children of men: Religion is lost, and God forgotten in the world; and yet, out of this wretched world, Christ has provided inhabitants for heaven, where nothing can enter that defileth.' Look into your own hearts, ye sinners, see what a hell lies there; and ye converts of the grace of Christ, look into your hearts too, and see how many of the seeds. of wickedness still lie hid there; how much corruption, and how little holiness; look inward, and wonder that Christ should ever fit you for heaven, by by his converting and his sanctifying grace.

Look round the world again, and survey the miseries of this earth; as many calamities as there are creatures, and perhaps ten times more: Who is there on earth without his sorrows? And sometimes a multitude of them meet in one single sufferer: See how toil, and weariness, and disappointment, poverty and sickness, pain, and anguish, and vexation, are distributed through this world, that lies on the borders of hell; see all this, and wonder at the grace of Christ, that has taken a colony out of this miserable world, and made a heaven of it.

We shall, many of us, be a wonder to each other as well as to ourselves, and we shall all review and admire the grace of Christ in and towards us all. Among the rest, there are two sorts of Christians whose salvation shall be a special matter of wonder, and these are the melancholy and the uncharitable. The melancholy Christian shall wonder that ever such a sinner as himself was brought to heaven; and the uncharitable shall wonder how such a sinner as his

neighbour came there.

The poor doubting melancholy soul, who was full of fears lest he should be condemned, shall then have full assurance that he is elected and redeemed, pardoned and saved, when he sees, hears and feels, the salvation and the glory upon him, within him, and all around him, and he shall admire and adore the grace of God his Saviour. The narrow-souled Christian, who said his neighbour would be damned for want of some party notions, or for some lesser failings, shall confess his uncharitable mistake, and shall wonder at the abounding mercy of Christ, which has pardoned those errors in his neighbour, for which he had excommunicated and condemned him. Both these Christians in that day, I mean, the timorous and the censorious, shall stand at his right-hand, as monuments of his surprising grace, who forgave one the defects of his faith, and the other his want of love; and their souls and their tongues shall join together to rejoice in the Lord, and their spirits shall magnify their God and Redeemer: Christ shall have his due revenue of glory from both, in the hour of their public salvation.

O what honour shall it add to the overflowing mercy of Christ, what joy and wonder to all the saints, to see Paul the persecutor and blasphemer there, and Peter who denied the Lord that bought him, and Mary Magdalene that impure sinner! See what a foul and shameful catalogue, what children of iniquity are at last made heirs and possessors of heaven. Cor. vi. 9, 10, 11. The fornicators and idolaters, the thieves and the covetous, the drunkards, the re

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vilers, and the extortioners. Such they were in the days of ignorance and heathenism, fit fuel for the fire of hell; and in those circumstances they are utterly excluded from the kingdom of God,' but now they find a place in that blessed assembly; and the converting grace of Christ is admired and glorified, that could turn such sinners into saints. O surprising scene of rich salvation, when these Corinthian converts, washed in the blood of Christ, and renewed by his spirit, shall appear in their white garments of holiness and glory! There is not one sinful creature to be found in all the vast retinue of the holy Jesus. But there are thousands who have been once great criminals, notorious sinners, and have been snatched by the the arm of divine love, as brands out of the burning.' What an affecting sight will it be, when we shall behold all the members of Christ united to their Head, and complete in glory; and see at the same time, a world of vile sinners doomed to destruction! With what adoration and wonder shall we cry out," and such were some of these happy ones, but they are sanctified, but they are justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the spirit of our God," ver. 11. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to' God our Saviour be eternal honour. In the seventh place, There is another glory and wonder added to to this illustrious scene, and gives honour to our blessed Saviour, and that is, that so many vigorous, beautiful, and immortal bodies, should be raised at once out of the dust, with all their old infirmities left behind them:' Not one ach or

pain, not one weakness or disease, among all the glorified millions: As the Israelites came out of their bondage in Egypt, so shall the army of saints from the prison of the grave, "and not one feeble among them." Psal. cv. 37. This is the work of Christ the Creator and the Healer.

Here I might run many sorrowful divisions, and travel over the large and thorny field of sickness and pains that attend human nature, those inborn mischiefs that vex poor Christians in this state of trial and suffering: But these were all buried when the body went to the grave, and they are buried for ever; he that has the keys of death, shall let the bodies of his saints out of prison; but no gout nor stone, no infirmity nor distemper, no head-ach nor heart-ach, shall ever attend them. The body was sown in weakness, but it is raised in power;' it was 'sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory,' through the power of the second Adam, and his quickening spirit. 1 Cor. xv. 43, 45. Rom. viii. 11.

Then shall Christ appear to be Sovereign and Lord · of death, when such an endless multitude of old and new captives are released at his word, and the grave has restored its prey; when those bodies which have been turned into dust some thousands of years, and their atoms scattered abroad by the winds of heaven, shall be raised again in glory and dignity, to meet their descending Lord in the air. Surely Jesus in that day shall be acknowledged as a Sovereign of nature, when, at the word of his command, a new creation shall arise, all perfect and immortal.

It will add yet further glory to Christ, when we remember what fruitful seeds of iniquity were lodged in that flesh and blood, which we wore on earth, and which we laid down in the tomb; and when, at the same time, we survey our glorified bodies, how spiritual, how holy, how happily fitted for the service of glorified souls made perfect in holiness. How did all the saints once complain of a 'law in their members, that warred against the law of their minds, and brought them into bondage to the law of sin?' But this law of sin' is now for ever abolished, this 'bondage' dissolved and broken, and these 'members' are all newcreated, for instruments' of 'righteousness' to serve God in his temple, for ever and ever. Holy Paul shall no more groan in a sinful tabernacle,' he shall no more complain of that flesh wherein no good thing dwelt,' he shall cry out no more, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?"

Many and bitter have been the sorrows of a holy soul in this world, because of the perverse dispositions of animal nature and the flesh: But none of the saints in that assembly shall ever feel again the stings of inward envy, the pricking thorns of peevishness, nor the wild ferments of wrath and passion: None of them shall ever find those unruly appetites' which wrought so strongly in their old flesh and blood, and too often overpowered their unwilling souls, those appetites which brought their consciences sometimes under fresh guilt, and filled them with inward reproaches, and agonies of spirit. These evil principles are all destroyed by death, they are lost in the