our Father's house, no longer exposed to the inconveniences which, so long as we abide abroad in these tents, we are subject to; and let us not forfeit all this happiness for want of a little more patience. Only let us hold out to the end, and we shall receive an abundant recompense for all the trouble and uneasiness of our passage, which shall be endless rest and peace.

Let this especially fortify us against the fear of death: it is now disarmed, and can do us no hurt. It divides us, indeed, from this body awhile, but it is only that we may receive it again more glorious. As God, therefore, said once to Jacob, 'Fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will go down with thee, and will surely bring thee up again;' so I may say to all who are born of God, Fear not to go down into the grave; lay down your heads in the dust, for God will certainly bring you up again, and that in a much more glorious manner; only be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, and then let death prevail over and pull down this house of clay, since God hath undertaken to rear it up again, infinitely more beautiful, strong, and useful.

SERMON XIII.

CHRIST'S COMING TO JUDGMENT.

BY BISHOP HORSLEY.

[SAMUEL HORSLEY was born in 1733. He was made Bishop of St. David's in 1788; was translated to St. Asaph in 1802; and died in 1806.]

SERMON XIII.

JAMES, V. 8.

For the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.

TIME was, when I know not what mystical meanings were drawn, by a certain cabalistic alchymy, from the simplest expressions of Holy Writ,-from expressions in which no allusion could reasonably be supposed to any thing beyond the particular occasion upon which they were introduced. While this frenzy raged among the learned, visionary lessons of divinity were often derived, not only from detached texts of Scripture, but from single words, -not from words only, but from letters-from the place, the shape, the posture of a letter: and the blunders of transcribers, as they have since proved to be, have been the groundwork of many a finespun meditation.

It is the weakness of human nature, in every instance of folly, to run from one extreme to its opposite. In later ages, since we have seen the futility of those mystic expositions in which the school of Origen so much delighted, we have been too apt to fall into the contrary error; and the