1793] ^^^- WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 385 



And whence comes this difference between the truly primitive and 

 modern spirit of professing Christians? Whence, brethren, but from 

 what the apostle suggests ? The former considered the present life only 

 as a pilgrimage, and this whole world as but an inn, or short refreshing 

 place, in their way to the regions of immortality and glory ! They 

 looked upon their passage thither as a scene of perils — a passage through 

 a valley of sorrow and tears — and that, for the trial of their faith and 

 exercise of their hope, they were called to a constant warfare with ene- 

 mies both within and without them. The soul they considered as their 

 truly better and immortal part, worthy of all their care; the body but 

 as of an inferior nature — a tabernacle, a tent, a cottage, an earthen ves- 

 sel, a mere temporary abode, or rather the prison-house of the soul ; in 

 itself more brittle than glass, decaying and constantly mouldering away, 

 subject to diseases, pain and every vicissitude of the surrounding ele- 

 ments. And thus, daily considering the vanity and the emptiness of 

 earthly things, their affections were more and more weaned from this 

 world. They became impatient of the dross of body; their souls pene- 

 trated by faith through the clouds of this mortality; and they obtained 

 some foretaste of the immense good things laid up for them in a world 

 to come. They acquired some just and ravishing conceptions of that 

 building of God, that house not made with hands, that celestial body, 

 with which the soul was to be united (for the nourishment of their hope 

 and the exercise of their charity) in the mansions of glory; and, there- 

 fore, far from being awed or terrified at the separation of the soul from 

 the body, or apprehensions from the dissolution of their eartldy taber- 

 nacle, and of its dust mixing again with its kindred dust, they groaned 

 earnestly within themselves, waiting for the adoption, that is, the re- 

 demption of the body, that they might be clothed upon with their 

 heavenly house, "and so be forever with the Lord." 



But can we say, brethren, that this is the general temper of those who 

 call themselves Christians in the present day? Can we say that we are 

 always looking forward to our future end? Or rather, do we not keep 

 ourselves blind to the future, ignorant of our destiny, or without any 

 guesses concerning another world ? We rather wish to consider the 

 present as our only world, and death as an- everlasting sleep — a total' 

 annihilation of, perhaps, soul and body! Wherefore, if wc think of an 

 approaching dissolution, we sorrow, as men having no hope beyond the 

 narrow precincts of the grave. If any dark glimmerings of another 

 world intrude upon our quiet, we strive to stifle the divine sparklings in 

 the soul, and hate to converse with the God within us, or think of any 

 future state. And thus, far from rejoicing at the notices nature gives- 

 of an approaching dissolution of our mortal part ; far from groaning 

 carnestlv to be clothed upon with our immortal house, and meeting- 

 death in the full hope of glory, I may appeal to yourselves, whether the 

 very name cf death be not as a thunder-stroke to us ! We startle, we 



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