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low me, is not worthy of me." He who cannot consent to sacrifice a few momentary gratifications, a few transitory pleasures, to the commands of his Saviour, is not worthy of him. He who is not a partaker of its discipline and selfdenial here, cannot in reason expect to be a partaker of its glories hereafter.

Where then the great Captain of our salvation has led the way, it is our duty, as well as our privilege, to follow. Upon that high altar on which the Redeemer offered himself up a sacrifice for us, a curse for our guilt, a propitiation for our offences, let us also offer a holy, pure, and reasonable oblation of gratitude, adoration, and obedience. At the foot of the cross, let us also with sorrow and shame sacrifice every guilty passion, every sensual and rebellious appetite; let them be buried for ever with the old man, but let us arise in holy faith to a life of righteousness, as the redeemed of his blood, as heirs of that life and immortality which he hath purchased for us. So" that when Christ who is our life shall we also may appear with him in glory."

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SERMON V.

1 CORINTHIANS XV. 12.

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection from the dead?

It might reasonably be expected, that the promulgation of an article of faith so novel in its nature, so strange in its effects, so tremendous in its consequences, as that of the resurrection of the dead, should encounter the resistance and opposition, which would naturally arise in the minds of those who were ill calcuated for the reception of any religious truth, much more of this, the most sublime and awful doctrine of the Christian dispensation.

The sophistry and the pride of man took the alarm, and marshalled themselves in array against the word and the power of God. The one, delighting ever, rather in the detection of error, than in the possession of truth, could not but employ itself in raising objections, which unas

sisted and alone, it could never resolve; the other, could but ill support the entrance of a doctrine, to whose origin human reason could not interpose the slightest claim.

In proof of this assertion, let us for a moment turn our eyes from that opulent and luxurious city, to whose converted inhabitants the words of my text are directed, and behold the great Apostle in a nobler scene, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, addressing himself no longer to the obstinacy of Jewish prejudice, or the ignorance of Asiatic superstition, but to the pride of Athenian literature, to the power of Greek philosophy. Within the walls of that ancient and illustrious city, were assembled those who gave law to the moral and intellectual world; within her schools were concentrated the rich stores of information gathered from every age and country. She was still the emporium of science; the Academy still flourished, and in her groves philosophy still maintained her ancient sway, It t was to this city, it was to the disciples and followers of those great masters of human reason, whose writings have challenged the admiration of every age, and are themselves, if duly weighed, considered, and studied, both in their excellencies and defects, the very avenue and portico to Christianity; it was to them that the great Apostle proclaimed aloud, the resur

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rection of the dead. The partial light displayed by the greatest luminaries of human reason, had neither itself dispelled the powers of darkness in their minds, nor taught them to look up with confidence to that heavenly light, which now burst in upon them in full lustre. When they heard of the resurrection of the dead," somě mocked, and others said, we will hear thee again of this matter." The intellectual indolence of the Epicurean fled with precipitation from a thought so fatal to his voluptuous ease. The stern dogmatism of the Stoic rejected with scorn what he never did, and therefore never would, believe. The Academy perhaps would freely have heard him again of that matter, but it would have heard him only to have indulged the love of idle disputation, and to have repeated a system of sophistical objections.

It will not be unimportant to consider on what principles their objections were founded, and on what part of the Christian scheme of a general resurrection they fixed as incredible and absurd. Was it on the expectation of a future life-was it on the hopes of immortality? In every age, and under every system, the wisest of the heathens discovered that there were grounds for an expectation beyond the grave. For life and immortality, Nature pants with groans unutterable. She sees all her children mingled with the

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dust; but by the power of unassisted reason she sees also, that there is in the composition of man an invisible and an immaterial principle, over which the grave can have no power, and corruption no dominion. Farther, in every other work of the Almighty arm, she perceives the beauties of its whole, the harmony of its parts, the order of its system, the constancy of its curses. In the moral world, alone, she per ceives disorder and confusion. She sees with horror the dominion of triumphant vice; she views with dejection and pain the sorrows of afflicted virtue. Whither then can she flee from this scene of darkness and perplexity for refuge? On the hopes of another world she rests her expectation, as the comfort of her afflictions here on earth, and as a vindication of the just and equal administration of the universal and allruling Being. On this point then the doctrines of the Gospel, and the dictates of natural reason, stand or fall together. The superstition of the vulgar, the imagination of the poets, and the frauds of the priests, had indeed in every country so concealed this natural belief under the veil of mystical darkness, and so clothed it with mythological absurdity, as to call forth the strongest powers of the mind to separate the light from the darkness, and distinguish truth from absurdity. There were those, whose trans

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