it all misery; but Christ having borne the curse, has redeemed his people from it, Gal. iii. 13. And now he has taken as many as he pleases of the threatenings and terrors of the law into his own new covenant, the covenant of grace; and has sanctified their nature, and made them become blessings to the saint. He has turned the curse into a blessing, (Deut. xii. 5.) so that afflictions, and pains, and sorrows, and death itself, are no longer a curse to them, for they are ordained, by the wisdom and grace of Christ, to promote their interest.

Death, in its original design, was the under ser vant of God's avenging justice: it was the jailor to bring the soul out of the body before the divine tribunal, there to receive its condemnation to hell. It was the executioner both to torment and to destroy the flesh, and send the spirit into everlasting misery. But Christ having answered all the demands of this avenging justice, has also purchased the sovereignty over death; and though sometimes, when it seizes a saint, it may for the present signify his displeasure, as in 1 Cor. xi. 30. yet it always fulfils the designs of his love, and conveys them into his own delightful presence: therefore, as soon as we are absent from the body, we are said to be present with the Lord, 2 Cor. v. 8.; and when we depart from the flesh, it is to be with Christ, Phil. i. 23. Death was ordained at first to be a slave to satan; by the righteous ap pointment of God, both death and the devil are executioners of his wrath; and satan is said to have some power over death, Heb. ii. 14. But Christ, by dying, has subdued satan, spoiled him of his destroying weapons, has made void his authority, especially with regard to believers; he has taken death out of his power, and manages it himself: and thus he delivers them, who through fear of death were held in a long and painful bondage, ver. 15.

It is in such views as these that the apostle says to the Corinthian believers, "all things are yours,

hings present, and things to come, this world” in he joys or sorrows of it, "life and death, all are ours, and ye are Christ's," 1 Cor. iii, 22, 23. You have an interest and a share in the possessions and he power of Christ over all things, so far as may promote your happiness: Christ makes "all things even death itself) work together for the good" of is people, Rom. viii. 28. By death he puts an end o the body of sin, and frees the soul from all those uffling passions, those inquietudes of the blood, and lisorders of nature; those strong and perverse appeites that cost the christians so much toil to subdue, And brought him so often under guilt, darkness, and Borrow. By death he delivers the believer from the pains and infirmities of the body, the perpetual lanruishings of a weakly constitution, and the anguish of acute diseases. He constrains death to give the weary saint release from all the miseries of the present state, and to hide him from the fury of the op pressor. The grave is God's hiding-place from the torms and tumults of the world; "there the weary are at rest, and the wicked cease from troubling:" and instead of consigning us over to the full malice of the devil, death is made a means to convey us away from all his assaults, and translate us into that country where he has no power to enter. And when the soul is dismissed into the bosom of a reconciled God by the ministry of death, the body is put to rest in the grave; the grave, which is sanctified into a bed of rest for all the followers of Christ, since their Lord and Master has lain there.

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In the gospel of Christ, the name of death is altersed into sleep. Christ, who has subdued it, seems to have given it this new name, that it might not have a frightful sound in the ears of his beloved. Though it was sometimes called sleep in the Old Testament, yet that chiefly regarded the silence, and darkness, and inactivity of that state; whereas in the New Tes(XIV.)

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tament, and in the 12th of Daniel, it is called sleep, to denote that there is an awaking time. The an cient christians, upon this account, called the churchyard where they buried the dead, a sleeping place. And though the grave may be termed the prison of death, yet death is not lord of the prison; he can detain the captives there but during the pleasure of Christ, for he who is " alive for evermore, has the keys of death and hell," that is, " of the separate state," Rev. i. 18.

Now this is the true reason why christians have spoken so many kind things of death, which is the king of terrors to a natural man. They call it a release from pain and sin, a messenger of peace, the desired hour, and the happy moment. All this is spoken while they behold it, with an eye of faith, in the hands of Christ, who has subdued it to himself, and constrained it to serve the designs of his love to them.

