desert world. Now we must encounter the calamities of life by native prowess, or by the courage of piety: Which will aid us the best? This is the question which I wish may be pondered with solemnity for a few moments.

I shall mention some of the storms of life, that we shall all be sure to meet; and inquire, as I pass on, which has the safest defence-the mere man of the world, or the man of piety.

I. We shall all probably part with beloved friends. The ties that bind them to us are slender, the sport of every wind that blows, and every dew that falls. They are ours only by loan, and must be resigned. We may have warnings of their departure, or may have none. They may be torn from us at the moment of our highest attachment-when our life is bound up in theirswhen it shall seem to us that we have nothing to stay for, if they must leave us. This calamity will certainly come, alike upon the good man and the unbeliever. Which will sustain it best? They stand together by the death-bed of a mother, a father, a sister, a brother: they have the same instinctive passions; they both feel the stroke, and must try to outlive it. But by what principles shall they brace their minds against the storm?

The unbeliever may hope to forget his sorrow, or find some other friend as good, or draw from something else, the comfort he has enjoyed in his dying friend. But all this is a distant and uncertain relief. He will find it difficult to forget his friend, and he dare not wish to, and months, or even years, must elapse before he can hope to. Nor will he find it easy to supply the place of his friend. Such friends do not rain down from heaven, do

not spring up from the ground, cannot be bought. A mother, for instance,-who can supply her place? Who, like her, will wear out her nature to serve you, and watch by your sick-bed, and feel every pang, and wipe away your tears? What friend will become dear to you as your brother, and suffer to befriend you, and endure any thing but death to save you? I know "there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother;" but he is the friend of the godly, not yours. And you will find it difficult, if you have lost a friend, to secure the same amount of enjoyment elsewhere. Friends are our choicest blessings. Wealth is trash, and fame is air; but a friend, in this cold-hearted world, is a precious pearl. See then how distant and doubtful is the conso

lation of the ungodly.

Take some of the still nearer and dearer friends, and the case is more hopeless still. The mother must see her child taken into the cold embrace of death. And she tries, does she? to live through it without divine support. Now where and when will she find one, who will call her mother, and feel her pains, and watch her tears, and sooth her miseries? Oh, I hear her say, unless she has still another son, "My grey hairs will come down with sorrow to the grave. I shall go weeping to the sepulchre for my son."

Or the dying friend is a wife. Go now, and find, if you can, one who will be a mother to your children. Try if you can forget her endearments. Try if you can find in any other object the amount of joy you had in her. Oh, how the agonies of the ungodly wring pity from our hearts. This is the onset when "the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall." No native vigour can enable one to brow-beat a storm like this, and not be, in the result, a

hopeless and desponding sufferer. The heart loses its courage, soon as it enters the conflict. No cold philosophy can reason down affection, or mitigate the agonies of separation. And the poor surviver, if an unbeliever, can only "lie down in sorrow."

But not so the Christian, who waits upon the Lord. He has in heaven a better Friend than he has lost, and can smile at the ravages of death, as hurting only some of his minor interests. He can immediately transfer the affection he fixed upon his friend, to God; and reap, in an hour, a return infinitely better than any fruits of earthly friendship. He holds all his living friends as the loan of Heaven, ready to be transferred to their original Proprietor. And in the hour of trial his soul utters with deep sincerity, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." He has not to wait till he can forget his friend, or find another, or procure a substitute. He "waits upon the Lord," and is thus strengthened for the hour, and becomes happy in the midst of tears. He passes through the waters, but God is with him; and through the floods, but they do not overflow him. He walks through the fire, but is not burned, neither does the flame kindle upon him. His song is, "The Lord liveth; and blessed be my Rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted." He never calculated on any very durable good from earthly things, as does the unrenewed man. Hence he is not disappointed. His best hopes are not cut off, nor his richest prospects darkened. God has been as good to him as his promises, and better than his own fears. His trials will soon end in heaven. There he will join a circle of friends to whom he has been long more attached than to any other. Thus he mounts as on

eagles' wings, scales the very heavens, runs and is not weary, walks and is not faint.

At how many funerals have we witnessed this wide contrast between the native prowess of a mind unsanctified, and the fortitude of a man of God strengthened for the trial by the light of his countenance.

Come, then, my young friends, let me assure you, how only you can be happy in the hour of bereavement. You may suppress your tears when you attend the funeral of your mother, or your brother, but nature will feel. You may put on the stoic, but the heart will bleed. You may try to cheer your spirits, but your strength will fail, unless God in that hour is your refuge, your very present help. If you intend to live without him, you need hope for nothing but that his waves and his billows will often come over you, while there will be no comforter. You have twenty dear friends, and one may die each year, these twenty years; and ere then you may die yourself. Thus the heart will bleed, and you will be covered with the weeds of death, all the way to the sepulchre. I should not choose to be one of your friends, unless I could believe that you would think of me when I was gone one year; that my funeral solemnities would create a cloud, that would cast its shade upon you till the sun had performed at least one annual revolution. Let each friend make the same demand, and you have no divine support under your bereavements, and you readily see that the whole of life is a cloudy and dark day.

I have noticed yet the loss of friends by death only ; but we may lose them more tremendously, by desertion. Let the hour come when it shall not be popular to be your friend, and when many who have sought your acquaintance, and received your hospitality, and waited

to know and do your pleasure, shall hide their face from you; then is the hour when "the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint." I know there is a buoyancy in the human heart, that may seem for a moment to sustain you. You can despise the man whose sycophancy deceived you, but who was never your friend, and has now only uncovered to you the rottenness of his heart. You can resolve to despise the men who are the friends of your prosperity, but not of your adversity; and they deserve to be despised: but you will feel a pain dart through you in that hour, which you must sustain, either by your native prowess or by a higher courage. Would you trust in an arm of flesh? Ah, but this arm fails you; and then where will you lean? Now, the good man has no misgivings in such an hour. With him it is a living maxim, "it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of man's judgment; but he that judgeth me is the Lord." Paul could keep up all his courage while in the midst of a people who not long before would have plucked out their eyes and given them to him, but were now become his enemies because he told them the truth. And the Lord Jesus Christ, who had all the tenderness of our nature, could, without despair, hear the cry, "Crucify him! crucify him!" uttered by that same multitude whose blind he had made to see, whose lame to walk, whose lepers he had cleansed, whose sick he had healed, and whose dead he had raised. All this one can easily sustain who has an almighty friend in heaven. He can pour a holy contempt upon the wavering men who have no principle, and will desert him when he needs