wickedness. But the curse and sting is taken | mortal shall put on immortality. He shall out of their afflictions, and they are so mo- change our vile body, that it may be fashioned derated and sanctified by the wisdom and according to the likeness of his own glorious grace of him whom they serve, that in the body. So that his own resurrection is both event they work for their good. But though the pledge and the pattern of theirs. I have they yield the peaceable fruit of righteous- only farther to observe upon this subject at ness, (Heb. xii. 11,) in themselves, and at the present, that as Adam is the root and head of time, they are not joyous, but grievous. all mankind, from whence they all derive a sinful and mortal nature; so Jesus, the second Adam, is the root of a people who are united to him, planted and engrafted in him by faith. To these the resurrection, considered as a blessing, is to be restrained. There will be a resurrection of the wicked likewise, (John v. 29,) but to condemnation, shame and everlasting contempt, Dan. xii. 2. But the connexion is close and indissoluble between Christ, the first-fruits, and them that are Christ's at his coming.

(3) They are still subject to the stroke of death, the separation of soul and body. But this death has lost its sting as to them. And therefore they are said not to die, but to sleep in Jesus. Death is not their enemy, but their friend. To them, instead of being an evil, it proves a deliverance from all evil, and an entrance into everlasting life.

2. That new life to which they are raised is surely connected with life eternal; the life of grace, with the life of glory. For Christ liveth in them, and being united to him by faith, they shall live while he liveth. They only shut their eyes upon the pains and sorrows of this world, to open them immediately in his presence, and so they shall be for ever with the Lord. How wonderful and happy is the transition! From disease and anguish, from weeping friends, and often from a state of indigence and obscurity, in which they have no friends to compassionate them, they remove to a state of glory, honour, and immortality, to a mansion in the realms of light, to a seat near the throne of God. In the language of mortals, this ineffable honour, and happiness is shadowed out to us, by the emblems of a white robe, a golden harp, a palmbranch (the token of victory,) and a crown, not of oak or laurel, of gold or diamonds, but a crown of life. Such honour have all the saints. However afflicted or neglected, despised or oppressed, while upon earth, soon as their willing spirits take their flight from hence, they shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Thus Lazarus lay for a time, diseased, necessitous, and slighted, at the rich man's gate. Yet he was not without attendants. A guard of angels waited around him, and when he died conveyed his spirit into Abraham's bosom, Luke xvi. 22. The Jews thought very highly of Abraham, the father of their nation, the father of the faithful. Our Lord therefore teaches us by this representation, that the beggar Lazarus was not only happy after death, but highly exalted by him who seeth not as man seeth; for he was placed in Abraham's bosom, a situation which, according to the custom of the Jews, was a mark of peculiar favour, intimacy, and distinction. Thus the beloved disciple was seated in the bosom of our Lord, when he celebrated his last passover with his disciples, John xiii. 22-25.

3. Their dead bodies shall be raised at the great day, not in their former state of weakness and corruption, but that which was sown in weakness shall be raised in power, and the

May we be happily prepared for this great event, that when he shall appear we may have confidence in him, and not be ashamed before him, 1 John ii. 28. Happy they who shall then be able to welcome him in the language of the prophet, "Lo, this is our God, we have waited for him, and he will save us; this is the Lord, we have waited for him, we will be glad, and rejoice in his salvation, Isa. xxv. 9. But how awful the contrast of those (many of them once the great, mighty, and honourable of the earth) who shall behold him with horror, and in the anguish of their souls shall call (in vain) to the rocks and mountains to fall on them and hide them from his presence, saying, "The great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?" Rev. vi. 16, 17.

SERMON XLII.

THE GENERAL RESURRECTION.

Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52.

