saying of Christ implies a practical attention to the requirements of truth. Of course you will all admit, without the necessity of argument, that to keep Christ's saying is to keep it as our rule by which we are to be governed-to keep it as our way in which we are to walk in our progress to our heavenly Father's kingdom. We are to keep Christ's sayings by acknowledging and adopting them as our rule of life and as our maxims of conduct.

And lastly, I add, that to keep the saying of Christ, implies a steadfast adherence to the cause of truth, and the profession of it according to our means and opportunities, to the end of our earthly pilgrimage. To keep Christ's saying, is opposed to the desertion or abandonment of it. Accordingly, we are required to abide in Christ's word '-to continue in the faith rooted and grounded-to 'hold fast the form of sound words.' Thus only, when we come to die, shall we be able to say, to the honor of Divine grace, 'I have kept the faith.' Thus only shall we receive from the hand of our Judge that sentence of approbation―Thou hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.'

6

I pass on now to notice THE PRIVILEGE WHICH IS ATTACHED TO THIS CHARACTER. 'If a man keep my saying '—if his heart and life be brought and kept by the grace of God in Christ under the governing and sanctifying influence of Divine and Christian truth, he shall never see death.' Of course we are all too well aware, even were it only from recent visitations of Providence, that this promise must not be understood as entitling believers to expect an exemption from natural death. It is not in that sense that the Saviour tells his followers they shall never see death.' 'It is appointed unto all men '—to holy men as well as to wicked men, to those that keep as well as those that reject or abandon the sayings of Christ—it is appointed to all men once to die.' Enoch and Elijah have, indeed, already been exempted from the operation of this decree the exception will be extended hereafter, we are told, to those who shall be alive at the second coming of Christ. The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised, but surviving saints shall be changed. With these few and almost singular exceptions, there is no discharge from that warfare which we are called to wage with the last enemy-death.

Doubtless God could have as easily extended the benefit-if it is really a benefit-of translation to all his faithful people as he did to the eminent saints we have mentioned. He could have caused them to be translated to their eternal rest and recompense without, in any sense, tasting death; but there seem to be good reasons, apparent even to us-and doubtless there are many we know not at present which we may know hereafter-why a contrary determination has taken place in the Divine councils. If God had adopted the plan

of universal translation in favor of his people, and had exempted them from death, it must have been by a continual system of counteraction to the present tendencies of nature-that is, it would have required a perpetuity of miracles; and it is not in the plan or order of God to display anything like a waste-a superfluous and unnecessary exhibition of miraculous power; because, first dying, and then entering into glory in consequence of the resurrection of the body to eternal life, the people of Christ are more exactly and gloriously conformed to him who is their Saviour and their ever living head and this, to those who love Christ aright, and who have those feelings of affectionate regard to every thing which appertains to him which they ought to have, will not be deemed of mean importance. In consequence of the plan actually adopted, in preference to that to which we are adverting, and which might, possibly, have been adopted,-a constant memorial is maintained, in the sight of all the world, of the terrible evil of sin; the just and legal desert of it is thus exhibited, in a very impressive and awful manner, before our eyes; the important truth is brought home sooner or later to every individual; and at the same time brought into and exhibited in every family and every circle and community of men—that the proper wages of sin is the death of the body as well as the destruction of the soul. If it had been the plan of God, that all the saints should be translated and that sinners only should die, the consequence would have been, that the promised resurrection would have lost all that is agreeable and pleasant; it would have been connected only with anticipations dark, gloomy, and terrible the seccond advent of our Saviour himself in that case would have lost half its splendor. And then, again, upon the plan of the translation of the righteous, so that the wicked only should be left to die, this would have been the result-that the last judgment would, in a great measure, have been anticipated and rendered useless we should have known, from the very manner of a man's departure from this world, whether in the way of translation or death, what was the judgment of God on his character, or what would have been his final condition; and thus all the moral influence connected with that great day would have been lost, and many great calamities inflicted upon the feelings of survivors.

These are some of the reasons which divines have usually urged, as vindicating this part of the ways of God toward his pardoned and beloved people. On the whole, it seems to us to be meet and right and fitting, that the righteous should be buried, and that the people of God should pass through death to their eternal home.

As this clause in the verse does not promise at all exemption from natural death, so neither does it promise continued existence merely to good men in a future state of being, in opposition to the

extinction of being, or its annihilation. For not to see death, in this sense-that is, not to be annihilated-not to pass from life into nonentity-is by no means peculiar to such as keep the sayings of Christ continued existence is the portion and will be the curse of the ungodly: they shall seek death but shall not find it ; they shall desire to die, and to be as if they had never been: death shall flee away from them: their being will be their torment. God in his infinite mercy save us from so great a death—the death that never dies!

