tions in the love of God's creatures, of our powers in the communication of his benefits. We are here most happy when most employed; and can opportunities, or objects, or means, or inclination be hereafter wanting in the immense range of God's creation?

Who, then, is the man that is fit for heaven? The selfish, solitary, and indolent speculatist; the griping, hoarding, narrow-minded child of earth; the vain, proud, self-important man of consequence? No! the heaven, which we describe, can be no place for them. The proper candidates for heaven are the men who diligently fulfil the duties of ' their station; who live most for others; and, with unremitted and unwearied care, exert their talents in laboring to correct their own dispositions, and to promote the good of others.

There is another circumstance in the future life of the Christian, which it would be inexcusable to omit, and that is the presence of Christ. He has gone to prepare a place for his followers, that where he is they may be also. It is on these promises, that the Christian's hope has been supported. "Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me." What though all his other expectations of the specific nature or employments of his future condition should be false, yet it is enough for the Christian to know that hereafter Christ will be his companion, and his friend. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God;" "if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.”

Who, then, are to be partakers of this life to come? The world is full of rational beings, capable of forming the conception and cherishing the hope of such an exist

ence. But can we expect to find hereafter, in a more exalted state, all the degraded creatures who live now on the mercy and forbearance of God? Neither Scripture nor reason will allow this hope. There are those who will "sleep in the dust of the earth," and "awake to everlasting contempt." The society of heaven cannot be composed, like the present, of the foolish and the wise, the virtuous and the profligate, the worthless and the excellent. Into the world we have been describing entereth nothing "that defileth or that maketh a lie." And I heard a voice out of heaven saying, "It is done. I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. He, that overcometh, shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the second death."

How glorious are the prospects opened to the eye of faith and virtue! Separated from the wicked, to dwell only with the wise and virtuous, to act with them, to learn with them, and to worship, with them, the everlasting Father; to be occupied forever in the general good of God's creatures, and to proceed from good to better, from glory to glory!

SERMON VI.

JOHN XVIII. 36.

JESUS ANSWERED; MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD.

WHEN Our Savior was brought before Pilate, and maliciously charged by the Jews with affecting regal power, Pilate asks," Art thou the King of the Jews?" and receives the reply in the text, "My kingdom is not of this world."

In the opinion of the Roman judge it appears to have been explicit and satisfactory; for he went out, without delay, to our Savior's accusers, to protest, a second time, that he found no fault in him. This reply, which, at the time, seems to have produced in the mind of Pilate a conviction of the innocence of our Savior's designs, and of the intellectual nature of that influence and authority which he had endeavored to establish, stands yet on record, to refute those idle accusations of disingenuous men, by which they have represented the religion of Jesus as a contrivance of ambitious impostors, and the spiritual engine of political power. It stands yet on record, to reproach the weakness of Pilate, who, after such a declaration, could yield up the Son of God as a dangerous and seditious enemy of Cæsar, and also as a reproach to the pride and spiritual despotism of many sectaries and princes in the history of the church. It stands yet on record, to encourage and

console the real church of Christ in times of affliction, persecution, apostasy, and decay; for, whether our religion enjoy the favor, or endure the hostility, of the civil powers; whether the kingdoms, which call themselves Christian, are swept away, or extended; whether this globe itself endure, or vanish from the systems of the world, the Prince of Peace is not dethroned, nor his holy dominion destroyed, nor his realm invaded, nor the peace and privileges of his subjects disturbed.

Every religion, which the world, before the coming of Christ, had known, was, more or less, incorporated with established governments. The system of Paganism was altogether civil; the augurs could suspend any proceeding of state, and, at last, the character of priest was invariably united with that of emperor. The religion of Moses, too, was intimately incorporated with his civil polity; and, however the circumcision of the heart only might be recommended by a Christian apostle, no one could ever belong to the Jewish nation, who did not, first, by this outward rite of religious initiation, belong to the Jewish church.

But the religion of Jesus, thanks be to God! was linked with the fortunes of no nation, and wrought into the forms of no government. It interferes with none of the distinctions of political society. It is a religion circumscribed by no natural boundaries, suited to every climate, country, and state of improvement, and adapted to all ages of the world. It has no peculiar exemptions, nor peculiar privileges, for any sex, age, or order of society. In one word, it was designed to be universal and immortal. It has its rudiments only in this world, but its perfection hereafter. The subjects of Christ's kingdom here are a small and distant colony of a mighty empire, placed where their loyalty

is in a state of perpetual probation, to be transplanted successively to the parent country, and to dwell under the more immediate influence of the Prince of Peace, in heaven, the seat of his immediate presence.

Jesus, in his reply to Pilate, who had asked him whether he were a king, adds, in confirmation of the unwarlike nature of the kingdom which he came to establish, "If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have fought, they would not have permitted me to be delivered up to the Jews." Our Savior does not offer this as the only, or the strongest, proof of the spiritual nature of his government, but as one which was evidently suggested by his actual cir

cumstances.

Our Savior's meaning, in the words of our text, undoubtedly, was, that he was, indeed, a king, but that the sway, he should exercise, would be marked by none of the insignia of temporal power, that it would consist in the spiritual influence of his gospel, and the acknowledgment of his authority in the hearts of all his faithful followers, through a long succession of ages; that this world was not the limit of his reign, but that his kingdom would be continued and consummated hereafter.

It shall be our present object, to show you how little the kingdom of Christ resembles, and how little it is connected with, the kingdoms of the world, in its origin, its establishment, its nature, and its duration.

First, then, in its origin. We discern in reality what was so often absurdly claimed by the founders of states, we discern a celestial origin. With what retired and peaceful auguries is it ushered in! In that day, when "the God of heaven" began to "set up a kingdom which should never be destroyed," the world, we are told, was reposing in universal