ven the blessed have the experience of this. | the breasts of the persons to whom you would There God exerts the plenitude of his power make the communication. In order to proover the soul, by exciting in it the most lively duce them, faculties must be found, adapted emotions of delight; there this communica- to the reception of such sensations. But tions are proportional to the immortal nature of the glorified spirit. This was produced in the soul of our apostle. 'The pleasures which I have tasted,' he seems to say, are not such as your present faculties can reach. In order to make you com-I prehend what I have felt, I must be endowed with the power of creating new laws of the union subsisting between your soul and your body. I must be endowed with the capacity of suspending those of nature; or rather, I must be possessed of the means of tearing your soul asunder from that body. I must have the power of transporting you in an ecstacy, as I myself was. And considering the state in which you still are, I am persuaded that I shall represent to you what my feelings were much better, by telling you that they are things unspeakable, than by attempting a description of them. For when the point in question is to represent that which consists in lively and affecting sensations, there is no other method left, but actually to produce them in these faculties you do not as yet possess. It is therefore impossible that you should ever comprehend, while here below, what such sensations mean, And it is no more in my power to convey to you an idea of those which have enjoyed, than it is to give the deaf an idea of sounds, or the blind man of colours.' You must be sensible then, my brethren, that defect in respect of faculties, prevents our conception of the sensible pleasures which the blessed above enjoy, as want of tuste and want of genius prevent our comprehending what are their inclinations, and what is their illumination. Accordingly, the principal reason of St. Paul's silence, and of the silence of scripture in general, respecting the nature of the heavenly felicity, present nothing that ought to relax our ardour in the pursuit of it; they are proofs of its inconceivable greatness, and so far from sinking its value in our eyes, they manifestly enhance and aggrandize it. This is what we undertook to demonstrate. SERMON LXXVII. THE RAPTURE OF ST. PAUL. PART III. 2 Cor. xii. 2-4. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth ;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth ;) how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. WE have endeavoured to elucidate the expressions of our apostle in the text, and to de monstrate that the silence of Scripture, on the subject of a state of celestial felicity, suggests nothing that has a tendency to cool our ardour in the pursuit of it, but rather, on the contrary, that this very veil which conceals the paradise of God from our eyes is, above all things, calculated to convey the most exalted ideas of it. We now proceed, III. To conclude our discourse, by making some application of the subject. singular kind, and which well deserves your most serious attention. It is a trait which immediately refers to the subject under discussion: I mean the ardent desire expressed by St. Paul to return to that felicity, from which the order of Providence forced him away, to replace him in the world. Nothing can convey to us a more exalted idea of the transfiguration of Jesus Christ, than the effects which it produced on the soul of St. Peter. That apostle had scarcely enjoyed a glimpse of the Redeemer's glory on the Now, if the testimony of an apostle, if the holy mount, when, behold, he is transported at decisions of Scripture, if the arguments which the sight. He has no longer a desire to dehave been used, if all this is deemed insuffi- scend from that mountain; he has no longer a cient, and if, notwithstanding our acknowledg-desire to return to Jerusalem; he has forgoted inability to describe the heavenly felicity, you should still insist on our attempting to convey some idea of it, it is in our power to present you with one trait of it, a trait of a ten every thing terrestrial, friends, relations, engagements; Lord, it is good for us to be here; if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles,' Matt. xvii. 4; and to the extremity of old age he retains the impression of that heavenly vision, and exults in the recollection of it: He received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount,' 2 Pet. i. 17, 18. The idea of the celestial felicity has made a similarly indelible impression on the mind of St. Paul. More than fourteen years have elapsed since he was blessed with the vision of it. Nay, for fourteen years he has kept silence. This object, nevertheless, accompanies him wherever he goes, and, in every situation, his soul is panting after the restoration of it. And in what way was he to look for that restoration? Not in the way of ecstacy, not in a rapture. He was not to be translated to heaven, as Elijah, in a chariot of fire. Necessity was laid upon him of submitting to the law imposed on every child of Adam: It is appointed to all men once to die,' Heb. ix. 27. But no matter; to that death, the object of terror to all mankind, he