers? Could any candid and intelligent observer claim, for the mass of the statesmen of this country in our times, the high character for integrity and moral principle accorded to the fathers of the Revolution? Virtue and talent there are; but is the average of right principle in our great political parties equal to that displayed in the times of our forefathers? In the growing rapacity and corrup→ tion of public servants; in the violence of party discord and its venality; and in the madness of passion seen disgracing even the halls of national legislation by brawls; are there auguries for good, as to the destinies of the nation thus guided, and of the rising generation, thus to be trained and moulded? The desecration of the Sabbath; our national eagerness for gain-our growing luxury-the character of our widely spread and cheaper literature, much of the best of it frivolous, and much of it worse than frivolous, "sensual and devilish,”— are not all these causes for humiliation and alarm, and do they not afford, on such an occasion as this, materials for heart-searching inquiry and profound and penitent meditation? We have, as a people, many and rich mercies, but they are reviewed with safety when regarded as heightening our responsibility, and, if neglected and perverted, as enhancing the more the darkness of our guilt, and the severity of our punishment. We are a young nation, and to the community as to the individual, youth is the season of ardor, hope, and boastfulness. If there has been justice in the charge other nations have made against us, that we are given to vaunting, has not God, in the disaster with