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ence on the enjoyments of the world, and making you seek and find your highest bappiness in fellowship with God. He is moderating your attachment to the relations of life, and increasing your desires for heaven, where the days of your mourning shall be ended.

Perhaps a feeble frame of body often detains

you from the sanctuary of God, and diminishes the ardour of your devotion in secret worship, and in solemn ordinances. Believe it, Christians, this is not inconsistent with the love of God to your souls. You

. escape many snares and many evils by this weakness of body. God is less forgotten, the world less esteemed, futurity less neglected, than if you had been favoured with constant health and a vigorous constitution. Are

you in bondage through the fear of death? or are you kept in daily terror of the grave? You are living far below your privileges; for if you have fled for refuge to the Saviour, and have laid hold on God's covenant, then death is yours,— your release from warfare, your deliverance from woe, your ministering angel, to conduct your ransomed spirit to glory. Every circumstance connected with that decisive event, the time, the place, and the manner, are well ordered, and shall work together for your good. If

circumstance what

you are heirs of the covenant, fear not the separation of the soul from the body. Think what it is for a Christian to die. It is to escape from this prison-house of clay ; to emerge from the swelling streams of Jordan ; to leave all corruption behind; to be clothed with immortality ; to behold the face of God in righteousness; to see Jesus in the full splendour of his glory; to be supported by his everlasting arms; to share his victories; and to participate in that celestial, unceasing, and transporting triumph, “ Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ : for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day. and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death *.” If this be death, what Christian, depending on the Captain of his salvation, should fear to die?

* Rev. xii, 10. 11.

Thus, in all respects, the everlasting covenant is well ordered ; and hence learn, genuine disciple of Jesus! to enlarge your expectations. Every blessing which the exigencies of your nature demand, every grace which

you feel to be necessary, is graciously promised. Let your calamities be ever so numerous, and

and your sufferings ever so complicated; yet, in your lowest abasement, and in your worst frame, you may lay hold on this covenant, and derive consolation from its arrangements of mercy. It engages, and

, makes good to the saints in every age, that when they are weary and heavy laden, the Saviour will give rest to their souls; when in bondage, that he will proclaim liberty; when grieved in their minds, that he will speak peace; when weak in themselves, that he will make them strong in the Lord; when tempted, that they will find a way to escape; and when conflicting with the last enemy, that he will give them to rejoice in hope of the glory to be revealed.

Let it then be the daily endeavour and joy of us all, to embrace the Saviour in all

his offices as Mediator ; to plead the accomplishment of his promises ; and to derive consolation in all situations, from the firm persuasion, that the everlasting Father is gracious to all who fear him, and that, " though our house be not so with God, yet he has made with us an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure." Amen.

SERMON

SERMON XVI.

THE STRONG CONSOLATION.

Heb. vi. 18.

That by two immutable things, in which it was

impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.

As this epistle was originally addressed to Jewish converts, its declarations chiefly refer to the institutions of Moses, and are intended to shew the vast superiority of the gospeldispensation, above that which was now to pass away.

Thus the language of our text evidently refers to the appointment of the cities of refuge in the land of Judea. Of these cities you have a plain account in the book of

Numbers.

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