looks forward with fond desire. that he was inspired by the Spirit of God, we must ever entertain high ideas of a man, who had derived his extensive knowledge from the pure sources of the Jewish dispensation; who had ennobled his enlarged and capacious mind by all that is more sublime in Christianity; of a man, whose heart had always obeyed the dictates of his understanding; who opposed Christianity with zeal, so long as he believed Christianity to be false, and who bent the full current of his zeal to the support of Christianity, from the moment he became persuaded that it was an emanation from God. St. Paul was a man possessed of strong reasoning powers, and we have in his writings many monuments which will convey down to the end of the world the knowledge of his intellectual superiority. Nevertheless this man so enlightened, so sage, so rational; this man who knew the pleasures of heaven by experience, no longer beholds any thing on the earth once to be compared with them, or that could for a moment retard his wishes. He concludes that celestial joys ought not to be considered as too dearly purchased, at whatever price it may have pleased God to rate them, and whatever it may cost to attain them. I reckon, says he, I reckon what I suffer, and what I may still be called to suffer, on the one side; and I reckon, on the other, the glory of which I have been a witness, and which I am still to enjoy ; I reckon, that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,' Rom. viii. 18. Having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, Phil. i. 23. But who is capable of giving an adequate representation of his transports, so as to make you feel them with greater energy, and were it possible, to transfuse them into your hearts? Represent to yourself a man, who has actually seen that glory, of which we can give you only borrowed ideas. Represent to yourself a man, who has visited those sacred mansions which are in the house of the Father,' John xiv. 2; a man who has seen the palace of the Sovereign of the universe, and those thousands,' those thousand thousands,' which surround his throne, Dan. vii. 10; a man who has been in that new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven,' Rev. iii. 12; in that But what do I say, that death simply was the path which St. Paul must tread, to arrive at the heavenly rest? No, not the ordinary death of most men; but death violent, premature, death arrayed in all its terror. Nero, the barbarous Nero, was then upon the throne, and the blood of a Christian so renowned as our apostle, must not escape so determined a foe to Christianity. No matter still. Let loose all thy fury against me, ferocious tiger, longing to glut thyself with Christian blood; I defy thy worst. Come, executioner of the sanguinary commands of that monster; I will mount the scaffold with undaunted resolution; I will submit my head to the fatal blow with intrepidity and joy.' We said, in the opening of this discourse, Paul, ever since his rapture, talks only of dying, only of being absent from the body, only of finishing his course, only of departing. We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: .... willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord,' 2 Cor. v. 4. 8. Nei ther count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might fiuish my course with joy, and the min-new heaven,' and that new earth,' Rev. istry which I have received of the Lord Jesns,' Acts xx. 24, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better,' Phil. i. 23. We often find men braving death when at a distance, but shrinking from the nearer approach of the king of terrors. But the earnestness of our apostle's wishes is heightened in proportion as they draw nigh to their centre: when he is arrived at the departing moment, he triumphs, I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day,' 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8. My brethren, you are well acquainted with St. Paul. He was a truly great character. Were we not informed by a special revelation xxi. 1. The inhabitants of which are angels, archangels, the seraphim; of which the lamb is the sun and the temple, Rev. xxi. 22, 23, and where God is all in all,' 1 Cor. xv. 28. Represent to yourself a man, who has heard those harmonious concerts, those triumphant choirs which sing aloud day and night: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory,' Isa. vi. 3; a man who has heard those celestial multitudes which cry out, saying, Alleluia: salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God. .... and the four-and-twenty elders reply, saying, Amen; Alleluia. . . . . let us be glad and rejoice, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready,' Rev. xix. 1. 4. 