in the present discourse to explain and to apply to the case of the illustrious personage, whose departure from this transitory scene is, we would hope, but his entrance upon an eternal state of unfading honour and bliss.

And first, There is a figurative sense in which a man may come to his grave in a full age.

Life is not to be measured by the few or the many fleeting hours which may happen to compose the term of our mortal exist ence, but by the use to which it is applied; and that young person who shall have given the morning of his days to God, and whose "sun may have gone down at noon day," shall have lived longer than another who may have arrived at the longest age of man without attending to the concerns of his soul, That was not a mere fanciful distinction preserved on the ancient epitaph of a great man, which reported him to have died at an advanced old age, yet to have lived only the period of infancy. Ac cordingly that man may be said to have arrived at a full age, without reference to actual duration, who shall have rightly conceived, and rightly followed the grand object and end of his present being.

1st, He must rightly have conceived the object of his present being. If we take our opinions of life from the world, we should say that its object was to derive the greatest possible enjoyment from this short inch of our existence; but if we derive them from the infallible word of God, the true object of life is to prepare for eternity. A mistake then at this stage must be fatal, since it is clear that we cannot arrive at a fixed point by a road which runs in a contrary direction; and that men, the heirs of immortality, who shall live exclusively or chiefly for the objects of time, can no more answer the purposes of their being than a plant of Eden suddenly transferred from its original seat could flourish in a soil CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 219.

which bears upon it the curse of bar renness. That man, therefore, can never arrive at the maturity, properly so called, of his being, who proposes to himself any inferior aim; who either spends his labour for nought, or does not rise to the level of his immortal hopes and prospects. If he is not actually to be compared to those tares which are fit only for burning, he is like corn blasted with mildew, stopt in its growth, and incapable of yielding seed to the sower, or bread to the reaper. Very different, however, is the case of the man who sees life in its true colours, and considers it as a season of probation, and a day of grace in which to secure the salvation of his soul. He will view himself as a fallen creature, exposed to the displeasure of God, and deriving from the first Adam a corrupt and sinful nature. He will perceive that the image of God, lost at the fall, must be regained ere man can be again admitted, as he once was in a state of innocence, to the beatific and heavenly vision. He will see that now is the time for mercy, and that now a remedy can be found in the blood of Christ from sin, that worst of all human evils; and that, as now is the day of salvation on the part of God, so it is the season for exertion on the part of man, the period in which he must become reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, and believe, and watch, and labour, and pray for his immortal welfare. With such a sober view of the true objects of life he will be little liable to be dazzled by its flattering splendours, to be attracted by its fading honours, to be overcome by its empty pleasures, or cheated by its lying vanities. From viewing the world and its votary as equally doomed to perish, he is not likely to cast in his lot or his fortunes with them; but having seen things by the light of God's word, and the clear shining of his Spirit, in their real dimensions, and conceived rightly of God as the Author of all our mer

X

cies; of himself as a dependant and sinful being, of Christ as his Saviour, and the Holy Ghost as his Comforter and Sanctifier; what can he do less than transfer these conceptions as ruling principles into his life, and go on to perfection; and from conceiving, proceed to pursue rightly the things which be long to his eternal peace?

2. The man then who comes to a full age pursues rightly, in the second place, the grand object of life. Inferior objects must necessarily engage, but they do not engross his attention; animal life must call for sustenance and support; but his true life is not that of sense but that of faith, and is "hid with Christ in God." This unites him to his heavenly Father, and proves at the same time the ground of his justification, and the animating and unceasing principle of a holy and spiritual course. Here he lives indeed, because he lives under the sunshine of that favour which is better than life, and in the exercise of those dispositions which are to be perpetuated eternally, though in some new and appropriate forms, in the world of spirits. He then truly lives, because delivered from the depressing weight of worldly cares, and set free from the entanglements of sin, and from either extreme of passion or indolence, his spirit is at liberty to seek and to find its proper rest in God; the animal is subdued to the spiritual nature; and while still confined in person within the range of this lower world, and chained down to its necessary occupations, his best affections yet speed their flight to holier and happier regions. It is no longer he that lives, but Christ that lives in him, and the life that he lives in the flesh, he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who gave himself for him. The seed of a progressive sanctification having been planted in his soul, a fruitful and ripened harvest has sprung up from it: it has appeared first in the blade, then in the ear; and at

whatever time death may have been commissioned to put in his sickle, he has found "the full corn in the ear." The believer has arrived at his full age; because, whatever be the term of his natural life, he has outstept in his feelings the boundaries which separate time from eternity, and is ripened into a meetness for the glorious and heavenly state. At whatever time his Lord shall come (and he cannot come unseasonably), he shall find him with his loins girded, his lamp burning, and himself like a servant waiting for his Lord. He has arrived at his full age; for "blessed,” adds the Saviour," is that servant whom his lord when be cometh shall find watching."