3. When it has done all Christ's work, it shall be utterly destroyed. After the resurrection, there shall be no more dying. The saints shall rise immortal, and dwell in heaven for ever, in the complete enjoy ment of all that is included in the name of life. As the angel in prophecy lifts up his hand, and swears by him that lives for ever and ever, that “time shall be no longer." Rev. x. 6. so Christ Jesus, the Lord of angels, shall, as it were, pronounce with a sove reign voice, that "death shall be no more." He shall send the great archangel with the trumpet of God, it shall sound through the deepest caverns of the grave, and shall summon death from its inmost recesses. The tyrant shall hear and obey, and restore all his captives out of prison; "the dead shall bear the voice of the Son of God, and live," John v. 25, 28, 29. "They that have done good, to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, to the resurrection of damnation." After this our Lord

is no employment for death, his slave; the bodies men shall die no more; there shall be no more y state of separation between the flesh and spirit, ev. xx. 14. “And death and hell [or Hades] were ist into the lake of fire;" that is, there shall be no ore death, no grave, no separate state of souls, all ese shall be for ever destroyed.

1st Reflection. We may infer from this third geeral head, the great power and glory of our Lord esus Christ; we may learn the honor that is due to im from mortals; it is he that has subdued death, nd that by his own dying. A wondrous method of ictory! A surprising conquest! and he lives for ver to destroy it in his appointed time. How great nd honorable must he be in the eyes of all maniud, who has vanquished so universal a conqueror? How desirable is his person, and how delightful the ound of his name to every believer! For he supresses all their enemies, and shall destroy them even o the last. How well does he fulfil the great enagement? Hosea xiii. 14. "I will ransom them rom the power of the grave: I will redeem them From death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, will be thy destruction; repentance shall be hid rom mine eyes." Let us salute him "the Prince of ife," Acts iii. 15. and adore him under that characer. He dispossesses death of all its dominions. He pproves himself a complete Saviour of all his saints, And a Redeemer of his captive friends.

2d Reflection. We may learn also from this head of discourse, the power and excellency of the gospel of Christ, for it discovers to us how this great eneny is vanquished, and when it shall be destroyed; and thus it lays a foundation for courage at death, and gives us assurance of a joyful rising day. "Death being abolished by the mediation of Christ, immortality and life are brought to light by his gospel,' 2 Tim. i. 10. that is, there is a brighter discovery of

the future state, and of everlasting happiness, than ever before was given to the world.

Here, in the name of Christ, and of his gospel, we may give a challenge to all other religions, and say, which of them has borne up the spirit of man so high above the fears of death as this has done? or has given us so fair, so rational, and so divine an account how death has been overcome by one man, and how by faith in his name we may all be made overcomers ? How vain are the trifles with which the heathen priests and their prophets amused the credulous multitude? What silly and insipid fables do they tell us of souls passing over in a ferry boat to the other world, and describe the fields of pleasure, and the prisons of pain, in that country of ghosts and shadows, in so ridiculous a manner, that the wise men of their own nations despised the romance, and few were stupid enough to believe it all. If we consult the religion of their philosophers, they give us but a poor, lame, and miserable account of the state after death. Some of them denied it utterly, and others rave at random in mere conjectures, and float in endless uncertainties. The courage which. some of their heroes professed at the point of death, was rather a stubborn indolence, than a rational and wellfounded valor; and not many arrived at this hardi. ness of mind, except those that supposed their exist. ence ended with their life, and thought they should be dissolved into their first atoms. Aristotle, one of the greatest men amongst them, tells us, that "futurity is uncertain," and calls death the most terri ble of all terribles.

If we search into the religion of the Jews, which was a scheme of God's own contrivance and revelation to men, we find the affairs of a future world lay much in the dark; their consciences were not so thoroughly purged from the guilt of sin, but that some terrors hung about them, as appears from Heb. x. 1—3. and having so faint and obscure notices of