this immenfe inheritance unalienably ours! Yes, brethren, it is; reafon and revelation prove our title beyond all difpute. It is an inheritance entailed upon us, whether we will or not; whether we have made it our intereft it fhould be ours or not. To command ourselves into nothing is as much above our power as to bring ourselves into being. Sin may make our fouls miferable, but it cannot make them mortal. Sin may forfeit an happy eternity, and render our immortality a curfe; fo that it would be better for us if we never had been born: but fin cannot put an end to our being, as it can to our happiness, nor procure for us the fhocking relief of reft in the hideous gulph of annihilation. And is a little time, a few months or years, a great matter to us? to us who are heirs of an eternal duration? How infignificant is a moment in feventy or eighty years! but how much more infignificant is even the longeft life upon earth, when compared with eternity! How trifling are all the concerns of time to those of immortality! What is it to us who are to live for ever, whether we live happy or miserable for an hour? whether we have wives, or whether we have none; whether we rejoice, or whether we weep; whether we buy, poffefs, and use this world, or whether we confume away our life in hunger, and nakedness, and the want of all things, it will be all one in a little, little time. Eternity will level all ; and eternity is at the door. And how fhall we spend this eternal duration that is thus entailed upon us? Shall we fleep it away in a ftupid infenfibility or in a ftate of indifferency, neither happy nor miferable? No, no, my brethren; we muft fpend it in the height of happiness or in the depth of misery. The happiness and mifery of the world to come will not confift in such childish toys as those that give us pleasure and pain in this infant ftate of our existence, but in the moft fubftantial realities fuitable to an immortal fpirit, capable of vaft improve improvements, and arrived at its adult age. Now, as the apostle illuftrates it, we are children, and we speak like children, we understand like children; but then we shall become men, and put away childish things. 1 Cor. xiii. 11. Then we fhall be beyond receiving pleasure or pain from fuch trifles as excite them in this puerile ftate. This is not the place of rewards or punishments, and therefore the great Ruler of the world does not exert his perfections in the diftribution of either; but eternity is allotted for that very purpose, and therefore he will then diftribute rewards and punishments worthy himself, fuch as will proclaim him God in acts of grace and vengeance, as he has appeared in all his other works. Then he will fhew his wrath, and make his power known on the veffels of wrath who have made themfelves fit for deftruction, and nothing elfe; and he will fhew the riches of the glory of his grace upon the veffels of mercy, whom he prepared beforehand for glory. Rom. ix. 22, 23. Thus heaven and hell will proclaim the God, will fhew him to be the Author of their refpective joys and pains, by their agreeable or terrible magnificence and grandeur. O eternity! with what majestic wonders art thou replenished, where Jehovah acts with his own immediate hand, and displays himself Godlike and unrivalled, in his exploits both of vengeance and of grace! In this prefent ftate, our good and evil are blended; our happiness has fome bitter ingredients, and our miferies have fome agreeable mitigations but in the eternal world good and evil shall be entirely and for ever feparated; all will be pure, unmingled happiness, or pure, unmingled mifery. In the prefent ftate the best have not uninterrupted peace within; confcience has frequent caufe to make them uneafy: fome mote or other falls into its tender eye, and fets it a weeping: and the worst also have their arts to keep conscience fometimes eafy, and filence its clamours. But then confcience will have its full scope. It will never more pafs a cenfure upon upon the righteous, and it will never more be a friend, or even an inactive enemy to the wicked for fo much as one moment. And O what a perennial fountain of bliss or pain will confcience then be! Society contributes much to our happiness or mifery. But what mifery can be felt or feared in the immediate prefence and fellowship of the bleffed God and Jefus (the friend of man ;) of angels and faints, and all the glorious natives of heaven? But, on the other hand, what happiness can be enjoyed or hoped for, what mifery can be escaped in the horrid fociety of lost, abandoned ghofts of the angelic and human nature; dreadfully mighty and malignant, and rejoicing only in each other's mifery; mutual enemies, and mutual tormentors bound together infeparably in everlasting chains of darkness! Ŏ the horror of the thought! In fhort, even an heathen* could