whether ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do it to the glory of God. Endeavour to have your character as kings and priests, attaching to all your thoughts, words, and actions. Live as those who have been set apart to the divine employment of living near to God, and serving Him. For this you have been cleansed by the blood of Christ from all your sins, and anointed with His Holy Spirit. Therefore, maintain your character at all times, and in all places. As anointed priests dedicate to God your souls and bodies, your time, and talents, and gains. Serve Him in all your relations, and in all conditions; serve Him in your closets; serve Him in your families; serve Him in your callings; serve Him in your recreations; serve Him in prosperity and adversity; serve Him with your one talent, or with your ten; serve Him in the church, and serve Him in the world; serve Him in the midst of His friends, and serve Him in the midst of His enemies; serve Him day and night; serve Him in health and in sickness; serve Him with your joys and with your sorrows; serve Him in life and in death. Cause your light continually to shine before men. Let the holy fire of love be ever kept alive and burning within your hearts. Let holiness to the Lord be engraven on all the thoughts, imaginations, and desires of your hearts, on your habitual conversation, and daily and hourly conduct. Let all the members of your body, and all the powers of your mind, as instruments of righteousness, be consecrated to His services. And thus, by a life spent in continual acts and exercises of piety, prepare for passing through the gates into the celestial city, there to serve God day and night in His temple for ever. Such as are not thus living as kings and priests to God, are slaves of sin and servants of Satan. They worship and serve the creature more than the Creator. They employ their time and talents, their energies, resources, and influence, in ministering to the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. And continuing so, they can have no share in the services of the heavenly temple, and no standing within its precincts. JACOB'S DYING CHARGE: A SERMON. BY WILLIAM BRUCE, D.D., INFIRMARY STREET CHURCH, EDINBURGH. "And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying-place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife ; and there I buried Leah. The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people."-GEN. xlix. 29-33. THERE ended the long and eventful life of the patriarch Jacob. He had schemed to obtain the birthright and blessing of his brother. He had borne the burden of toil and privation, through day-drought and night-frost, in the service of his uncle Laban in Padan-aram, meeting difficulties with resolution, and opposing craft to craft, that he might secure wealth and his union to his cousin Rachel. He had returned into Canaan, hoping to enjoy the comforts and luxuries of a prosperous condition, but only to find his latter days clouded by the jealousies and quarrels of his children. All these, however, were over now; and he was also leaving the honour and happiness experienced in Egypt, where the high rank and influence of his son Joseph had guarded and gladdened his declining years. How many vicissitudes he had survived! How many obstacles he had surmounted! How much of earthly good had been gained by him!—the father of a numerous family, the owner of large substance, a companion of nobles and princes, a man of repute and influence, not only among his own people, but among strangers! What, think you, was his estimate of it all, when he charged his sons to bury him in the cave of Machpelah ? There ended also the religious privileges and exercises which had mingled with the current of his temporal labours and fortunes; such visions as that which brightened his solitary unsheltered slumbers at the gate of Luz; such promises as that which pledged the God of Abraham and Isaac to be his guardian; such prayers as that which won for him, in the night-wrestling at Jabbok, his new and princely name of Israel; such thankofferings as that which he laid on the altar of commemoration, in the place which he called Bethel. But it was not the end of such things, as it was the end of all his worldly wealth and dignities. The latter terminated in the sense of ceasing for ever to have any special value in his eyes; they became to him as if they had never been, as if schemes, and labours, and trials, and prosperings were the phantasms of a dream from which he was now awaking. But his religious experiences here ended, in the sense of being transformed and gloriously consummated, as the flower ends in the fruit, or the foreshadow in the antitype. No more visions of descending angels for him, who was about to join the multitude in the heavenly mansions; no more promises of Jehovah's blessing, because all that could be promised was on the point of being realised; no more prayers for defence in danger, because he was passing into the country where danger is never known; no more thank-offerings at earthly altars, because he was ready for the services of the upper Sanctuary. My friends, there is a vast difference between the earthly and the spiritual; and O, how impressively the death-bed teaches that the one is changeable, transient, and unsatisfying, that only the spiritual is trustworthy and everlasting! --- The dying words of the patriarch, recorded in the passage before us, are chiefly important as indicating his peace and faith in that