5. Who is he that comes to burst open the prison door of the tomb; to bid the dead awake; and to gather his redeemed from the four winds of heaven? He descends on a fiery cloud; the sound of a trumpet goes before him thousands of angels are on his right hand. It is Jesus, the Son of God; the Saviour of men; the Friend of the good. He comes in the glory of his Father; he has received power from on high.

6. Mourn not, therefore, child of immortality! for the spoiler, the cruel spoiler, that laid waste the works of God, is subdued. Jesus has conquered death; child of immortality, mourn no longer.

Heaven.

1. THE rose is sweet, but it is surrounded with thorns the lily of the valley is fragrant, but it springs up amongst the brambles. The spring is pleasant, but it is soon past: the summer is bright, but the winter destroys its beauty. The rainbow is very glorious, but it soon vanishes away: life is good, but it is quickly swallowed up in death.

2. There is a land where the roses are without thorns; where the flowers are not mixed with brambles. In that land there is eternal spring, and light without any cloud. The tree of life grows in the midst thereof; rivers of pleasure are there, and flowers that never fade. Myriads of happy spirits are there, and surround the throne of God with a perpetual hymn. The angels with their golden harps sing praises continually, and the cherubim fly on wings of fire! This country is Heaven: it is the country of those that are good; and nothing that is wicked must inhabit there. The toad must not spit its venom amongst turtledoves; nor the poisonous henbane grow amongst sweet flowers. Neither must any one that does ill, enter into that good land.

3. This earth is pleasant, for it is God's earth, and it is filled with many delightful things. But that country is far better there we shall not grieve any more, nor be sick any more, nor do wrong any more; there the cold of winter shali not wither us, nor the heats of summer scorch us. In that country there are no wars nor quarrels, but all dearly love one another.

4. When our parents and friends die, and are laid in the

old ground, we see them here no more; but there we shall mbrace them again, and live with them, and be separated o more. There we shall meet all good men whom we read f in holy books. There we shall see Abraham, the called if God, the father of the faithful; and Moses after his long wanderings in the Arabian desert; and Elijah, the prophet of God; and Daniel who escaped the lions' den: and there he son of Jesse, the shepherd king, the sweet singer of Israel. They loved God on earth; they praised him on earth; but in that country they will praise him better, and love him more.

5. There we shall see Jesus, who is gone before us to that happy place and there we shall behold the glory of the high God. We cannot see him here, but we will love him here. We must be now on earth, but we will often think on Heaven. That happy land is our home; we are to be here but for a little while, and there forever, even for eternal ages.

The Folly of Pride.

1. Ir there be any thing which makes buman nature appear ridiculous to beings of superior faculties, it must be pride. They know so well the vanity of those imaginary perfections that swell the heart of man, and of those little supernumerary advantages of birth, fortune, or title, which one man enjoys above another, that it must certainly very much astonish, if it does not very much divert them, when they see a mortal puffed up, and valuing himself above his neighbours, on any of these accounts, at the same time that he is liable to all the cominon foibles and calamities of the species.

2. To set this thought in its true light, we shall fancy, if you please, that yonder molehill is inhabited by reasonable creatures; and that every pismire (his shape and way of life only excepted) is endowed with human faculties and passions. How should we smile to hear one give an account of the pedigrees, distinctions, and titles, that reign among them! Observe how the whole swarm divide, and make way for the pismire that passes along! You must understand he is an emmet of quality, and has better blood in his veins than any pismire in the molehill.

3. Do you not see how sensible he is of it, how slowly he

marches forward, how the whole rabble of ants keep thei distance? Here you may observe one placed upon a little eminence, and looking down on a long row of labourers. He is the richest insect on this side the hillock: he has a walk of half a yard in length, and a quarter of an inch in breadth; he keeps one hundred menial servants, and has at least fifteen barley-corns in his granary. He is now chiding and enslaving the emmet that stands before him, one who, for all that we can discover, is as good an emmet as himself. 4. But here comes an insect of rank! Do you not perceive the little white straw that he carries in his mouth? That straw, you must understand, he would not part with for the longest tract about the molehill: you cannot conceive what he has undergone to purchase it! See how the ants of all qualities and conditions swarm about him! Should this straw drop out of his mouth, you would see all this numerous circle of attendants follow the next that took it up; and leave the discarded insect, or run over his back to come to his successor.