7. Represent to yourself a man who has been received into heaven by those angels who 'rejoice over one sinner that repenteth,' Luke xv. 7, and who redouble their acclamations when he is admitted into the bosom of glory; or, to say somewhat which has a still nearer relation to the idea which we ought to conceive of St. Paul, represent to yourself a man bearing in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus,' Gal. vi. 17, and beholding that Jesus in the bosom of the Father: represent to yourself that man giving way to unrestrained effusions of love, embracing his Saviour, clinging to his feet, passing, in such sacred transports of delight, a time which glides away, undoubtedly, with rapidity of which we have no conception, and which enables the soul to comprehend how, in the enjoyment of perfect bliss, a thousand years fly away with the velocity of one day: represent to yourself that man suddenly recalled to this valley of tears, beholding that third heaven,' those archangels, that God, that Jesus, all, all disappearing; Ah, my brethren, what regret must such a man have felt! What holy impatience to recover the vision of all those magnificent objects! What is become of so much felicity, of so much glory! Was I made to possess them, then, only to have the pain of losing them again! Did God indulge me with the beatific vision only to give me a deeper sense of my misery! O moment too fleeting and transitory, and have you fled never to be recalled! Raptures, transports, ecstacies, have ye left me for ever! My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof,' 2 Kings ii. 12. As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God: my soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?' Ps. xlii. 1, 2. How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.... Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be still praising thee! thine altars, thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God!' Ps. lxxxiv. 1, &c. My God, wherefore enjoy we not at this day such privileges, that we also might be filled with such sentiments! Boundless abysses, which separate between heaven and earth, why are ye not, for a season, filled up to us, as ye were to this apostle! Ye torrents of endless delight, wherefore roll ye not to us, some of your precious rills, that they may teach us a holy contempt for those treacherous joys which deceive and ensnare us! My brethren, if ceasing from the desire of manifestations which we have not, we could learn to avail ourselves of those which God has been pleased to bestow! were we but disposed to listen to the information which the Scriptures communicate, respecting the heavenly felicity: If we would but examine the proofs, the demonstrations which we have of eternal blessedness! If we but knew how to feed on those ideas, and frequently to oppose them to those voids, to those nothings, which are the great object of our pursuit! If we would but compare them with the excellent nature of our souls, and with the dignity of our origin! then we should become like St. Paul. Then nothing would be able to damp our zeal. The end of the course would then employ every wish, every desire of the heart. Then no dexterity of management would be needful to introduce a discourse on the subject of death. Then we should rejoice in those who might say to us, Let us go up to Jerusalem.' Then we should reply, our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem!' Ps. cxxii. 2. Then we should see that fervour, that zeal, that transports, are the virtues, and the attainment of the dying. You would wish to be partakers of St. Paul's rapture to the third heaven, but if this privilege be denied you to its full extent, nothing forbids your aspiring after one part of it at least. When was it that St. Paul was caught up into paradise? You have been told; it was when engaged in prayer. While I prayed in the temple,' says he, 'I was in a trance,' Acts xxii. 17. The word trance or ecstacy is of indeterminate meaning. A man in an ecstacy is one whose soul is so entirely devoted to an object, that he is, in some sense, out of his own body, and no longer perceives what passes in it. Persons addicted to scientific research, have been known so entirely absorbed in thought, as to be in a manner insensible during those moments of intense application. Ecstacy in religion, is that undivided attention which attaches the mind to heavenly objects. If any thing is capable of producing this effect, it is prayer. It is by no means astonishing that a man who has entered into his closet, and shut the door,' Matt. vi. 6, who has excluded the world, has lost sight of every terrestrial object, whose soul is concentrated and lost in God, if I may use the expression, that such a man should be so penetrated with admiration, with love, with hope, with joy, as to become like one rapt in an ecstacy. But farther. It is in the exercise of prayer that God is pleased to communicate himself to us in the most intimate manner. It is in the exercise of prayer, that he unites himself to us in the tenderest manner. It is in the exercise of prayer, that distinguished saints obtain those signal marks of favour, which are the object of our most ardent desire. A man who prays; a man whose prayer is employed about detachment from sensible things; a man who blushes, in secret, at the thought of being so swallowed up of sensible things, and so little enamoured of divine excellencies; a man who asks of God, to be blessed with a glimpse of his glory, with a foretaste of the felicity laid up in store for him, and that he would fortify his soul against the difficulties and dangers of his career; such a man may expect to be, as it were, rapt in an ecstacy, either by the natural effect of prayer, or by the extraordinary