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the good and misery to the wicked, as the natural sequence to a well or ill-spent life. The advances they made on this subject were confined to a faint expectation of being eternally happy or miserable, according to "the things done in the body," whether they were good or bad.

We need not wonder, therefore, at the ignorance of the heathen on this head. The natural repugnance and stupidity of the human mind on such subjects; the unsatisfactory proof of the thing itself, which could only be comprehended by a few; the impossibility of answering the great question, how this immortality was to be obtained; these and many other circumstances prevented any extensive and just knowledge of that life and immortality which are brought to light by the Gospel.

The gloom and melancholy so much maintained to be the result of reflecting upon a happy resurrection and perpetual joy, must have been in reality experienced by those, whose fear and dread of an hereafter must have corresponded with the belief of an immortality, and conviction of its truth. The subject could hardly have been investigated with any real enquiry after truth, without creating the most painful anxiety in the mind; which would dispose the enquirer to lay aside an investigation which either ended in uncertainty, or from conviction created terror, from the magnitude of the issue and consequences of the event.

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While we then easily account for the ignorance of the heathen upon a subject, which ended in uncertainty or terror, we cannot but be amazed at the profound ignorance of those who, with every facility of learning, pass their time from youth to age insolicitous of truth, as they are indifferent to the consequences. The scriptural proof of the immortality of the soul and resurrection of the body is adapted to the meanest capacity, for it depends upon no abstract metaphysical reasoning, but the resurrection of Christ,-a fact which places the expectation of immortality upon a sure and firm basis, a fact, which is at once the base and chapiter of the pillar of the Christian faith.

Nor are the means of obtaining this beatitude less obvious, less intelligible, or less adapted to the meanest mind. Every page of the scriptures teems with this truth; which meets us with all possible variety of ideas, haunts us with all possible images, to receive which it exhorts us with all possible promises, and to reject, it warns us against with all possible threats.

Life and immortality are now made manifest, are now made sure by the certainty of a past event with which they are connected; for in the death and resurrection of Christ they were at once conceived and brought to birth, since "if the dead rise not, then is Christ not risen."

Since then every thing connected with this great

subject is made so plain, that he who runs may read and understand, surely they are without exeuse, who with every facility of knowledge, every exhortation, warning, and instruction, remain ig norant of so great a truth, and unpossessed of so great a blessing. While the ignorance of the heathen may be palliated from their want of knowledge, the condemnation of those among you will be most awful, who after the most reiterated instructions, the most constant and affectionate appeals, remain untaught, unenlightened, and unmoved. Although I have repeatedly solved the question, What must a man do to be saved? and clearly stated in what eternal life consists, and given it in some measure that prominence in my ministry which it bears in the scripture; I should betray much ignorance of human nature, were I to think that the repetition of this truth is unnecessary, and that your ignorance of it is untrue. I firmly believe that one third among you cannot inform me how eternal life is to be gained, and in what it consists. Perhaps your minds are anticipating the answer you would give to such a question; let me then exhort you to compare it with the solution which my text gives of this momentous question.

This is life eternal, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

While this solves the question which the wisest

among men were unable to unravel, it of necessity explodes and contradicts every other solution, which ignorance may have suggested, and vanity attempted to give. By declaring eternal life to consist in the knowledge of the Father and the Son, our Lord affirms all other attempts hopeless, and other expectations vain. From our text we learn that eternal life does not consist in the fulfilment of our relative moral duties, in discharging the obligations which as citizens of the world we are called upon to perform, nor likewise in the less obligatory duties of charitable benevolence to the species, collectively or individually.

"By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified" is the fundamental truth of Christianity, and must be recognised and felt before the elements of Christian knowledge can possibly be received.

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By the law, it is written, is the knowledge of sin ;" and therefore absurd is it to suppose that eternal life can be gained by the law, which can only impart the knowledge of that, which by introducing death is diametrically opposed to holiness, life, and immortality. Those only know the law who believe it to be the knowledge of sin; those only are ignorant of the law, who suppose it to be the knowledge of eternal life. "If indeed there had been a law which would have given life, verily righteousness would have been by the law; bad

God hath concluded all under sin," and hath declared eternal life to consist in the knowledge of himself, and his Son Jesus Christ.

Our Lord had declared that the hour was come in which both the Father and Son were to be glorified; he declares his power over all flesh, and the object of his mission to give eternal life to those whom the Father had given him. In my text he parenthetically informs us in what this eternal life consists. It would surpass the limits of a discourse to lay before you the ignorance of the pagan world respecting the nature and character of God, as it would likewise be unprofitable to my auditory. Any person but little versed in the best writings of those, who if not believing, at least professed a belief in the plurality of Gods, must be painfully convinced of the truth of the assertion of our Lord, "Oh righteous Father the world hath not known thee ".

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It is clearly manifest that man must ever have remained ignorant of God, if he had not been pleased to manifest himself by a divine revelation. We must ever bear in mind that the revelation of the character of God was one of the principal reasons of the mission of Christ; this we learn from the chapter before us. In the 6th verse our Lord affirms "I have manifested thy name unto the men

a John xvii. 1.

b John xvii. 2.

John xvii. 25.

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