There is no more time for you to be vexed with the society of sinful creatures: Your spirit within you shall be no more. ruffled and disquieted with the teizing conversation of the wicked, nor shall you be interrupted in your holy and heavenly exercises by any of the enemies of God and his grace. The time of your painful labours and sufferings is no more. Rev. xiv. 13. Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for they rest from all their labours that carry toil or fatigue with them: There shall be no more complaints nor groans, no sorrows or crying; the springs of grief are for ever dried up, neither shall there be any more pain in the flesh or the spirit. God shall wipe away all tears from your eyes, and death shall be no more; Rev. xxi. 4. It is finished, said our blessed Lord on the cross: It is finished, may every one of his followers say at the hour of death, and at the end of time: My sins and follies, my distresses and my sufferings, are finished for ever, and the mighty angel swears to it, that the time of these evils is no longer: They are van-. ished, and shall never return. O happy souls, who have been so wise to count the short and uncertain number of your days on earth, as to make an early provision for a removal to heaven., Blest are you above all the powers of present thought and language. Days, and months, and years, and all these short and painful periods of time, shall be swallowed up in a long and. blissful eternity, the stream of time which has run between the banks of this mortal life, and bore you along amidst many dangerous rocks of temptation, fear and sorrow, shall launch you out into the ocean of pleasures which have have no peroid. Those felicities must be everlasting, for duration has no limit there time, with all its measures, shall be no more. Amen. Occasioned by the decease of Mrs. Sarah Abney, Daughter of the late Sir Thomas Abney, Knt. Preached April 2, 1732. Dedicated to the Lady Abney, Mother of the deceased, and to Mrs. Mary and Mrs. Elizabeth Abney, her two surviving Sisters. MADAM, IF Sorrows sorrows could be diminished in proportion to the multitude of those who share in them, the spring of your tears would have been drawn almost dry, and the tide of grief have sunk low, by being divided into a thousand streams. But though this cannot afford perfect relief to your ladyship, yet it must be some consolation to have been blessed with a daughter, whose removal from our world could give occasion for so general a mourning. I confess Madam, the wound which was made by such a smarting stroke is not to be healed in a day or two, reason permits some risings of the softer and kinder passions in such a season; it shews at least that our hearts are not marble, and reveals the tender ingredients that are moulded up in our frame; nor does religion permit us to be insensible when a God afflicts, though he doth it with the hand of a father and a friend, Nature and love are full of these sensibilities, and incline you to miss her presence in every place where she was wont to attend you, and where you rejoiced in her as one of your dearest blessings. She is taken away indeed from mortal sight, and to follow her remains to the grave, and to dwell there, gives but a dark and melancholy view, till the great rising-day. Faith may discern the distant prospect, and exult in the sight of that glorious futurity; yet I think there is also a nearer relief Madam, to your sorrows. By the virtues which shone in her life, you may trace the ascent of her spirit to the world of immortality and joy. Could your Ladyship keep the eye of your soul directed thither, you would find it an effectual balm for a heart that bleeds at the painful remembrance of her death.-What could your Ladyship have asked as a higher favour of heaven, than to have born and trained up a child for that glorious inheritance, and to have her secured of the possession beyond all possible fear or danger of losing it. This Madam, is your own divinest hope for yourself, and you are hastening on toward that blessed society, as fast as days and hours give leave. When your thoughts descend to this lower world again, there are two living comforts near you, of the same kind with what you have lost: May your Ladyship rejoice in them yet many years, and they in you! And when Jesus, who bath the keys of death, and the invisible state, shall appoint the hour for your ascent to heaven, may you leave them behind to bless the world with fair examples of virtue and piety among men, and a long train of services for the interest of their Redeemer. If I were to say any thing young Ladies to you in particular, it should be in the language of our Saviour and his beloved apostle, "Hold fast what you have till the Lord comes, that none may deprive you of your crown. Take heed to yourselves that you lose not the things which you have wrought, but that ye receive a full reward." Go on and persevere as you have begun, in the path of true religion and happiness: And in this age of infidelity and degenerate life, be ye daily more established in the christian faith and prac tice, in opposition to the smiles and frowns, and every snare of a vain delusive world. Let this one thought set a double guard upon you, that while your elder sister was with you, it was something easier to resist every temptation, when she had pronounced the first refusal: Her steadiness was a guard, which you have now lost, but you have an almighty God in covenant on your side, and “the grace of our Lord Jesus is sufficient for you. To his care my Lady, I commend yourself, and your whole family with affectionate petitions, and am, -MADAM, Your Ladyship's most obliged, and faithful servant, DISCOURSE II.-The Watchful Christian dying in Peace. À FUNERAL SERMON, &c. IT is an awful providence, which hath lately removed from among us a young person, well known to most of you, whose agreeable temper and conduct had gained the esteem of all her acquaintance, whose constitution of body, together with the furniture of her mind, and circumstances in the world, concurred to promise many future years of life and usefulness. But all that is born of the race of man is frail and mortal, and all that is done by the hand of God is wise and holy. We mourn, and we submit in silence.— Yet the providence hath a voice in it, and the friends of the deceased are very solicitous, that such an unexpected and instructive appearance of death might be religiously improved to the benefit of the living. For this end I am desired to entertain you at present, with some meditations on those words of our Saviour, which you read in Luke xii. 37.-Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching. VARIOUS, and well chosen are those parables, whereby our Saviour gave warning to his disciples, that, when he was departed from this world, they should ever be upon their guard, and always in a readiness to receive him at his return; because he would come on a sudden, and in such an hour as they thought not, to demand an account of their behaviour, and to distribute his recompences according to their works. There are two of these parables in this chapter: But to enter into a detail of all the particular metaphors, which relate to this one, whence I have borrowed my text, would be too tedious here, and would spend too much of the present hour. Without any longer preface, therefore I shall apply myself to improve the words, to our spi ritual profit, in the following method : I. I shall enquire what is meant by the coming of Christ, in the text, and how it may be properly applied to our present purpose, or the hour of death.-II. I shall consider what is implied in the watchfulness, which our Saviour recommends.— 111. I shall propose some considerations, which will discover the blessedness of the watchful soul in a dying hour.—IV. I shall add some practical remarks. First, Let us enquire, what is meant by the coming of Christ in my text. The coming of Christ, in some of these parables, may have reference to his speedy appearance, in the course of his providence, in that very age, to judge and punish the Jewish nation, to destroy their city, and put an end to their church and state, for their many heinous iniquities, and the most provoking crime of rejecting and crucifying the Son of God.But these words, in their supreme and most important sense, always point to the glorious appearance of Christ at the last day, when he shall come to shut up all the scenes of this frail life, to put an end to the present world, to finish all the works of this mortal state, and to decide and determine the eternal states of all mankind by the general judgment. Yet Christ comes to each of us in the hour of death also, for he hath the keys of death and of hell, or of the invisible world; Rev. i. 18. It is he who appoints the very moment, when the soul shall be dismissed from this flesh, he opens the doors of the grave for the dying body, and he is Lord of the world of spirits, and lets in new inhabitants every minute into those unseen regions of immortal sorrow, or immortal peace. And, as Christ may be said to come to us by the message or summons of death, 20 the many solemn writings and commands of watchfulness, which attend these parables of Christ, have been usually, and with good reason applied to the hour of death also, for then the Lord comes to shut up the scene of each of our lives, our works are then finished, our last day is come, and the world is then at an end with us. Let it be observed also, that there is a further parallel between the day of the general judgment, and that of our own death: The one will as certainly come as the other, but the time when Christ will come, in either of these senses, is unknown to us, and uncertain: And it is this, which renders the duty of perpetual watchfulness so necessary to all men. The parable assures us, that our Lord will certainly come, but whether at the second, or third watch, whether at midnight, or at cock-crowing, or near the morning, this is all uncertainty; yet whensoever he comes," he expects we should have our loins girded, like servants fit for business, and our lamps burning, to attend him at the door, and that we be ready to receive him as soon as he knocks. Were the appointed hour of judgment, or of death, made known to us for months or years before-hand, we should be ready to think constant watchfulness a very needless thing.Mankind would persuade themselves to indulge their foolish and sinful slumbers, and only take care to rub their eyes a little, and bestir themselves an hour or two before this awful event: But it is the suddenness and uncertainty of the coming of Christ to all mankind, for either of these purposes, that extends the charge of watchfulness to all men, as well as to the apostles; Mark xiii. 37. and that calls upon us aloud, to keep our souls ever awake, lest, as our Lord there expresses it, lest, coming suddenly, he should find us sleeping. And remember this, that if we are unprepared to meet the Lord at death, we can never be ready when he comes to judgment: Peace and blessedness attend the watchful chris. tian, whensoever his Lord cometh. Blessed is that servant, whom, when his Lord cometh, he shall find watching. leads me to the second general head. This Secondly, What is implied in watchfulness Answer. In general it is opposed to sleeping, as I have already hinted; in Mark xiii. 35, 36. And, in the language of scripture, as well as in common speech, sleep and slumber denote an unprepared→ ness to receive whatever comes, for this is the case with those who are asleep On the other hand, watchfulness is a preparation and readiness for every event, and so it is expressed in some of these parables, verse 40. Be ye therefore ready. But to enfer into a few particulars. 1. There is a sleep of death; Ps. xiii. 3. Spiritual death, as well as natural, is sometimes called a sleep. Such is the case of a soul dead in trespasses and sins; Eph. v. 14. compared with ii. 1. Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the deud, and Christ shall give thee light. Watchfulness, therefore, implies life, a principle of spiritual life in the soul: Surely those, who are dead in sins, are not prepared to receive their Lord: He is a perfect stranger to them, they know him not, they love him not, they obey him not; and a terrible stranger he will be, if he come upon them before they are awake. But those, who are awakened by divine grace into a spiritual life, have seen something of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; they are acquainted with their Lord, they love him, and have some degree of preparation to meet their Saviour, when he summons them to leave this world. This is therefore, a matter of highest consequence, that we awake from a state of sin and death, that we be made alive to God, begin the christian life, and set upon religion, in good earnest, according to the rules of the gospel, before Christ calls us away. It is only the divine life begun in us, that can secure us from eternal death; though even christians may be found slumbering in other respects, aud expose themselves to painful evils, if that hour surprize them at unawares. 2. There is a sleep of indolence and thoughtlessness: When a man is insensible of his own circumstances, and too careless of the things which most concern him, we say, "the man is asleep." Such a sleep seems to be upon the church of Israel; Isai. xxix. 10, 11. a spirit of deep sleep, when the law, which contained the great things of God, and their salvation, was to them as a sealed book, they read it not, their eyes were closed, their spiritual senses were bound up. Many a christian, who hath been raised from a death in sin, has been seized with this criminal slumber, and has had the image of death come again upon him: He has grown too careless and unconcerned about his most important and eternal affairs; and, in this temper, he hardly knows what his state is toward God, nor keeps up a lively sense or notice of divine and eternal things upon his spirit. Watchfulness, in opposition to this sleep, implies a holy solicitude and diligence to |