communications which God is pleased to vouchsafe to those who call upon his name. From this source proceeds that earnest longing to depart,' such as Paul expressed : hence that delightful recollection of the pleasure enjoyed in those devout exercises, pleasure that has rendered the soul insensible to the empty delights of this world; hence the idea of those blessed moments which occupy the mind for fourteen years together, and which produces, at the hour of death, a fervour not liable to suspicion for, my brethren, there is a fervour which I am disposed to suspect. I acknowledge, that when I see a man who has all his life long stagnated in the world, affecting in the hour of death, to assume the language of eminent saints, and to say, 'I have a desire to depart my soul thirsteth for God, for the living God;' becoming all at once a seraph, burning with zeal; I acknowledge myself to be always under an apprehension, that this zeal derives its birth from some mechanical play, or to the unaccountable duty which the sick impose upon themselves, even such of them as are most steadily attached to the earth, of declaring that they feel an earnest desire to leave it. But a man who, through life, has been busied about eternity, whose leading aim was to secure a happy eternity, who has, as it were, anticipated the pleasures of eternity, by habits of devotion; a man who has been absorbed of those ideas, who has fed upon them; a man who having devoted a whole life to those sacred employments, observes the approach of death with joy, meets it with ardent desire, zeal, transport, such a man displays nothing to excite suspicion. And is not such a state worthy of being envied? This is the manner of death which I ask of thee, O my God, when, after having served thee in the sanctuary, like the high priest of old, thou shalt be pleased, of thy great mercy, to admit me into the holy of holies. This is the manner of death which I wish to all of you, my beloved hearers. God grant that each of you may be enabled powerfully to inculcate upon his own mind, this great principle of religion, that there is a third heaven, a paradise, a world of bliss over our heads! God grant that each of you may attain the lively persuasion, that this is the only desirable felicity, the only felicity worthy of God to bestow, and of man to receive! God grant that each of you, in meditation, in prayer, in those happy moments of the Christian life in which God communicates himselt so intimately to his creatures, may enjoy the foretastes of that felicity; and thus, instead of fearing that death which is to put you in possession of so many blessings, you may contemplate it with holy joy and say, this is the auspicious moment which I have so long wished for, which my soul has been panting after, which has been the burden of so many fervent prayers: Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. May God in mercy grant it to us all. To him be honour and glory for ever. Amen. SERMON LXXVIlI. ON NUMBERING OUR DAYS. * PART I. PSALM XC. 12. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. THROUGH what favour of indulgent heaven does this church nourish in its bosom members sufficient to furnish out the solemnity of this day, and to compose an assembly so numerous and respectable? Through what distinguishing goodness is it, that you find yourselves with your children, with your friends, with your fellow-citizens; no, not all of them, for the mourning weeds in which some of you are clothed plainly indicate, that death has robbed us, in part of them, in the course of the year which is just terminated. But through what distinguishing goodness is that you find yourselves, with your children, with your friends, with your fellow-citizens, collected together in this sacred place? The preachers who filled the spot which I have now the honour to occupy, and whose voice resounded through this temple at the commencement of the last year, derived, from the inexhaustible fund of human frailty and infirmity, motives upon motives to excite apprehension that you might not behold the end of it. They represented to you the fragility of the organs of your body, which the slightest shock is able to derange and to destroy: the dismal accidents by which the life of man is incessantly threatened; the maladies, without number, which are either entailed on us by the law of our nature, or which are the fruit of our intemperance; the uncertainty of human existence, and the narrow bounds to which life, at the longest, is contracted. After having filled their mouths with arguments drawn from the stores of nature, they had recourse to those of religion. They spake to you of the limited extent of the patience and longsuffering of God. They told you, that to each of us is assigned only a certain number of days of visitation. They thundered in your ears such warnings as these: 'Ga * Delivered in the church of Rotterdam, on new-ther yourselves together, yea gather together, year's day, 1727. O nation not desired; before the decree bring How is it possible that we should have escaped, at the same time, the miseries of nature, and the fearful threatenings of religion? And to repeat my question once more, through what favour of indulgent heaven does this church nourish