exalted virtue, at the sight and the remembrance of which the sympathy of men kindles into rapturous admiration, must be pronounced absurd and unreasonable sacrifices. The doctrine of a future life holds out rewards of obedience, which the purest virtue is not degraded by seeking as its object,-pains as the punishment of transgression, which the most hardened cannot slight; lightens the heaviest of our earthly afflictions, by assuring us that death has no power over virtuous friendships; and vindicates the moral providence of God, by supplying a remedy for that unequal distribution of good and evil which the present scene exhibits.

But in order that Christianity may prove itself to be "a doctrine according to godliness," by revealing the future retributory existence of man, it is absolutely necessary that an inseparable connexion be maintained between the present conduct and the future condition; and every doctrine which represents final salvation as depending on any thing else than the performance of good works, and in an inferior degree, those which make them the sign, and not, under the grace of God, the means of our salvation, want the characteristics of evangelical truth. Compare for a moment the influence of these systems, as they minister sources of consolation or motives to

duty. To him who contemplates eternal life as the gift of God through Jesus Christ, and conformity with the law of Christ as the only means of attaining it, the connexion between belief and practice is simple and obvious. He knows that every departure from the path of duty exposes him to the displeasure of God; that, if allowed to become habitual, it may draw down upon him the severest manifestations of his just abhorrence of sin; he feels (for, however creeds may teach him to deny it, every man feels,) that he has implanted within. him capacities of virtue which he is to improve and cherish, along with tendencies to evil which he is to extirpate and subdue; and as he sinks in the combat and faints in the race, or perseveres and triumphs, his conscience bears witness to the neglect or the performance of his duty, and encourages or alarms him with the prospect of the future. He trusts in the mercy of God to forgive the imperfections which adhere to his most earnest efforts to serve him; he acknowledges it to be of his free grace alone, that these services should be rewarded with the crown of immortality but he places no dependence on any imputed righteousness, nor hopes that he may wallow in sensuality and voluptuousness, and suffer his heart to be corrupted with malevo

lence to the last hour of life, and yet be enabled, perhaps at the moment of dissolution, to apply to himself the sacrifice which his Redeemer has offered in his behalf, and quit the world in rapture and rejoicing, when he has lived in it a burden and an outcast. Is it "a doctrine according to godliness," which, if not counteracted by some foreign influence, naturally leads to such results as those which I have just described?

How different the effects of the doctrine of a future life, as a source of consolation, under these two systems! With what calmness may the good man look on death, when he thinks on the gracious promises of God, and reviews a life devoted to his service! Of all those whose thread of life has been twined with his own, he knows that he shall lose none in the grave whose society he would wish to resume: those whom he leaves will follow him; those who have left him are only gone before him; and, as he advances on his journey, every object which reminds him how far he has proceeded from the place which he quitted in the morning, shows him also how rapidly he draws near to his evening rest, where friends and kindred are waiting to receive him. When called upon to resign into the hands of death any one of those to whom his soul has been

knit in the bonds of affection, the very bitterness of the grief which he feels at the remembrance of the qualities by which they were endeared to him becomes its own relief; and every virtue, which fills the heart with sadness and the eye with tears, is a pledge that it shall be repossessed in a happier state. But how different, did not the powerful feelings of nature triumph over the dictates of systematic theology, must often be the state of those, who have been taught to consider final salvation as bestowed without any reference to good works, and the evidence of it as consisting, not in the purity and benevolence of the life and the devotedness of the soul to God, but in the application to ourselves of the sacrifice of Christ! The friend whom you are committing to the tomb, may be one who in every relation of life has deserved the affection and esteem of all who have been connected with him; who has lived soberly, righteously and piously in the world; whose name shall go down to posterity illuminated in the record which preserves from oblivion the benefactors of mankind; and who leaves behind him a memory which" smells sweet and blossoms" in the ashes of the tomb. But what does all this avail for his safety, or for your consolation? His religious faith has been unsound; he has

refused to yield up his reason to the guidance of human authority; he sought earnestly and laboured diligently to know what was truth, but the knowledge was withheld from him; he did not receive and rest upon the righteousness of Christ; his good works, by which the wretched were comforted and the ignorant enlightened, the hungry fed and the naked clothed, are of the nature of sin; and instead of hoping to behold him in the mansions of the blessed, you must believe that his portion will be appointed with the transgressors, and that ages of ages shall roll away, and the worm not die and the fire not be quenched!

I trust that I need not pursue these parallels any further, but that you are convinced, that to produce its full effects, as a doctrine according to godliness, Christianity must be disencumbered of many things commonly believed to be of its very essence. The faith in the profession of which we appear this day united, if the zeal of an advocate has not misled me in estimating the force of the arguments which have been advanced, embraces all that is necessary to produce a life of piety, benevolence, and heavenly-mindedness. It may not contain what is peculiar in the creed of the Fathers who preceded, or the Fathers who composed, the Council of Nice; it may want