ond self, to divide your sorrows and double your joys; and with tender and faithful assiduity to promote your interest and comfort. But God, by removing this prop, is teaching you, in the most forcible manner, what a weak support, what a poor helper, what a feeble, short lived friend this is on which you have so fondly leaned ! Others of you have lost a parent, who was the guide, the counsellor, the guardian, of your younger years! but death is now teaching you the insufficiency of such a guide and patron, who has left you in the midst of your journey, through this dark and perilous wilderness. Others have lost a beloved brother; and God, by this dispensation, is teaching you, that the ties and sweets of natural brotherhood and friendship are a very scanty, precarious foundation on which to build solid, permanent happiness. Thus the deaths of any near and much loved friends proclaim, with a very loud and affecting voice, the vanity of all created comforts, and warn us in the language of the poet,

Beware what earth calls happiness: beware

All joys, but those that never can expire.

Lean not on earth; 'twill pierce thee to the heart;
A broken reed at best; but oft a spear;

On its sharp point peace bleeds, and hope expires.

II. The death of our friends is calculated to lead, yea, drive us to a more immediate and constant dependence on God. The stream is dried up in order to force us back to the fountain. These twinkling stars set in darkness, in order to make us prize and seek the beams of the Sun of righteousness. These earthly idols are turned out of our hearts, to make room for the King of glory, the sovereign beauty and good, to enter and fill them. While our friends were alive and flourishing around us, we were apt to trust in and live upon them;

to rest as it were our whole weight upon them; to make them our refuge and high tower, our sun and our shield. But when death comes and beats down this tower, and breaks this shield to pieces, and turns this feeble sun into darkness, then we feel a kind of necessity of looking out for some better refuge; of looking and flying to God, as our sun and our shield; then the attentive and pious mind will eagerly repair to the Bible, the fountain of divine consolations, which flow in that blessed volume, and will feel a new, a seasonable relief, and delight in surveying those kind, condescending characters and relations, which God and his Son have there assumed, for the comfort of his people in all their various distresses.

For instance; when we lose an earthly parent, with what pleasure will the thoughtful and serious mind, in such a circumstance, read, and, as it were, cling to these words of the psalmist; "When my father or my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." Or when the Christian loses the dear companion of his life, with what eagerness and satisfaction does he fly into the arms of Jesus, as a bosom friend, a husband, a companion, who can never fail him! And in the loss of a natural brother, what pleasure is there in the thought, that Jesus Christ is become the natural, sympathizing brother of man, by partaking in our nature and sorrows, and offers to become our spiritual brother by regenerating and adopting grace! In short, the loss of any dear, earthly connexion, is powerfully adapted, as a mean to make us prize, and seek, and secure, a spiritual, indissoluble connexion with the infinite God and his divine Son, in whom we may regain, to unspeakable advantage, the endearments and sweets of all those relations and ties of love, which death has broken, or can dissolve.

III. The removal of dear friends calls to an important trial of our love to God, and submission to his sovereignty. When God tears from our arms and our hearts some favourite creature, he hereby practically puts the same question to us, which Christ did to Peter; "Lovest thou me? lovest thou me more than these crea. ture delights? Art thou willing to resign them at my call? Thou hast called me thy Lord and Sovereign; I am now come to bring thy sincerity to the test. Art thou willing I should be sovereign in this instance? Canst thou give up thy dearest comforts to me-to my absolute disposal? I gave up my Son to death for thee; and hast thou any thing so near and dear to thee, as my Son was to me?"

And now, ye bereaved mourners, what answer do your hearts give to these divine questions? Do you find, upon trial, that you really love God and his will above all things, so that you can surrender any thing when his pleasure and glory demand it? If so, what a comfortable, what a glorious example is hereby exhibited of your gracious sincerity! an example which at once greatly honours God, edifies and strengthens good men, presents matter of conviction to the wicked as well, as affords great satisfaction and benefit to yourselves. There is no frame of mind so sweet and so reasonable, as a cheerful and entire acquiescence in the will of God. And this salutary lesson is to be chiefly learned in the school of affliction. And perhaps no kind of affliction is better fitted to teach it, than this. In many other calamities there is such a mixture of human interposition, that we are ready to imagine we may be allowed to complain, and to chide a little; and, while we feel a mixture of indignation against the instrument, we are apt to forget the great First Cause and Disposer of our trials. But

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here it is so evidently his hand, that we must refer it to him; and it will appear daring impiety to quarrel at. what is done. In other instances, we can at least flatter ourselves with hope, that the calamity may be diverted, or the enjoyment recovered: but here, alas! there is no such hope; for the last fatal stroke is irrecoverably given; so that opposition is vain; and a forced submission gives but little rest to the mind: a cordial acquiescence in the divine will is the only thing in the whole world, that can ease the struggling heart, and restore it to true peace. Remaining corruptions will work in the best Christians on so trying an occasion. This will lead them to an attentive review of the great reasons for submission. It will lead them to press these arguments on their own souls, and to plead them with God in prayer; till at length the storm is laid; and tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience a hope, which maketh not ashamed, while the love of God is so shed abroad in the heart, as to humble it for every preceding opposition, and to bring it to an entire and delightful approbation of all that so wise and gracious a Father has done; giving up every temporal interest and enjoyment to his disposal, and sitting down with the sweet resolution of the prophet,-"Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." When we are brought to this, the whole horizon clears at once, and the sun breaks forth in its strength.

IV. The deaths of beloved relatives are dispensations excellently adapted to lead us into a deeper knowledge of what is amiss in our hearts. They, as it were, sift our carnal and perverse hearts to the bottom, and bring

up to our view a great deal of lurking pride, selfishness, idolatrous affection to creatures, and rebellious opposition to the Creator. These evil dispositions, perhaps, lay quite out of sight, and in a great measure dormant, so long, as God smiled upon us, and gratified our ardent desires with a constant series of temporal comforts. But, when he reverses the scene, and crosses these fond inclinations; then our pride and selfishness begin to swell, and burst into impatient and murmuring sentiments against him. Then our extreme reluctance to parting with creature comforts at God's command, and the long and excessive sorrow, which attends the parting stroke, too plainly shows, that we insensibly idolized these comforts, that we placed the creature in the room of the Creator, and that we are ready to quarrel with God for disturbing us in our sinful idolatry. Thus the school of bereavement teaches us more and more of the depths of wickedness in the human heart, and our pressing need of supernatural grace to rectify these disor ders; and thus tends to promote a spirit of deep humility, earnest prayerfulness, godly self-jealousy, and convigilance.

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V. The death of friends operates for our profit, when it awakens us to a solemn and tender recollection of our conduct toward them, whether it has been in all respects right or not; and when it quickens us in our duty to surviving relatives. While they alive and present with us, our neglect of duty toward them does not so soon strike our consciences. But when the stroke of death divides them from us in this world forever, we are ready then to bethink ourselves, whether we have fully performed our duty to them. "Did I always render that filial affection, that submissive tenderness to my departed parent, which became a child? Did I pay due honour and obedience to parental instructions, counsels,