of God, let us reflect that the pains which rend the body, and the sorrows which tear and agonize the heart, are not the result of chance, but the ordainment of eternal mercy; and while we suffer under this impression, adversity will change its aspect. We shall recognize a father's hand in every visitation of calamity; and see an angel present in the troubled waters of the soul, whose gracious province it is to soften and to purify the heart which he will never needlessly afflict. Are you tempted then, My Brethren, to the transgression of Gospel law and the perpetration of some gross iniquity? Tremble, lest at that moment your good angel should desert you. Tremble, lest, while you incur the guilt of violated vows and of a broken covenant, the ministering spirit, which God lent to do you service, should become at the bar of heaven the witness against your wickedness. Tremble, lest at the flight of him who was the guardian of your virtue, and the strengthener of your infirmity, you should be left naked to the wiles of his and your great adversary, whom the Scriptures justly characterize as "going about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour."

Think not, My Christian Friends, that I have been this day entertaining you with my own vague conjectures upon a mystery which passes our understanding, and which it is therefore idle to discuss. I do not think there is a pas

sage in Scripture less involved in mystery than the one of which we are treating. The existence, the nature, the office of angels is affirmed and explained, in a hundred texts of both the Old and the New Testament. Their relative situation to man is also sufficiently illustrated. "Thou madest him lower than the angels to crown him with glory and honour." But that which stamps an especial value upon the text is the confirmation which it affords to the doctrine of a special as well as of a general providence, a providence which, whether acting by the all-seeing eye of Omnipotence, or by the angels and ministers of grace which he employs, supervises every action of every created being, and, while it withers with its frown the designs and machinations of the wicked, sheds the light and halo of its smile upon the religious and the good. May the knowledge of this interesting truth produce in you the blessed results of true religion and virtue. May you never be insensible to the vigilant and corrective hand of Heaven; and may you in another world enjoy the fruits of his protection while on earth, and mingle with the "saints and seraphim, who cast their crowns before the throne, and in ceaseless adoration, hail the holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come!"

SERMON Xx.

ON THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS.

JOHN XI. 43, 44.

And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth; And he that was dead came forth.

THE scene, My Brethren, which terminated in this stupendous miracle, is one of the most touching and pathetic that the hand of history has recorded. It contains one of the most endearing incidents in the mortal pilgrimage of our Saviour, and discovers in an especial manner his sympathy in the sufferings of our nature, and his preter-human power to mitigate and heal them.

In one of the verses that precede the text, there are two simple words which almost do more to attach the heart of feeling to our Saviour, than even the active and miraculous benevolence which followed them. Before, in this almighty act, he gave his disciples a manifestation of his divinity, "Jesus wept," to display in his

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condolence his kindred sensibility to mankind. He shewed them in this gracious sympathy, that he was indeed the Son of Man, and then convinced them that as the Son of God, he was most emphatically, "the resurrection and the life."

The event for which our blessed Saviour is here described as weeping, was the death of a human being whom he had known and loved, and whose family were evidently dear to him. To lament and sorrow over irremediable evils, may perhaps be called the weakness of humanity; but it is a weakness frequently of so sweet and amiable an aspect, that we are glad to find it one in which the most pure and faultless character himself participated.

The sorrow and vexation of spirit which arise from so just a cause as the loss of friends whom the ties of blood, of habit, and of kindred virtues, have endeared to us, are not barely innocent, but, in this mortal state, are commendable. They argue the possession of that pity and kindness of heart, which are among the purest feelings of humanity; they redeem our character from the imputation of total and most disgusting selfishness; they purify the heart which they afflict, and render it more soft and grateful and devout to God.

We presume it was on this account that our Saviour would neither rebuke nor check the

grief of the sisters of Lazarus; on the contrary, he mingled his tears with theirs. He taught them, and, through them, the remotest posterity of the world's inhabitants, that lamentation for the dead did well become the living; that sympathy with the calamities that befall the good, was not only justifiable but praiseworthy; and that the Son of God and man commiserated with tears of human tenderness the sufferings of that depraved and deteriorated race, whom his own impending agonies could alone restore. But passive feeling was not the characteristic of our Saviour's charity, nor did he content himself with pitying the woes which he could cure. The whole of his short existence in the world was spent in acts of mercy and benevolence, of which the brief relation that has been transmitted to us contains but an inconsiderable part. To afford sight to the blind; strength to the impotent; speech to the dumb; information to the ignorant; and even life to the dead, was his divine occupation; and the resurrection of the buried Lazarus, by his all-compelling word, was only one of a series of miracles which proclaimed no less the benevolence, than the omnipotence, of the incarnate God.

But, My Brethren, it was not exclusively for the sake of Lazarus or of his surviving mourners, that Jesus wept." He wept to behold the melancholy condition to which the evil ascens