fay, "Had I an hundred tongues, an hundred mouths, The various forms and punishments of vice." The most terrible images which even the pencil of divine infpiration can draw, fuch as a lake of fire and brimftone, utter darkness, the blackness of darkness, a never-dying worm, unquenchable, everlasting fire, and all the most dreadful figures that can be drawn from all parts of the universe, are not fufficient to represent the punishments of the eternal world. And, on the other hand, the eye, which has ranged through fo many objects, has not feen; the ear, which has had ftill more extenfive intelligence, has not heard; nor has the heart, which is even unbounded in its conceptions, conceived the things that God hath laid up for them that love him. The enjoyments of time fall as much short of those of eternity as time itself falls fhort of eternity itself. *Non, mihi fi linguæ centum fint, oraque centum, But VIRG. En. VI. I. 625. But what gives infinite importance to these joys and forrows is, that as they are enjoyed or fuffered in the eternal world, they are themselves eternal. Eternal joys! eternal pains! joys and pains that will laft as long as the King eternal and immortal will live to diftribute them! as long as our immortal spirits will live to feel them! O what joys and pains are thefe ! us. And these my brethren, are awaiting every one of Thefe pleasures, or thefe pains, are felt this moment by fuch of our friends and acquaintance as have fhot the gulph before us; and in a little, little while, you and I must feel them. And what then have we to do with time and earth? Are the pleasures and pains of this world worthy to be compared with these? Vanity of vanities, all is vanity; the enjoyments and fufferings, the labours and purfuits, the laughter and tears of the prefent ftate, are all nothing in this comparison. What is the lofs of an eftate or of a dear relative to the lofs of an happy immortality? But if our heavenly inheritance be fecure, what though we should be reduced into Job's forlorn fituation, we have enough left more than to fill up all deficiencies. What though we are poor, fickly, melancholy, racked with pains, and involved in every human mifery, heaven will more than make amends for all. But if we have no evidences of our title to that, the sense of these transitory diftreffes may be fwallowed up in the just fear of the miferies of eternity. Alas! what avails it that we play away a few years in mirth and gaiety, in grandeur and pleasure, if when these few years are fled, we lift up our eyes in hell, tormented in flames! O what are all these things to a candidate for eternity! an heir of everlafting happiness, or everlafting mifery! It is from fuch convictive premifes as these that St. Paul draws his inference in my text; It remaineth therefore that they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they poffeffed not; and they that use this world, as not abufing it. The first branch of the inference refers to the dear and tender relations that we sustain in this life. It remaineth that thofe that have wives, and by a parity of reason, those that have husbands, parents, children, or friends dear as their own fouls, be as though they had none. St. Paul is far from recommending a ftoical neglect of these dear relations. That he tenderly felt the fenfations, and warmly recommended the mutual duties of fuch relations, appears in the strongest light in other parts of his writings, where he is addreffing himself to hufbands and wives, parents and children. But his defign here is to represent the infignificancy even of these dear relations, confidering how fhort and vanishing they are, and comparing them with the infinite concerns of eternity. These dear creatures we fhall be able to call our own for fo short a time, that it is hardly worth while to esteem them ours now. The concerns of eternity are of fo much greater moment, that it is very little matter whether we enjoy these comforts or not. In a few years at most, it will be all one. The dear ties that now unite the hearts of husband and wife, parent and child, friend and friend, will be broken for ever. In that world where we must all be in a little, little time, they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but are in this respect like the angels. And of how small confequence is it to creatures that are to exift for ever in the most perfect happiness or mifery, and that must so foon break off all their tender connections with the dear creatures that were united to their hearts in the present tranfitory ftate! of how fmall confequence is it to fuch, whether they fpend a few years of their existence in all the delights of the conjugal state and the focial life, or are forlorn, bereaved, deftitute, widowed, childlefs, fatherlefs, friendless! The grave and eternity will level all thefe |