What, then, appears to be the true meaning of this promise? It seems to me, first, that Jesus here engages to afford his faithful people such dying consolation and assistance, as that they shall not see death in its natural and original horrors-they shall have no painful experience of it in its hostile and vengeful character. Death, considered abstractedly-viewed only in its origin, in its more obvious and direct results and its usual circumstances, cannot possibly be contemplated by any enlightened mind but with feelings of solemnity-never by any enlightened mind with feelings other than those of seriousness, if viewed apart from the promises of the Gospel and the blessings of the new covenant. Death has all the aspect of an enemy, viewed only by the eye of sense: it effects often a very painful separation between soul and body, and dissolves the intimacy which has subsisted between them; it turns our strength into weakness, our beauty into loathsomeness, our activity into impotence and indolence. When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth '—as a moth consumes a garment; and it appears but too striking and plain, that every man at his best estate is altogether vanity it clogs up our senses, cuts asunder every social and domestic tie it consigns our bodies to the worms in the grave, and sends our souls to appear in the presence of our Almighty Judge. And death is still more terrible and hostile in the aspect which it bears upon the awakened conscience of the unsaved sinner to him who has any thing like right views, death must appear as the appointed executioner of the Divine vengeance on the transgressor of the law. Death comes, as it were, on such a one and takes him by the throat, and says, ' Pay me what thou owest!' Hence we find death compared in Scripture to a serpent possessing a fatal sting. We are told, that that sting is sin-unpardoned and unsubdued sin—and that the strength of sin is the law.' It is our just exposure, as transgressors, to the vengeance of the Divine law, that arms death with his sting and gives him all his power over

us.

:

Thus terrible, thus hostile is death, if viewed by the eye of sense, and if viewed, too, by the eye of an awakened sinner who

has, as yet, no interest in the Saviour-who has not been delivered practically and personally from the curse of the law, by fleeing to Him who is the end of the law for righteousness.' No wonder that such men are afraid to die. But mark how different is the case with respect to the man who has received and kept the sayings of Christ! He has obtained, through faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ, the pardon of his transgressions: he is no longer a condemned sinner, except as he condemns himself, and is—

'Willing to grieve his life away,
For having grieved his Lord.'

There is no condemnation to him who is in Christ Jesus.' In his case the curse is, by the abounding grace of the Gospel, converted into a blessing. Christ hath so far abolished death, in the case of all his pardoned and saved people, that it seems to me they are no longer strictly and properly under its merely legal power. They are, indeed, doomed to die; but it is in virtue of that wise and gracious constitution of their pardoning God and reconciled Father, who has determined, that the way of death is, on the whole, the best and properest and most beneficial way for them; though to other men it is pure unmitigated penalty to die out of Christ, yet to those who die in Christ, it not pure unmitigated penalty. It is a penalty in its original circumstances, painful and afflicting in this and some of its more obvious results; but, nevertheless, by grace it is converted into a blessing; it is one of the 'all things' that is said to work together for good; it is put into the inventory of the Christian's privileges- Life is yours, and death is yours-a part of God's plan for your highest and eternal advantage. When men are interested, then, in this great privilege, they do not see death as other men see it-they do not see death in its natural terrors. The aspect of the last enemy is to them greatly changed; they often smile-such is the overflowing grace of God in them-rather than frown: he comes not as a messenger of wrath, but as the messenger of release and deliverance; he comes to be the instrument of rescue to them from all grief and temptation, and brings them the peace and purity which shall admit them at once into everlasting joy. And how often, then, have we seen this; so that the dying Christian-before, perhaps, accustomed to look at the period of dying as exceedingly formidable, and ready to shrink from the circumstances which accompany ithas said with sweet surprise,

6

'Tell me, my soul, can this be death'

Thus the believer has enjoyed, in innumerable instances, the

triumph which his Saviour has achieved; enlightened by the Gospel of Christ, which brings life and immortality to light-interested in the atoning sacrifice of Christ-shielded and cheered and sustained by the indwelling Spirit of Christ, he triumphs over his foe, and says, O death, where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?' This is dying, certainly in a very solemn sense of the expression too; but this is not that dying to which man subjected himself by transgression-it is not that unmitigated curse of death which was the proper penalty of the original offence.

Then, I will just say, that probably the expression of the text includes another idea. It includes not only the promise of a safe and tranquil dissolution, but also the promise of a joyful resurrection. 6 Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall not see death for ever' -so some render the term. Christ, in the case of all his people, hath already abolished death: so far, as we have said, it is no longer to them a pure unmitigated penalty. Even the right of death to have dominion over their bodies, is a right derived not merely from the law, nor is it dependent upon the law which originally adjudged that penalty as the wages of sin, -it is derived especially from the gracious appointment of God. Death does not reign over them in the same manner in which he reigns over those who have the whole curse of the law upon them, and who never have obtained pardon and peace. Now then, even as respects the bodies of the saints, which are in this sense left free from the operation of death, that power is limited to the sinner-it is not lost for ever. Jesus is the resurrection and the life;' he haththe keys of hades and of death.' He shall, by and by, unlock the prison of the tomb, and set at liberty all them who love him and wait for his appearance. 'He shall change their vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.'

1

I have hastened through this very imperfect discussion of the subject, in order that I might have as much time as possible for that portion of the service allotted to me, which I am persuaded will be most interesting to you, and to which I trust God will deign to annex his blessing. I hope you are already satisfied that the text which I have ventured to select for this occasion, is not by any means unappropriate. I think, as I proceeded you must have been reminded, by several remarks which you heard, of the character, and what you knew generally to have been the dying consolation and experience of my late lamented friend and your ever to-be-lamented pastor. I could think, indeed, of no text of Scripture which seemed more suitable to describe his permanent excellencies, and the source and origin of those excellencies, and to