sible world, and all the enticing objects of flesh and sense, there shall be no more hazard of your salvation, no more doubting and distressing fears about your interest in your Father's love, or in the salvation of his beloved Son.

There is no more time nor place for sin to inhabit in you the lease of its habitation in your mortal body must end, when the body itself falls into the dust; you shall feel no more of its powerful and defiling operations either in heart or life for ever.

The time of conflict with your spiritual adversaries is no longer. There is no more warfare betwixt the flesh and spirit, no more combat with the world and the devil, who, by a thousand ways, have attempted to deceive you, and to bear you off from your heavenly hope. Your warfare is accomplished, your victory is complete, you are made over. comers through him that has loved you. Death is the last enemy to be overcome; the sting of it is already taken away, and you have now finished the conquest, and are assured of the crown. 1 Cor. xv. 56, 57.

The time of your distance and absence from God is no more: the time of coldness and indifference; and the fearful danger of backslidings, is no more: you shall be made as pillars in the temple of your God, and shall go no more out: he shall love you like a God, and kindle the flames of your love to so intense a degree, as is only known to angels and to the spirits of the just made perfect.

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 teasing 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 labors and sufferings is no more. Rev. xiv 13. "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for they rest from all their labors”

that carry toil or fatigue with them: there shall be no more complaints nor groans, no sorrow 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 their 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 vanished, 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. Blessed 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 no period. Those felicities must be everlasting, for duration has no limit there, time, with all its measures, shall be no more.

Amen.

DEDICATION.

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 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 shows 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 favor 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 your. self, 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 hath 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 practice, 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

Ir 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