5. If now you have a mind to see the ladies of the molehill, observe first the pismire that listens to the emmet on her left hand, at the same time that she seems to turn away her head from him. He tells this poor insect, that she is a superior being; that her eyes are brighter than the sun; that life and death are at her disposal. She believes him, and gives herself a thousand little airs upon it. Mark the vanity of the pismire on her right hand. She can scarcely crawl with age, but you must know she values herself upon her birth; and, if you mind, spurns at every one that comes within her reach. The little nimble coquette that is running by the side of her, is a wit. She has broken many a pismire's heart. Do but observe what a drove of admirers are running after her.

6. We shall here finish this imaginary scene. But first of all, to draw the parallel closer, we shall suppose, if you please, that death comes down upon the molehill in the shape of a cocksparrow; and picks up, without distinction, the pismire of quality and his flatterers, the pismire of substance and his daylabourers, the white strawofficer and his sycophants, with all the ladies of rank, the wits, and the beauties. of the molehill.

7. May we not imagine that beings of superior natures and

perfections regard all the instances of pride and vanity among our own species, in the same kind of view, when they take a survey of those who inhabit this earth; or (in the language of an ingenious French poet) of those pismires that people this heap of dirt, which human vanity has divided into climates and regions.

The Swiftness of Time.

1. THE natural advantages which arise from the position of the earth which we inhabit, with respect to the other planets, afford much employment to mathematical speculation, by which it has been discovered, that no other conformation of the system could have given such commodious distributions of light and heat, or imparted fertility and pleasure, to so great a part of a revolving sphere.

2. It may be, perhaps, observed by the moralist, with equal reason, that our globe seems particularly fitted for the residence of a being, placed here only for a short time, whose task it is to advance himself to a higher and happier state of existence, by unremitted vigilance of caution, and activity of virtue.

3. The duties required of man, are such as human nature does not willingly perform, and such as those are inclined to delay, who yet intend some time to fulfil them. It was therefore necessary, that this universal reluctance should be counteracted, and the drowsiness of hesitation wakened into resolve; that the danger of procrastination should be always in view, and the fallacies of security be hourly detected.

4. To this end all the appearances of nature uniformly conspire. Whatever we see on every side, reminds us of the lapse of time, and the flux of life. The day and night succeed each other, the rotation of seasons diversifies the year, the sun rises, attains the meridian, declines, and sets; and the moon every night changes its form.

5. The day has been considered as an image of the year. and the year as the representation of life. The morning answers to the spring, and the spring to childhood and youth; the noon corresponds to the summer, and the summer to the strength of manhood. The evening is an emblem of autumn, and autumn of declining life. The night, with its silence and darkness, shows the winter, in which all

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the powers of vegetation are benumbed; and the wint points out the time when life shall cease, with its hopes ar pleasures.

6. He that is carried forward, however swiftly, by a m tion equable and easy, perceives not the change of pla but by the variation of objects. If the wheel of life, whi rolls thus silently along, passed on through undistinguishab uniformity, we should never mark its approaches to the e of the course. If one hour were like another;-if the pa sage of the sun did not show that the day is wasting;the change of seasons did not impress upon us the flight the year;-quantities of duration equal to days and yea would glide unobserved. If the parts of time were not v riously coloured, we should never discern their departu or succession, but should live thoughtless of the past, an careless of the future, without will, and perhaps witho power, to compute the periods of life; or to compare th time which is already lost, with that which may probab

remain.

7. But the course of time is so visibly marked, that it even observed by the passage, and by nations who ha raised their minds very little above animal instinct: the are human beings whose language does not supply them wi words by which they can number five, but I have read none that have not names for day and night, for summer a winter.

8. Yet it is certain, that these admonitions of nature, bot ever forcible, however importunate, are too often vain ; a that many who mark with such accuracy the course of tim appear to have little sensibility of the decline of life. Eve man has something to do which he neglects; every manh faults to conquer, which he delays to combat.

9. So little do we accustom ourselves to consider the fects of time, that things necessary and certain often surpr us like unexpected contingencies. We leave the beauty her bloom, and, after an absence of twenty years, wond at our return, to find her faded. We meet those whom left children, and can scarcely persuade ourselves to tr them as men. The traveller visits in age those count through which he rambled in his youth, and hopes for r riment at the old place. The man of business, wearied unsatisfactory prosperity, retires to the town of his nati