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"tween a man and his neighbour; if ye

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oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, "and the widow, and shed not innocent "blood in this place, neither walk after "other Gods to your hurt; then will I "cause you to dwell in this place, in the "land that I gave to your fathers, for "ever and ever."

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DISCOURSE XXVII.

ON THE GOOD NAME OF THE DEAD.

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ECCLESIASTES, vii. 1.

"A good name is better than precious oint"ment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth."

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THERE

HERE seems, my brethren, at first view, to be something very extraordinary in the latter part of this assertion of the wise man. The day of the birth of man has, at all times, been esteemed a day of rejoicing. It is the day on which the

Preached on July 2, 1815, the second Sunday after the Battle of Waterloo.

wishes of parents are accomplished, and when the mother "remembereth no more "her anguish, for joy that a man is born "into the world." It is a day on which innumerable hopes are formed, that carry forward the imagination into many pleasing anticipations of the future,hopes, which are only clung to with the greater eagerness, from the feeling of their precariousness and uncertainty.

The day of death, on the other hand, is, we all know, a day of lamentation and mourning. When the buds of infancy are blighted, the tears of parents fall over the failure of all their hopes ;when the strength or beauty of maturer years is cut down, how many heartrending sorrows are awakened and widely diffused ;-and even when the hoary head descends to the grave, covered with honour, and in the serenity of its setting radiance, how painful to part with that

cheerful affection which had so long smoothed, or that experienced wisdom which had guided through the perplexed paths of human existence!

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These, my brethren, are the feelings of nature, and her voice is ever sacred! Yet there is a greater voice, which springs from the meditations of wisdom and religion, there is a light of glory which

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surrounds the grave, that last retreat of mortal man is not left in the obscurity of its native horrors, and even amidst the and afflictions of suffering nature itself, there is a triumph and a consolation which may be heard!

pangs

"The day of death," says the wise man, “is better than the day of one's "birth." In the first and simplest view of this assertion, death may be considered as the termination of all the trials and conflicts of human nature. It is the hour of calm after the storm-the day of peace

after the tumult of the battle. If, in the silent" valley of the shadow of death," the joys and hopes of man are not to be found, neither are his anxieties and cares, -the pulse of passion has there ceased to beat, and all the sorrows that distract, and the disorders that lay waste his soul, are hushed in an eternal repose. "There "the wicked cease from troubling, and "there the weary be at rest."

There is, in this view of the tranquillity of the grave, something which is conWe love, genial to every gentle mind. in the hours of thought, to retire from the tumultuous gaiety of the world, or from its scenes of horror and sorrow, and to meditate amid the quiet mansions of mortality; and while the evening sun shines upon the turf that covers them, to feel the conflicts of our own bosoms gradually subside into the calm of nature, and of the tomb! When we think of the

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