upon earth are but as a shadow, Job viii. 9. If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister, Job xvii. 13, 14. For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living, Job xxx. 23. And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers, in the days of their pilgrimage, Gen. xlvii. 9. Wherefore David blessed the Lord and said, Blessed be thou, O Lord God of Israel, our father for ever and ever. For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers. Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding, 1 Chron. xxix. 15. Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever! Zech. i. 5. Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am. Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand breadth, and mine age is as nothing before thee: Surely every man at his best state is altogether vanity, Psalm xxxix. 4, 5. What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? Remember how short my time is. Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain, Psalm lxxxix. 48. Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye

children of men. Thou carriest them away with a flood: they are as a sleep. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away, Psalm xc. 3, 5, 6, 10. As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth; for the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more, Psalm ciii. 15, 16. Put not your trust (therefore) in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish, Psalm cxlvi. 3, 4. Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth, Prov. xxvii. 1. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath. All go to one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again, Eccles. iii. 19, 20. As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand, Eccles. v. 15. There is no man that hath power over the spirit, to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those who

are given to it, Eccles. viii. 8. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return to God who gave it, Eccles. xii. 7. All flesh is grass, and all the godliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth; because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is grass, Isa. xl. 6-8. Ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life, it is even as a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away, James iv. 14. Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come, Heb. xiii. 14. For we know 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 we that are in the tabernacle do groan, being burdened; not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life, 2 Cor. v. 1, 4.

ADDRESS.

The solemn consideration that man is born to die, that he is rapidly hastening to the termination of his existence in the present world, does not sufficiently affect the human heart. The wisest and best of men, while in seasons of health and prosperity, have too slight and transient an impression that the current of life is fast ebbing, and that they are advancing every moment towards eternity.

Nothing can be more suitable or affecting than the representations given us by the inspired writers, of the vanity and brevity of our being. They point out the constant liability of our existence to be soon or suddenly cut off. The sands are but few, and soon run out; the oil that feeds the lamp is soon exhausted; the flower that flourishes is unexpectedly blighted; the sun in many cases goes down at noon. Sometimes an accident, which we should suppose hardly adequate to produce so solemn an event, stops in an instant the crimson tide which flows through the veins. From the very atmosphere around us we inhale the poison which corrupts the blood and dissolves the clay tabernacle. Beside which, the body so ruined by sin, contains a thousand latent diseases, which only wait for some casualty to bring them into full and fatal operation. The outward frame is a "body of death." Every pain proclaims mortality; every sensation of sickness teaches man how frail he is. Disease in every form is but a friendly, yet faithful monitor, to warn us that the earthly tenement will ere long be taken down. Corporeal pains are but notices to quit, which a merciful God sends to his creatures that they may not be taken by surprisethat they may not be ejected from the frail tabernacle without preparation, without seeking and securing a better residence, even a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

It is in the chamber of sickness, and on the

couch of disease, or when some fearful and fatal stroke of death has unexpectedly cut down a friend or relative, that the solemn truth of mortality is most deeply felt. Then we read the lesson of our frailty more distinctly, learn it more effectually, and improve it more beneficially. Many have been taught to feel that they are dying creatures, by being made the subjects of alarming diseases, who were too little impressed with the thought when strong and healthy. We know the truth better by feeling it in ourselves, than seeing it in others; no knowledge is so valuable or influential, as the knowledge of experience. Are you laid upon a bed of sickness, or confined to your house, or if permitted to go abroad, yet feeling bodily diseases making advances upon you, and threatening to bring you to the house appointed for all living; how anxious should you be to derive a salutary lesson from this visitation of the Almighty. Should your sickness not be unto death, you will not have suffered in vain, if by it you have been, by the blessing of God, taught to see and feel the uncertainty of life more than heretofore. If you are more deeply convinced of your constant liability to enter another world, if you are led to seek with greater diligence and intensity, the enjoyment of spiritual and heavenly things, and constrained to devote yourself more seriously and sincerely to the service of God.

If the affliction should end in death, it is

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