fections, nor the imagination corrupt our hearts; when the consciousness of the divine approbation, unmingled and undisturbed, shall fill our souls, and nothing be wanting to ensure our endless happiness, but the pure and holy perception of the happiness of others.

All these considerations which confirm our expectations of a state of social existence, lead us to regard the future as an active life. Far be it from me to diminish the comfortable hope of that rest which remaineth to the people of God; or to deprive the patient, careworn, and exhausted Christian of the tranquillizing prospect of repose in the presence of his God. But rest is not torpor, nor repose inactivity. Nothing in nature, or in scripture, authorized the notion which too commonly prevails, that the good will be in a state of pure rest, or passive enjoyment, absorbed in the contemplation of God, and yielding to impressions of pleasure independent of all activity of body or mind. This cannot be the heaven which God, the eternally active, powerful, and vivifying spirit, has provided for creatures made in his image, and whose perfection consists in the active imitation of his benevolence. Let the thought that we are to be continually employed, and employed in the diffusion of that good at which God aims, enter into our anticipations of futurity. All there will be exercise; exercise of our faculties in the acquisition of knowledge, of our affections in the love of God's creatures, of our powers in the communication of his benefits. We are here most hap

py when most employed, and can opportunities or objects, or means, or inclination be hereafter wanting in the immense range of God's creation?

Who then is the man that is fit for heaven? The selfish, solitary, and indolent speculatist; the griping, hoarding, narrow-minded child of earth; the vain, proud, self-important man of consequence? No! the heaven which we describe can be no place for them. The proper candidates for heaven, are the men who diligently fulfil the duties of their station; who live most for others, and with unremitted and unwearied care, exert their talents in laboring to correct their own dispositions, and to promote the good of others.

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There is another circumstance in the future life of the Christian, which it would be inexcusable to omit, and that is, the presence of Christ. He has gone to prepare a place for his followers, that where he is they may be also. It is on these promises that the Christian's hope has been supported. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me.' What though all his other expectations of the specific nature or employments of his future condition should be false, yet it is enough for the Christian to know, that hereafter Christ will be his companion, and his friend. Beloved, now are we the sons of God; if children, then heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.

Who then are to be partakers of this life to come? The world is full of rational beings, capable of forming the conception and cherishing the hope of such an existence. But can we expect to find hereafter, in a more exalted state, all the degraded creatures who live now on the mercy and forbearance of God? Neither scripture nor reason will allow this hope. There are those who will sleep in the dust of the earth, and awake to everlasting contempt. The society of heaven cannot be composed, like the present, of the foolish and the wise, the virtuous and the profligate, the worthless and the excellent. Into the world we have been describing entereth nothing that defileth or that maketh a lie. ' And I heard a voice out of heaven saying, It is done. I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. He that overcometh, shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the second death.'

How glorious are the prospects opened to the eye of faith and virtue! Separated from the wicked, to dwell only with the wise and virtuous, to act with them, to learn with them, and to worship with them the everlasting Father; to be occupied forever in the general good of God's creatures, and to proceed from good to better, from glory to glory.

SERMON VI.

SPIRITUAL NATURE OF THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST.

JOHN, XVIII. 36.

JESUS ANSWERED; MY KINGDOM IS NOT OF THIS WORLD.

WHEN Our Saviour was brought before Pilate, and maliciously charged by the Jews with affecting regal power, Pilate asks, Art thou the King of the Jews,' and receives the reply in the text.

In the opinion of the Roman judge it appears to have been explicit and satisfactory; for he went out without delay to our Saviour's accusers, to protest a second time that he found no fault in him. This reply, which, at the time, seems to have produced in the mind of Pilate a conviction of the innocence of our Saviour's designs, and of the intellectual nature of that influence and authority which he had endeavoured to establish, stands yet on record, to refute those idle accusations of disingenuous men, by which they have represented the religion of Jesus as a contrivance of ambitious imposters, and the spiritual engine of

political power. It stands yet on record, to reproach the weakness of Pilate, who, after such a declaration, could yield up the Son of God as a dangerous and seditious enemy of Cæsar, and also as a reproach to the pride and spiritual despotism of many sectaries and princes in the history of the church. It stands yet on record, to encourage and console the real church of Christ in times of affliction, persecution, apostasy, and decay; for, whether our religion enjoy the favor, or endure the hostility of the civil powers; whether the kingdoms which call themselves christian are swept away, or extended; whether this globe itself endure or vanish from the systems of the world, the Prince of Peace is not dethroned, nor his holy dominion destroyed, nor his realm invaded, nor the peace and privileges of his subjects disturbed.

Every religion, which the world, before the coming of Christ, had known, was more or less incorporated with established governments. The system of Paganism was altogether civil; the augurs could suspend any proceeding of state, and at last, the character of priest was invariably united with that of emperor. The religion of Moses, too, was intimately incorporated with his civil polity, and however the circumcision of the heart only might be recommended by a christian apostle, no one could ever belong to the Jewish nation, who did not first, by this outward rite of religious initiation, belong to the Jewish church.