384 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE \M9'h 



not be without hope, as others who have no belief in the resurrection 

 of the dead. 



3d. The certainty of a future judgment, and the award of an eternity 

 of happiness to those who sleep in the Lord, or in the faith of the 

 Gospel — " For them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him, and 

 so we shall be forever with the Lord ! " 



4ih. That, from all these considerations, the devout Christian may 

 not only overcome the fear of death in himself, but derive an abundant 

 source of consolation for the death of others, according to our apostle, 

 who, in the sweetest accents of evangelical sympathy and love, in the 

 last verse of our text calls us to " comfort one another with the hopes, 

 after death and a resurrection, of being forever with the Lord ! " 



I proceed now to the first head of discourse as pointed out in the 

 text, namely: "Considerations on death, and how, through divine 

 assistance, to subdue and overcome his mighty terrors." And oh. Thou 

 almighty fountain of all wisdom and grace and heavenly fortitude, aid 

 me with thy divine spirit, that the great and awful subjects which I am 

 to handle may not suffer through my feeble endeavors ; but give me, 

 for the sake of Jesus and his Gospel, to follow, with clear and unembar- 

 rassed view, the steps and arguments of thy divinely enlightened 

 apostle, who is everywhere superlatively instructive and sublime, but 

 especially when he opens to us the prospects of a future world. Lo ! 

 he stands, though with his feet on earth, his eye steadfast on heaven, 

 considering death, not as a tyrant sent to disturb our peace, but as a 

 messenger of God, employed to "dissolve our earthly house of this 

 tabernacle that we may be clothed upon with our house, which is from 

 Heaven." 



"For we know," says he in another place,* "that if our earthly 

 house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an 

 house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this (earthly) 

 house we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house 

 which is from Heaven." 



Brethren, when I read this passage from our blessed apostle, in con- 

 junction with our text, as well as many others expressive of the true 

 spirit of primitive Christianity, I am doubtful (as saith an old commen- 

 tator) whether most to admire the exalted temper of the apostles and 

 first followers of Christ, or to deplore the low and desponding spirit of 

 the modern professors of Christianity — so heavenly and magnanimous 

 were the former, so earthly and abject the latter ! The former were 

 always raising their affections to things above — to their "house not 

 made with hands, eternal in the heavens ; " the latter too often immur- 

 ing themselves deeper and still deeper within the walls of their "earthly 

 house of this tabernacle ! " 



"" 2 Cor. V. I, z. 