Now

Such being the figurative and most important sense in which a man may be said to come to his grave in a full age, I proceed now to notice shortly, a literal sense in which this expression may receive its accomplishment. this takes place, when the dispositions which imply the true life of the soul, its death unto sin, and its new birth unto righteousness, are exhibited through a lengthened term of years; and the natural life prolonged to a good old age becomes more nearly the measure of the spiritual; when these two flow on in graceful union together, and the promise of the Old Testament appears in the later stages of their progress, to have received its fulfilment: "With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.'

Such was the

case with Abraham, the father of the faithful; who, having long sqjourned in a strange land, died in a good old age and full of years, in faith of that heavenly inheritance, of which the earthly Canaan was but a type and pledge. Such was the case with Jacob, who, preserved through the perils of a long life, and actually engaged in pronouncing a blessing upon his sons, exclaimed, "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord." Such were Joshua and Hezekiah among the Old-Testament saints;

and such was good old Simeon, who though he had watched for the Consolation of Israel, until his bodily eyesight was almost gone, was yet content to die as soon as he had been permitted to see the infant Messiah, and indeed prayed for his dismissal: "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." In these holy men the principle of life had reached its utmost limit; in both senses they had attained to a good old age, and descended as naturally into the grave, as the ripened fruit disengages itself by its own weight from the sustaining branch. And such is the promise of the text: "Thou shalt come to thy grave in a good old age, as a shock of corn cometh in in his season."

And now, to apply these remarks to the case of our late honoured and most beloved Monarch, between whom and the persons in question there may be traced several points of resemblance, and whose death may be considered rather as the burning out, than the forcible extinction of the taper-Judging of him by what he was in his moments of soundest reason and intelligence, I trust we are warranted in believing that he came to his full age in a spiritual, as well as natural sense, because, though a king, he never forgot his dependance upon God. It is not easy to dive into the interior of the human breast; but if a tree may be known by the fruits which it puts forth to view, we shall be able to trace, in the leading features, of a reign remarkable both for its dangers and its deliverances, a constant recognition of His power, through whom alone "kings reign and princes decree justice." Who was foremost in seasons of calamity to propose, and himself to practise, humiliation before Almighty God? Who, in the returns of national prosperity, was first to disclaim any share in producing it, and to ascribe all the glory to the Divine interposition? It was the king and father of his people. Many who witness

ed that august act of thanksgiving which followed upon his first restoration to health, have been swept away; and all who now remember it will, ere long, be numbered with the dead; but the act itself is engraved in the annals of the worldthat the first in rank and in obligation was the first to return thanks to his Supreme Benefactor. And truly, the sight of a monarch advancing with a firm and steady pace, at the head of a devoted people, for the purpose of returning thanks to God, is one which will be represented in unfading colours to the imagination of a Christian people to the end of time. Surely had he died upon the spot, when he reached the cathedral of the Protestant world, we might have followed him in faith and hope without presumption, from the thanksgivings of the church on earth, to those of the church triumphant in heaven.

But perhaps it was the improvement of this very affliction which led to his longer continuance amongst us. He did not despise the chastening of the Lord. He heard the rod, and Him who had appointed it. He saw and traced the finger of goodness and mercy in the stroke, and therefore was permitted to preside over his people through many years of trouble, and rebuke, and blasphemy, in which, but for the hold he possessed on their affections, and the energy of his government, the horrors of revolution had probably overwhelmed the goodly fabric of our constitution in church and state. In answer to our prayers, he was preserved to a good old age, and guided, though unconsciously, the vessel of the state in safety through the storm which assailed it. I would say then, in summing up the character of our late revered and never to be forgotten Sovereign, that as a king he was ever disposed to postpone all selfish feeling to the interests of his subjects; that he was, mild and tolerant in his principles,