AN object in itself great, and which we know to be so, will appear small to us if we view it from a distance. The stars, for example, in our view, are but as little specks or points of light; and the tip of a finger, if held very near to the eye, is sufficient to hide from us the whole body of the sun. Distance of time has an effect upon us, in its kind, similar to distance of space. It diminishes in our mind the idea of what we are assured is, in its own nature, of great magnitude and

I. The apostle apprizes the Corinthians that he is about to show them a mystery. As the word mystery has been treated with no small contempt, I shall embrace this occasion of offering you a short explanation of it, as it is used in the scriptures. We are allowed to say, that there are mysteries in nature, and perhaps we may be allowed to speak of mys

importance. If any of us were informed that | we should certainly die before this day closes, what a sudden and powerful change would take place in our thoughts? That we all must die, is a truth, of which we are no less certain, than that we are now alive. But because it is possible that we may not die today, or to-morrow, or this year, or for several years to come, we are often little more affect-teries in providence; but though an apostle ed by the thoughts of death, than if we expected to live here for ever. In like manner, if you receive the scripture as a divine revelation, I need offer you no other proof, that there is a day, a great day, approaching, which will put an end to the present state of things, and introduce a state unchangeable and eternal. Then the Lord will descend with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trump of God. The earth and all its works will be burnt up. The great Judge will appear, the tribunal be fixed, the books opened, and all the human race must give an account of themselves to God, and, according to his righteous award, be happy or miserable in a degree beyond expression or conception, and that for ever.

If we were infallibly assured, that this tremendous scene would open upon us tomorrow; or if, while I am speaking, we should be startled with the signs of our Lord's coming in the air, what confusion and alarm would overspread the congregation? Yet, if the scripture be true, the hour is approaching, when we must all be spectators of this solemn event, and parties nearly interested in it. But because it is at a distance, we can hear of it, speak of it, and profess to expect it, with a coolness almost equal to indifference. May the Lord give us that faith which is the evidence of things not seen, that while I aim to lead your meditations to the subject of my text, we may be duly impressed by it: and that we may carry from hence such a consideration of our latter end, as may incline our hearts to that which is our true wisdom! Many curious inquiries and speculations might be started from this passage, but which, because I judge them to be more curious than useful, it is my intention to wave. I shall confine myself to what is plainly expressed, because I wish rather to profit than to amuse my hearers. The principal subject before us is the resurrection of the dead, in the most pleasing view of it; for my text speaks only of those who shall change the mortal and corruptible, for incorruption and inmortality.

I. The introduction," Behold I show you a mystery."

II. What we are taught to expect, "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."

III. The suddenness of the event,- "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye."

IV. The grand preceding signal,-"The trumpet shall sound."

assures us, that great is the mystery of godliness, (1 Tim. iii. 16,) many persons will scarcely bear the application of the word to religion. And, a late ingenious writer, who has many admirers in the present day, has ventured to affirm in print, that where mystery begins, religion ends. If the frequency of the case did not, in some degree, abate our wonder, this might seem almost a mystery, that any persons who profess to believe the scripture, should so openly and flatly contradict what the scripture expressly and repeatedly declares: or that while, as men of reason and philosophy, they are forced to acknowledge a mystery in every part of creation, and must confess it beyond their ability to explain the growth of a blade of grass; they should, in opposition to all the rules of analogy, conclude, that the gospel, the most important concern of man, and which is commended to us as the most eminent display of the wisdom and power of God, is the only subject so level to our apprehensions, as to be obvious, at first sight, to the most careless and superficial observers. That great numbers of people are very far from being accurate and diligent in their religious inquiries, is too evident to be denied. How often do we meet with persons of sense who talk with propriety on philosophical, political, or commercial subjects, and yet, when they speak of religion, discover such gross ignorance, as would be shameful in a child of ten years old, and amounts to a full proof that they have not thought it worth their while to acquire even a slight knowledge of its first principles. Can we even conceive the possibility of a divine revelation that should have nothing in it mysterious to persons of this character?

A mystery, according to the notation of the Greek word, signifies a secret. And all the peculiar truths of the gospel may justly be styled mysteries or secrets, for two reasons.

