your tears, your desires, and prayers! Do you feel no anxiety for their welfare; and do no clouds of trouble rise to darken your light in glory? Parents, will you sit on your celestial height, unmoved at the pains and groans of your own suffering offspring?—or at the groans of suffering millions, and not feel one yearning of compassion over their unhappy fate? If so, I shall not envy you your seat. would be no heaven to me. bosom may never feel one an abode. You may keep it. It God grant, that this aspiring wish to such And is this the doctrine, that gives you joy and triumph over the bitterness of death? If so, I entreat you once more, by all the ties that bind man to man, —by those of kindred blood and parental love, by the love of God and the voice of Christ, by all the bowels of mercy in time and in eternity, that can be made to move at woe, I entreat you to look down once more to flaming worlds! There perhaps is a friend, who in this life was your benefactor. He saw you in distress and he flew to your relief. He saw you on a bed of pain, and with a hand of compassion kindly supported your aching head, and whispered the accents of encouragement and consolation. The hand that administered to your relief and fed the poor is now frying in flames, and the voice that spoke you comfort is venting the groans of despair! Where, oh! where, has your mercy fled? Where are those religious feelings you experienced on earth and which prompted you to love your enemies, and to succor the distressed? Where has your Christian benevolence fled? Are you changed, hardened, and insensible to that moral flow of feeling, which we call the true spirit of religion here? If so, then we are now completely ignorant of the nature of that spirit which warms the bosoms of the glorified in heaven, and all the religious exercises we experience on these mortal shores are but so many deceptions, received through the medium of the senses. But grant them to be the breathings of the same spirit which burns in the just made perfect, and the sight of endless misery would unparadise the realms of glory and paralyze the heavenly song of redemption. This infernal grandeur of woe, which in the sublime of terror infinitely transcends the lightning's blaze, can never remove the bitterness of death, but on the contrary gives it all its chilling horrors. We have now clearly shown, that the doctrine of endless misery can, in no sense, sustain the soul in the hour of death; and have clearly pointed out, that in our young lamented friend it was the sentiment of universal grace, that brought consolation and joy, and removed the bitterness of death. He was an amiable young man, for whom I cherished a deep affection, and our last farewell was painful and trying. But the dear youth is gone; and with triumphant composure did he leave us, exhorting his equal-aged equal-aged compan ions to live to God. Never more on earth shall we hear his well-remembered voice. But mourning mother, sisters, brothers, and friends, let us be comforted in the pleasing hope, that we shall meet him again beyond the storms of this everchanging life! Yes, we shall meet him in heaven, and hear his loved voice sound immortal, where death and parting shall be known no more. Let us live in accordance with the faith we profess; and cherish in our hearts the spirit of universal benevolence, so that, when we shall be called from these mortal shores, we may not only feel that the bitterness of death is past, but be enabled to breathe out in resignation, "This life's a dream, an empty show, O, glorious hour! O, blest abode ! SERMON II.* ON THE DEATH OF MRS. MORRIS. MELANCHOLY indeed is the occasion on which we are now assembled. It is no doubt to us all, as well as to the bereaved, one of deep and thrilling interest. Mrs. Morris, her little daughter, and its grandmother have been removed from these mortal shores. The speaker, who now addresses you, has been invited by the bereaved husband and father, who is a resident of Clinton, Mississippi, to meet him here and preach the funeral sermon of his dear fallen friends; and to administer the consolations of the gospel of Christ to his bleeding heart. But Though separated by a distance of more than 1900 miles, yet we have at length met in Gloucester, Virginia, agreeably to previous appointment. Here we parted four years ago. though we shake the friendly hand of greeting and affection in this place, endeared to us by many pleasing recollections, yet the scenes around us, conspire to awaken in the soul many tender emotions. Nature is robed in glory as when we part * Delivered in the Episcopal church, Gloucester, Virginia, Sunday, July 16th, 1837, on the funeral occasion of the wife, mother, and child of CHRISTOPHER S. MORRIS, Esq. ed, but seems to mourn! The woodlands proudly wave; but methinks they wave in melancholy grandeur! The plantations smile, and the heavens beam serenity, but these seem mingled with pensiveness! The songsters carol their morning and evening lay, but it sounds to the bereaved heart, like the sad requiem over friendship's early tomb! In you and me, all Nature's beauty awakens no thrill of fond, rapturous delight, but seems to mourn with us over the triple grave of our fallen friends. Even the beautiful flowers, which adorn these gardens, seem to speak of withered hopes, and of blighted domestic joys. Though sun in splendor make the morn, Such being the melancholy light in which the bereaved view the wonders of creation, while contemplating the gloom of the grave, which conceals the object of their affections, it becomes ́my duty on this occasion, to shed upon the dark and dreary mansions of the dead, the blessed light of revelation, by pointing them forward to the transcendent brightness of the resurrection morn, when death shall be swallowed up in victory, and |