really believe the doctrines of which we have been speaking, they cannot fail to influence your conduct. "Examine yourselves, therefore, whether ye be in the faith: prove your own selves." If you find that you are really possessed of a true faith in these consolatory doctrines, blessed are ye; and blessed shall ye be likewise in the day of affliction, for ye shall be comforted. If, on the other hand, my beloved brethren, you have reason to fear, from the general tenor of your conduct, or from the manner in which you have been disposed to conduct yourselves under past afflictions, that you are deficient in this faith, I would respectfully, but earnestly, call upon you to look to yourselves ere it be too late. So sure as you feel yourselves to be men, afflictions are in store for you. Before another Sabbath shines upon you, you may be called upon to endure them. Are you a husband? The wife of your bosom may be snatched from you. Are you a father? The fairest promise of your offspring may prove deceitful. Are you a son? A dying parent's blessing may await you. Are you men, my brethren? Dangerous diseases may be lurking within you at this moment, which, on their developement, may baffle the skill of the most experienced and sagacious. The bed of death may speedily be spread for you, and your faith in Christ may

be put to its last great trial. If you are desirous of being enabled to pass through every trial that may await you with fortitude and resignation; if you wish for courage in every danger, and comfort under every affliction; if you aim at peace of mind through life, and joyful hope in death, labour, I beseech you, with diligence to strengthen your convictions of the truth of the important doctrines to which I have been directing your attention, and study to convince both yourselves and all around you of the reality and sincerity of your faith, by walking in the world as becomes disciples of the Lord Jesus, and heirs of immortality.

SERMON XIX.

REST IN HEAVEN.

HEBREWS iv., 9.

There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God.

We cannot be surprised, my fellow Christians, if, amongst the various methods employed by the sacred writers of illustrating the sublime and momentous subjects of which they were commissioned to treat, we sometimes find them introducing allusions to the history of their nation. Distinguished as that history is by continual and most extraordinary interpositions of Divine Providence, it was peculiarly fitted to suggest such allusions; nor could they be otherwise than deeply interesting to the descendants of those whom it had pleased God to separate from the rest of mankind, and to make the subjects of a national discipline. We have an allusion of the kind referred to in the passage from which the text is taken. The writer reminds his countrymen, to whom the epistle is particularly addressed, of the manner in which

their rebellious ancestors had forfeited, by their disobedience, the rest that had been promised to them, and calls upon them to beware lest, by similar negligence and obstinacy, they deprive themselves of that rest which, under the Christian dispensation, as he declares in the words of our text, "remaineth for the people of God."

Every attentive reader of the New Testament must have perceived, that it did not form part of the commission of our Lord and his apostles to lay before mankind a strictly accurate description of that future state to which they were to encourage them to look forward. Most of the information which they give is extremely general in its nature, and such as it is, must be derived from language which is in itself manifestly figurative. To this may be added, indeed, what can be gathered from a few obscure and scattered hints, not always, in our present state of ignorance, easily reconcileable with each other. After all, however, they do but draw aside enough of the dark and awful veil that hangs before us, to encourage hope and to excite curiosity. A few beams of light ineffable fell on the glorified Saviour; but its full effulgence is reserved for that happy period when death shall have been swallowed up in victory. Under such circumstances, it is the duty of a

sincere and humble Christian to receive with gratitude the information that has been communicated, and devoutly to acquiesce in whatever degree of imperfection and obscurity it has pleased the All-wise and benevolent Giver of Revelation to attach to it. He will look with pleasure towards the land that lies before him, however dim its outline, or hazy the atmosphere that overhangs it, and rejoice, as he wanders in imagination through its fields of undying verdure and beneath its skies of unclouded sunshine, with those dear friends and companions from whom he is never again to experience the pain of a separation. He will dwell with pleasure upon such glimpses of futurity as, by the assistance of revelation, he is enabled to discover. He will examine with interest every expression which may have been employed by the sacred writers, with reference to this subject, and endeavour, by a collection and comparison of all that they have said respecting it, to supply his imagination with materials from which it may complete a picture, in the highest degree fitted to excite his desires and influence his conduct.

Amongst the variety of representations given by our Lord and his apostles of the blessings attendant upon a sincere reception of Christi