1. Because the discovery of them is beyond the reach of fallen man, and they neither would nor could have been known without a revelation from God. This is eminently true of the resurrection. The light of nature, which we often hear so highly commended, may afford some faint glimmerings of a future state, but gives no intimation of a resurrection. The men of wisdom at Athens, the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, who differed widely in most parts of their respective

schemes, united in deriding this sentiment, | heart must be given us from above, for we and contemptuously styled the apostle Paul a cannot reason ourselves into it. Nay, this babbler, (Acts xvii. 13,) for preaching it. But divine teaching is necessary to secure the this secret is to us made known. And we are mind from the vain reasonings, perplexities, assured, not only that the Lord will receive and imaginations which will bewilder our to himself the departing spirits of his people, thoughts upon the subject, unless we learn but that he will give commandment concern- to yield, in simplicity of faith, to what the ing their dust, and, in due time, raise their scripture has plainly revealed, and can be vile bodies to a conformity with his own glo- content to know no farther before the proper rious body. time.

2. Because, though they are revealed expressly in the scripture, such is the grossness of our conceptions, and the strength of our prejudices, that the truths of revelation are still unintelligible to us, without a farther revelation of their true sense to the mind, by the influence of his Holy Spirit. Otherwise, how can the secret of the Lord be restrained to those who fear him, (Psal. xxv. 14,) when the book which contains it is open to all, and the literal and grammatical meaning of the words is in the possession of many who fear him not?

Books in the arts and sciences may be said to be full of mysteries to those who have not a suitable capacity and taste for them: or who do not apply themselves to study them with diligence, and patiently submit to learn gradually one thing after another. If you put a treatise on mathematics, or a system of music, into the hands of a plowman or labourer, you will not be surprised to find that he cannot understand a single page. Shall the works of a Sir Isaac Newton, or of a Handel, be thus inexplicable to one person, while another peruses them with admiration and delight? Shall these require a certain turn of mind, and a close attention? and can it be reasonably supposed, that the Bible is the only book that requires no peculiar disposition, or degree of application, to be understood, though it is designed to make us acquainted with the deep things of God? 1 Cor. ii. 10. In one respect, indeed, there is an encouraging difference. Divine truths lie thus far equally open to all, that though none can learn them unless they are taught of God, yet all who are sensible of their own weakness may expect his teaching, if they humbly seek it by prayer. Many people are, perhaps, incapable of being mathematicians. They have not a genius for the science. But there is none who teacheth like God. He can give not only light, but sight; not only lessons, but the capacity necessary for their reception. And while his mysteries are hidden from the wise and prudent, who are too proud to wait upon him for instruction, he reveals them unto babes.

It may perhaps be thought, that a belief of the doctrine of the resurrrection does not require the same teaching of the Holy Spirit that is necessary to the right knowledge of some other doctrines of the gospel. But such a belief as may affect, cheer, and animate the

II. What we are here taught to expect is thus expressed-"We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." We are not to suppose that the whole human race will die, and fail from the earth, before the resurrection. Some will be living at the time, and among them some of the Lord's people. Of the living, it cannot properly be said that they will be raised from the dead: but they will experience a change, which will put them exactly in the same state with the others. Their mortality shall be swallowed up in life. Thus we conceive it to have been with Enoch and Elijah. They did not die like other men; but their mortal natures were frail and sinful, like ours, and incapable of sustaining the glories of heaven without a preparation. Flesh and blood in its present state cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither can corruption inherit incorruption; but the dead shall arise, and the living shall be changed. Here is a wide field for speculation, but I mean not to enter it. Curiosity would be glad to know how our bodies, when changed, shall still be the same. Let us first determine how that body, which was once an infant, is the very same when it becomes a full grown man, or a man in extreme old age. Let us explain the transmutation of a caterpillar or silk-worm, which from a reptile becomes a butterfly. What a wonderful change is this both in appearance and in powers? Who would suppose it to be the same creature? Yet who can deny it? It is safest and most comfortable for us, to refer to the wisdom and power of God the accomplishment of his own word.

III. These great events will take place unexpectedly and suddenly-"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." We have reason to believe, that a part at least of mankind will be employed as they are now, and as they were in the days of Noah and Lot, (Luke xvii. 26--30,) eating and drinking, buying and selling, building, and planting; having nothing less in their thoughts than the calamity and destruction which shall overwhelm them without warning. For while they are promising themselves peace, the day of the Lord shall come upon them like a thief in the night, unlooked for, and like the pangs of a labouring woman, unavoidable." "In that day the lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness ot man shall be bowed down, and the Lord