On this occasion, let us indulge a few solemn reflectious on death-and inquire, What will produce composure, when we come to die?

What is death? This is an important inquiry; for all human beings die, and none have returned from the grave to give us information, either of the power of death, or the pains of dying. Still there is no subject with which we may be more familiar than the slaughters of death; every day exhibits its victims; graves open to the weeping eyes of surviving relatives; and, we ourselves, bear the seeds of mortality within us, which fast ripen for dissolution. Let us therefore collect some ideas of what is death, from its general and visible effects on human beings, in its slaughters around us. And then, recur more immediately to the Scriptures, for information of its nature, its design, and its consequences.

Death cuts asunder the silver cord which ties together the body and the soul. By this stroke, the dust returns to the earth as it was: and the spirit returns unto God who gave it. From a natural attachment to these frail bodies, and the years in which the kindred spirits have been mutual sharers in the pleasures or the pains of life, proportionably do we dread the moment of their separation. Many a good and gracious man, notwithstanding his firm hope of future felicity, being constitutionally in bondage through fear of death, has recoiled at the shock of instant separation by the stroke, more than at death itself. No wonder then that the

thoughtless sinner, on the brink of the grave, should start and tremble!-Death comes and tears us away

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from the charms of social friendship. tinction. Parents and children, husbands and wives, young and old, however sweet and interesting their mutual union, are subject to the inroads and separating hand of this cruel foe. Ah! what ravages and devastations does death produce among the families of mankind! Who but must have witnessed the grim tyrant's visits to those abodes where reigned the charms of social love and friendship, which were turned into bitterness and woe! Yes, from all these charming ties they are forever separated; they go down to the grave, and say to corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister. What a change of society this; and where resides that family, which is not exposed to the shafts of this desolating foe?-Survey the scenes of public life; in what various active stations are men employed-some in concerns of state, some in trade and commerce, and others act their part in the shades of humble life, or drag along in abject servitude. Some indeed are actively employed in preaching the gospel to their fellow men; while others, as was our deceased friend, are engaged in acts of charity and kindness to the poor and the needy. But death comes, they are called away, and quit the stage of action, and the place that knew them, shall know them no more forever. Job, though by his active benevolence he had been eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame; a father to the poor, and had made the widow's heart to sing for joy: yet, he knew his own mortality and exposure to death. His contrast between the activity of life, and the shades of death, is so extremely striking, I cannot forbear reciting to you the description:-I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the

shadow of death; a land of darkness; as darkness ilself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness. Chap. x, 21, 22. Such is that dreary abode to which, by death, you and I are rapidly hastening; and which ought to excite in our breasts the deepest consideration.-Death comes to undress us; or, as Paul expresses it, to put off this mortal body. To indulge the thought of putting off the garments which cover and decorate our persons, and exchange them for a shroud, is mortifying in the highest degree, and gives a stab to the pride of mortals. But, that the very flesh which gives form to our features, and covering to our bones; the nourishment and support of which have taken up almost the whole time of our existence, to feed with every delicacy that could possibly be procured: and then part with it to become food for worms-how humiliating is the thought! Yet, so it must, and so it will be; for none can stay the hand of death, and prevent him from tearing off these fleshy garments, as in a moment, or giving us a little more leisure to undress in the chamber of old age. In either case, to part with those bodies with which we have been so familiar from our infancy, and which have been the instruments of so many pleasures and delights, and thus undress for the cold caverns of the grave, must produce the most exquisitely painful feelings, and cast a gloom over all the joys of life.

These several views of death are obvious to all; and most of us have had frequent occasions to see and lament the victims which we have followed to their long home. Why such slaughters of human beings? Is not man, whether in his natural or intellectual powers,

the noblest part of God's creation? Whence, then, the commission and the power of death to destroy? There must be a cause to justify both the wisdom and the severity of God in the awful proceedure. As the sacred scriptures can alone satisfy our inquiries, let us open their pages, and from thence derive the necessary information upon this important subject, of the cause and consequences of death.

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The procuring cause of death, Is SIN. tures assure us that, by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Rom. v, 12. Death is the penalty of that divine law, binding upon our first parent Adam, by which he was prohibited from eating the forbidden fruit, when God said, in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. He did eat; and he justly became obnoxious to death, in all the variety of its dreadful forms, and to all its train of evils in the present life, as well as in that state which is to come. For this reason it is that death is personified as THE KING OF TERRORS. Job, xviii, 14. No sooner did sin enter into the world, than this grim tyrant took his seat upon his throne; and to this moment he hath swayed his sceptre over all the children of men.-What renders death still more terrible to mortals, is, he is armed with a STING. The sting of death is sin; its power to penetrate, and to inject the mortal poison to the heart, arises from the inflexibility and justice of God's command; the strength of sin is the law. 1 Cor. 15. Besides, death is God's MESSENGER of justice. He comes with the signed warrant in his hand, arrests man on his career, whether in the bloom of days, the busy

scenes of worldly pleasure, or in the decrepitude of old age; and thus bears him away to stand before the tribunal of his God and Judge. Could the libertine, with safety, say, “ there is no hereafter;" then might he sneer at death, nor fear to die: but conscience speaks aloud, and eternal truth declares, as it is appointed unto men once to die, so after this the judgment.-You may now perceive the reason, why God commandeth man to die. The wages of sin is death. This earthly tabernacle trembles and then falls; and thus this exquisitely fine fabric of the human body is righteously dashed in pieces, and eventually moulders in the grave. Where then shall we trace the cause of death, more just with man's acknowledged state of sin, and more reconcileable to the justice and perfections of God, than by what is contained in the scriptures of truth?

Let the representation of these scriptural views of death, have their due influence upon all present. Each of you is deeply interested in the affecting subject. They are not drawn by the flight of fancy, nor the dictate of fable; but founded upon those facts which reason and common observation must approve. Death is not a probable event; not peradventure it may happen to you; but what most assuredly will take place with all human beings; for what is more certain than death? Is it then possible, that any of the sinful race of mankind can meet death undaunted, and be really resigned to the fatal stroke? It is possible. But not to the careless sinner in his sins; much less to the stupid infidel, who believes that death is the final end of man's existence, and yields to mortality by what he calls "the law

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