lives; look not behind you; stay not in all the plain; flee to the mountain, lest you be consumed."

Flatter not yourselves, that you shall have peace, while you walk in the imagination of your hearts. Let no worldly trifles divert you from the care of your souls. Dare not to trespass on God's commands and break through his prohibitions. Presume not on his patience, nor trust to future opportunities. Rest not in partial amendments, or past convictions. Let no worldly connections seduce you into sin, nor any difficulties and oppositions discourage your pursuit of heaven. Remember the warnings

and threatenings of God and lay them deeply to heart. Think of the examples of his wrath against the impenitent, especially against apostates; and work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

If you were in the situation of Lot's wife, just without the walls of the desecrated city; if you beheld the storm of fiery sulphur gathering thick around it and over it; if you saw the vivid fires flashing down from above, and kindling into flames the bituminous substance of the soil on which the city stood; if you were met on every side with the shrieks of despairing mortals, the crash of falling houses, and the convulsions of the cleaving ground; would you not think it time to flee? Would you not wonder at the stupidity of any who should stand within the confines of the storm to gaze at the tremendous scene ?-Remember, there is a scene foretold far more tremendous than this, at which you must appear, and which may be near at hand. Apply, then, the warning, and obey the counsel of the angel to the family of Lot, and escape, lest you be consumed.

SERMON XVI.

THE OPENING GRAVE CONTEMPLATED AND IMPROVED.

JOB XVII. 1.

The graves are ready for me.

THUS spake Job in a time of sickness and adversity; and thus every man may speak in health and prosperity. Let all, then, keep themselves in readiness for the grave.

The disease with which Job was afflicted was of such a nature as threatened death. From various expressions in his discourses with his friends, we find, that he had given up the hopes of recovery. He felt like one in the last conflict of a dissolutionlike one who saw the solemn preparation making for his inter

ment.

Job, though a man of great piety, yet found the same stupifying effect, as many others find, from a long course of prosperity. In his more happy days, too insensible of human weakness, and too unmindful of the uncertainty of the world, he said, "I shall die in my nest; I shall multiply my days as the sand; for," adds he," my root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all night upon my branch, and my glory was fresh in me." But when he saw his glory fading, and perceived his nature decaying, he entertained quite different apprehensions. Death and another

world were now full in his view. He considered his life as extinct, and the grave as opened for the reception of his flesh. It would be well, that we all, in our happiest circumstances, and especially under certain threatening appearances, should accustom ourselves to similar contemplations on human frailty, and our own near approach to the grave. For,

1. Every one may say, "The grave is ready for me." This circumstance is not peculiar to the aged and infirm: it is common to all.

So short is the life of man, that the time of death cannot be really remote, though to some it may seem so. In the verse next preceding our text, Job says, "When a few years are come, then shall I go the way, whence I shall not return." But he immediately corrects the expression, as if a mortal man might hardly talk of years. "When a few years are come?—Nay, my days are extinct."—What are a few years to a man who knows that he must die, and that eternity is before him? Job, for the period in which he lived, was not an old man; there were then with him men much elder than his father. But impressed with a sense of the vanity of man, he thinks, the few years, which might possibly remain to one of his age, scarcely worth bringing into the reckoning.

This life, though considered by itself, or compared with the duration of an insect, may seem something, yet contrasted with eternity, vanishes into nothing. "My days," says David, "are an hand-breadth, mine age is as nothing before thee. Surely every man, at his best state, is altogether vanity." "A thousand years, in thy sight," says Moses, "are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch of the night."

Life is almost an imperceptible part of our existence. It is only our entrance into being. We here but just open our eyes, and begin to live. Our real life-that duration which properly deserves the name, is beyond the grave-it is in another world. This part of our existence is so short and transient, that, in the first moment of it, the grave is near-it is ready for us. Job lived in an age, when human life far exceeded our present term;

and yet he speaks of it in the most diminutive expressions, as an empty shade-a passing wind-a withering flower.

2. The length of human life is various.

Few, very few, reach the period, which is commonly called old age. Multitudes, in every stage, from the earliest infancy to the last decay of nature, are removed from our world; and no man can, long beforehand, conjecture, in what stage of the progress he must close the scene. Every one, therefore, may justly say, “The grave is ready for me." At least, every one ought to entertain this idea and act on this supposition.

3. There are many of the human race, whose exit is sudden, and without any special warning by previous sickness and decay. Or if there have been warnings of this kind, they have come and past away so often, that they have lost their effect, and death comes suddenly at last. And that which happens to many, no man can be sure will not happen to himself.

It is, doubtless, true of some, now in full health, that their breath is almost spent, their life is nearly finished, and their grave will soon be opened. And who can say, this is not his own condition? Who can boast of to-morrow, or tell what it will bring forth? Who can promise himself another hour, or another breath? The uncertainty of the time when death will come, and the frequent intimations given us, in the providence of God, that it may surprize us suddenly, are reasons why we should always watch, and always be ready. It is the command of our Lord to us, and to all, "Watch, for ye know not when the time is―watch, lest, coming suddenly, it find you sleeping."

4. Some, under sensible decays of nature, have special reason to view the grave as ready for them. It was disease and affliction which so deeply impressed on Job, a sense of mortality and the grave.

When one feels his nature languishing, his strength failing, and his spirits wasting, the concerns of futurity ought surely to command his attention. In the firmness of health, and the flow of spirits, we are insensible of our weakness and frailty; we cannot realize the nearness of death; we almost forget that we are mortal. Sickness teaches us what we are, points us to the grave, and

tells us, that we must soon lie there. Sickness is death already begun-already preying on our nature, and reducing it to ruins. There are some diseases, which, by their violence, or obstinacy, or usual effects on others, give the patient reason to conclude, that they will terminate in his death. And every disorder and infirmity of body, in the most moderate degree, is an admonition to think of, and prepare for such an event. Diseases spring from the same fatal cause, and are the effects of the same awful sentence, as death itself. The sin, which brought death into the world, has also introduced those numerous maladies which afflict the human race. The same Divine curse which subjected mankind to mortality, has also subjected them to pain and sorrow, sickness and vanity.

5. The aged have special reason to apply the language of the

text.

In the course of their life, they have passed through various scenes. They have stood spectators on this gloomy theatre, and beheld their fellow-mortals around them, dropping off, and falling into the grave. They have seen the young, as well as the aged; the strong, as well as the weak, yielding to the power of death. They have visited the mansions of the dead a thousand times, there to lodge, and there to leave, in long darkness, a friend, a neighbor, or acquaintance. They have sometimes had the sentence of death in themselves by diseases, casualties and dangers. They have heard the sentence loudly sounded in their ears by the deaths of their contemporaries, and of their intimate relatives. They have seen death pass along near them to smite the friend who stood by their side, and have felt the wind, and even the stroke of his destroying weapon. Through a thousand perils they have been brought on to the present stage; and here they stand almost alone. In vain they look around for their early friends and associates. There is left of these only here and there a mortal, as faint and as solitary as they. Few, very few, of those who sat out in their company on the journey of life, are now to be found. These have fallen by the way, and slept together in the dust. The aged have reached the point, which few are known to pass, and which none pass far beyond. They feel their powers