heart labouring with forrow too big to be ut tered, and driven from every expectation and gleam of hope from human aid, without forethought or deliberation flies to the original fountain of all confolation and happinefs.

The unnatural violence of men to themfelves in endeavouring to fupprefs or divert these feelings; their fubftituting falfe and artificial remedies; bufinefs, amufements, I do not know what airy schemes of philofophy, are the mifchievous.caufes which wreck their comfort, and plunge them into an unfathomable abyfs of mifery and despair.

SER

Concerning the neceffity of Death, and its no lefs neceffary effects.

By THOMAS BLACKLOCK, D. D.

2 KINGS, XX. i.

In thofe days was Hezekiah fick unto death: and the prophet Ifaiah the son of Amos came to: him, and faid unto him, Thus faith the Lord, Set thine houfe in order, for thou shalt die, and not live.

F mankind were fo vain and foolish to

Ia

flatter themselves that the duration of their present state would be eternal, Nature and Providence have taken fuch care to undeceive them, as the importance of the point required.. Scarce one day can pafs without exhibiting fad: fpectacles of mortality to the public eye. As mists and vapours, when exhaled, defcend in. rains ; as fountains and rivers pour their full urns into the ocean, where they are undistinguifhably loft; as every morning-fun rifes but to decline; by the fame neceffity, the fame inviolable order of nature, every man is born. to die. When the facred writings treat of human life, they confider our existence here, as. an unsubstantial vapour, (fee Job xiv. 1. 2. and Pfal. ciii. 14.), which, floating through the

boundless

}

boundless fields of air, is at last absorbed in its maternal element, nor leaves the leaft difcernable veftige behind. They confider it as a flower in the field, which opening on the ravifhed eye, difplays the fairest colours of nature's inimitable pencil; but foon the nipping frofts, or chilling winds, blaft all the grace and beauty of its blooming verdure, and only leave its melancholy ruins behind; that from thefe the contemplative gazer may, with deep-felt anxiety and tender regret, lament the beauteous wreck, whilft he prefages his own. But Nature has not left us to learn our fate from remote and ambiguous calls. How loud, how univerfal, how emphatic, how intelligible, how inceffant, how alarming is her voice! It af fumes every form that may engage our attention, it darts upon the foul in every thought, it fpeaks in every period, it addreffes every fenfe. It is felt in the ties of friendship and confanguinity when broken, it is feen in the wis dow's tears, and heard in the fhrieks of or phans. The tomb, the infatiable tomb, is ever open to devour its prey, whilft multitudes of every fex and age, from every clime, are conftantly replenishing the dark and filent domains of death.

Is it not strange, therefore, is it not unaccountably ftrange, that Providence, and its fubftitute Nature, fhould have taken all these pains to little or no purpofe? When the funeral of an indifferent perfon paffes by, we are contented to breathe a figh, which decency, not hu

manity,

manity, prompted, or to fay we are forry for it, even with too little concern to fave our veracity from imputation. But though our excufe, that we have no connection with the perfon, might be sustained; yet what can we plead when the grim tyrant is more awful and immediate in his approaches? Our neighbours, our friends, our relations have died: what then? Perhaps we dreffed in black, paid a few tears to their memory, reclined our heads, talked fadly, and looked grave, till the period of decent mourning expired: then, equally forgetful of our lofs and of ourfelves, we returned in alt our former gaiety to the fcenes of pleasure, or the reforts of bufinefs. It is one of the moft benignant inftitutions in Nature's law, that time affords a balm for every wounded heart.

I reprove not the drooping head when raifed from dejection, nor would cover the cheek of forrow with blufhes when wiped from tears. Let us return to the pleasures and employments of life with proper relifh, but never live with fo much eagerness and avidity, as to forget that others have died before us, and that we alfo muft die. It was to roufe us from indolence and security, to awake, if poffible, a due sense of our precarious fituation, that this fubject has been undertaken; let me therefore beg, that it may gain fuch attention from my audience, as they would wish to have paid it in the hour of darknefs and convulfive pangs; when time, and earth, and day, and pleafare, fly from every fenfe, and when nothing but a

boundlefs

:

boundless and uncertain eternity lies before them. Death, my brethren, however gloomy and terrific, is pregnant with interefting confiderations for though we have not, like Hezekiah, received a particular meffage from Heaven, to warn us of the impending crifis; yet, by the voice of nature and experience, which, though lefs immediate and fenfible, is the voice of God himself, we are certainly informed that we shall die.

I do not pretend to exhauft a fubject fo copious; permit me only to hint a few things which feem natively to arife from the words of our text. Without attending to the preceding narration, we shall briefly infift upon the injunction itself, "Set thine house in order, for "thou fhalt die, and not live."

It was delivered by an immediate and special commiffion from the abfolute Sovereign of heaven and earth, to Hezekiah, when amidst the triumphs of a late victory, and elated with a fenfe of freedom from a formidable enemy: he was feized with a distemper, mortal in its own nature, had not its malignity been checks ed by that Almighty Being in whofe hands are the iffues of life and death.

But without taking the words as they stand in connection, they may be, with great propriety, confidered as a general precept; and in this view they will become univerfally applicable.

'Let me, therefore, addrefs every particular perfon here; and would to God, my addrefs

were