A. To keep myself light and active for the Christian course. Q. How are you to do that? A. To cast off the unnecessary weight of riches, worldly cares and pleasures. Q. Is there not some particular impediment, which every particular Christian is to lay aside? A. There is some one sin, which wraps itself more closely about him, and is harder to put off than any other, and hinders him most of all in his Christian progress. Q. What else was required of those who were preparing for the race? A. To be temperate in all things for this contributes as much to the strength of the mind as of the body. Q. What obligations are you under to do the best you can ? . A. The race is not won, but by him who does his utmost: he that is careless will not obtain, neither doth he deserve the prize. Q. What other obligation are you under? A. I am striving before a cloud of witnesses, who will receive and applaud me if I succeed. Q. Who are they? A. The A. The holy angels; all good men; and all they who have already run the race of faith, and obtained the prize. Q. How were the conquerors rewarded of old time? A. With a crown or garland of laurels and flowers. Q. What will be your reward? A. An eternal crown which fadeth not. THE TEXTS. Heb. xii. 1. Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us; and let us run with patience the race which is set before us. 1 Cor. ix. 24, &c. They which run in a race, run all; but one receiveth the prize: so run, that ye may obtain. And every one that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly-but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest while I have preached unto others, I myself should be a cast away. III. THE III. THE CHAPTER OF TABERNACLES. ALL men are but passengers and pil grims through this world; and it is a fatal mistake to think we are possessors of any thing, of houses or lands, when we are no more than tenants and occupiers in this transitory life: Some dwell in stately palaces; and many more in poor cottages; but all are born to the same mortality. If the poor man's hut drops into decay, he dies never the sooner; and if the house of the rich is founded upon a rock, he lives never the longer. To prevent all mistakes from distinctions of this kind, the holy Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, inhabited no lofty cities, built no strong holds; but lived in tents or tabernacles, with which they removed from place to place, as God was pleased to order them. This was very remarkable in their case; because they did it in a land which God had promised to them for an inheritance: thereby signifying, that they did not accept of the earthly land, but looked for a better country, that is, an heavenly. When the children of Israel were journeying to Canaan (to give us a pattern of the state of man in this world) they lived by encampments in a wilderness; removing their tents from place to place for forty years, and ending their days in that unsettled way of life. Even when the people were fixed in Canaan, good men still devoted themselves to live as sojourners and pilgrims. We see this in the example of the Rechabites, who renounced the pleasures and possessions of the world, and dwelt in tents as their holy fathers had done before. Even God himself was pleased to partake of the condition of his people; making himself, even under the law, that stranger upon earth which he was to be afterwards under the gospel. The place of his worship in the wilderness, and long afterwards, was not a house, but a tent and a tabernacle; and when the Word was made flesh, he is said to have tabernacled amongst us; living as one who renounced this world and all its possessions; more unprovided of house and land, than the foxes of the earth or the birds of the air. The passage from this world to the other is much more easy to those who live in this manner. man of the world, who fixes his abode here, is violently torn away at his death, as a tree pulled up by the roots, and hath no prospect The after after it but he who lives in a tent is easily removed. If we live in faith, we shall die in hope: knowing that, if our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have another building, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. When we leave this land, on which we never rested, we find a better country, in which we may fix with safety; when we leave the buildings of this world, which fall into decay, we find an eternal city, whose builder and maker is God. No subject is perfectly understood, till it excites devotion in us and we should endeavour to give that turn to it, in some such way as this: Lord, make me ever mindful, that I am a pilgrim and stranger upon earth; a passenger and traveller through this transitory life, to the possession which thou didst promise to. our forefather Abraham, and the heirs of his faith. As I have here no abiding-place, let me be content to lead a changeable unsettled life, if thou seest it good for me, as a tent is removed from one station to another; that, when all my journeyings and encampments through this wilderness shall be finished, I may see the felicity of thy chosen, and rejoice with thine inheritance; dwelling with thee |