in its bosom members sufficient to furuish out the solemnity of this day, and to compose an assembly so numerous and respectable? but so to number our days, as that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom,' we cannot successfully attempt without thy all-powerful aid-Lord, so teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.' | Amen. In order to a clear comprehension of the words of my text, it would be necessary for me to have it in my power precisely to indicate who is the author of them, and on what occasion they were composed. The psalm, from which they are taken, bears this inscription, 'A prayer of Moses, the man of God.' But who was this Moses? And on the supposition that the great legislator of the Jews is the person meant, did he actually compose it? or do the words of the superscription, ‘A prayer of Moses, the man of God,' amount only to this, that some one has imitated his style, and, in some measure, caught his spirit, in this composition? This is a point not easily to be decided, and which indeed does not admit of complete demonstration. The opinion most venerable from its antiquity, and the most generally adopted, is, that this psalm was composed by the Jewish lawgiver, at one of the most melancholy conjunctures of his life; when after the murmuring of the Israelites, on occasion of the report of the spies, God pronounced this tremendous decree: As tru It is to be presumed my brethren, that the principle which has prevented our improvement of the innumerable benefits with which a gracious Providence is loading us, prevents not our knowledge of the source from which they flow. It is to be presumed, that the first emotions of our hearts, when we, this morning, opened our eyes to behold the light, have been such as formerly animated holy men of God, when they cried aloud, amidst the residue of those whom the love of God had delivered from the plagues inflicted by his justice, in the days of vengeance: 'It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not: they are newly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with every morning,' Lam. iii. 22, 23. Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah,' Is. i. 9. the glory of the Lord.... your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number . . . . shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware to make you dwell therein,' Ñum. xiv. 21. 29, 30. Wo! wo! Anathema upon anathema! be to him who shall dare henceforth to abuse... If this conjecture be as well founded as it But no, let us not fulminate curses. Let not is probable, the prayer under review is the sounds so dreadful affright the ears of an au- production of a heart as deeply affected with dience like this. Let us adopt a language grief, as it is possible to be without sinking more congenial to the present day. We come into despair. Never did Moses feel himself to beseech you, my beloved brethren, by those reduced to such a dreadful extremity, as at very mercies of God to which you are in- this fatal period. It appeared as if there had debted for exemption from so many evils, and been a concert between God and Israel to put for the enjoyment of so many blessings: by his constancy to the last trial. On the one those very mercies which have this day open-hand, the Israelites wanted to make him reed for your admission, the gates of this temple, instead of sending you down into the prison of the tomb; by those very mercies, by which you were, within these few days, invited to the table of the Eucharist, instead of being summoned to the tribunal of judgment; by these tender mercies we beseech you to assume sentiments, and to form plans of conduct, which may have something like a correspondence to what God has been pleased to do in your behalf. And thou, God Almighty, the Sovereign, the Searcher of all hearts thou who movest and directest them which ever way thou wilt! vouchsafe, Almighty God, to open to us the hearts of all this assembly, that they may yield to the entreaties which we address to them in thy name, as thou hast been thyself propitious to the prayers which they have presented to thee. Thou hast reduced the measure of our days to an hand breadth : Ps. xxxix. 5, and the meanest of our natural faculties is sufficient to make the enumeration of them: sponsible for all that was rough and displeasing in the paths through which God was pleased to lead them; and it seemed as if God, on the other hand, would likewise hold him responsible for the complicated rebellions of Israel. Moses opposes to this just displeasure of God a buckler which he had often employed with success, namely, prayer. That which he put up on this occasion, was one of the most fervent that can be imagined. But there are situations in which all the fervour, of even the most powerful intercessor, is wholly unavailing. There are seasons when, though Moses and Samuel stood up before God,' Jer. xvi. 1, to request him to spare a nation, the measure of whose iniquity was come to the full, they would request in vain. In such a situation was Moses now placed. Represent to yourselves the deplorable condition of the Israelites, and the feelings of that man, whose leading character was meekness; and who, if we may be allowed the expression, carried |