hour. But we may first contemplate them shortly as an expression of natural feeling. A natural feeling it is, a strong instinctive impulse of our humanity, this concern about the body, this concern about it to the last, this desire that, when the spirit has fled, it should not be neglected, should not be thrown carelessly into the ground anywhere, but should receive a respectful interment where its mouldering remains may mingle with the dust of our nearest relatives. The soul, indeed, is the better part, the nobler element of our being, the seat of those rational and moral faculties which so unspeakably transcend in value the most curious and beautiful mechanisms. It can exist apart, can retain its consciousness, can exert its energy, can know, and love, and be happy, when its earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved. But the body is its companion here, as one brought up with it, as one affectionately cherished by it; and we cling fondly to the hope that surviving friends will manifest some reverence and attachment to the stricken frame in which we once moved among them, and looked upon them, and talked with them. We feel also, that, if there be one place in which our ashes may most fitly rest, it is the place which has already received into its silent chambers the remains of those who have been bound to us by the closest ties of kindred-whose fellowship we have loved, or whose memory we have venerated. "Bury me with my fathers," said the dying patriarch,—“ Bury me with my fathers, in the cave which is in the field of Machpelah before Mamre; there they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah." Who wonders that he uttered such a wish? Even if it had not been prompted by the holier principle to which we shall afterwards advert, might it not have found a sufficient spring and motive of its exercise in the natural impulses of human feeling? How instinctive the thought, that the dust in the family sepulchre has still some relationship to our material frame! How instinctive the desire, that our bodies and those of our beloved friends should take the long, still sleep together! Not less natural is the wish to be remembered-to be remembered in connection with those who have been so near to us in kindred and kindly fellowship. That our name shall be found among those of our household on the tombstone, that it shall be read along with theirs when the place is visited that it shall link our memory to their memory, in the thoughts of the generation that follows us :-this may be a humble ambition, but it has a deep root and free growth in our human sensibility. There may have been no pillar erected, no scroll graven, above the quiet resting-place of the patriarchs at Machpelah. But that spot would be memorable and hallowed to their posterity; and the thoughts of other generations, reverting to it, would dwell upon the characters and deeds of those whose bones had been laid in that unforgotten sepulchre. Did the dying man think of this? P -did he think of the pious Hebrew, in after years, leading his children to the place, and saying, "This is the tomb of the good and great ones, whose blood is in our veins, and whose virtues we must imitate; here they buried Abraham, and Sarah, his wife; here they buried Isaac, and Rebekah, his wife; here they buried also Jacob and Leah?" It was at least a natural wish, that there should be this additional link, binding his memory to the remembrance of his fathers. Such feelings, my friends, are not unlawful; but neither are they unprofitable. If they be kept in their own place, if they be cherished in subordination to higher principles, if they be not permitted to overgrow and stifle the desires and expectations of that which is spiritual, they are neither unbecoming nor useless. We are the better of feeling that the body is a part of man, an integral part of our personal identity, and not lost, or unworthy of care, even in its dissolution. We are the better of feeling that beyond death there is still some tie of kindred between our dust and the dust of our beloved relatives, as well as between our souls and their souls. We are the better of feeling the wish to be remembered after we are no more seen in the world,-to be remembered in association with those whom we esteem and reverence. That is no civilised land-no land of social attractions and advantages-in which there is no concern felt about funerals and sepulchres. That is no sound philosophy-no healthy training of the heart as well as the intellect—which would pity as sentimentalism, or stigmatise as superstition, the request of the patriarch to be laid beside his fathers. Yet, if these words had breathed only what natural feeling dictates, if they had not embodied some higher and holier sentiments, we could hardly have expected to find them so specially recorded in the book which is designed to raise us, above the things that are seen and temporal, into the hope of the heavenly, and into fellowship with the divine. The Word of God comes to make all things new in man; and if a few flowers, remnants and memorials of a better day, still linger in the weed-cumbered garden, these must have a new tone of life infused into them, that they may again display the beauty and breathe the fragrance of holiness. In their holier import, the words before us expressed the peace and faith of the dying patriarch. He had reached a great age; but he was still in full possession of his reason and consciousness. His language shows clearly |