and justice, from all of which she is freed by her great, glorious, and dying Redeemer, not secretly, as a thing done in a corner," but before, and in the face of men, angels, and devils, for the Son of Man must be lifted up," and while in which state, he cries, "It is finished! It is finished!" and gave up the ghost.

This will lead us, my friend, to the great consideration of the Holy Ghost as one of the holy recorders and contractors of the heavenly covenant. God the Father liberates on the ground of the atonement of the Son, who, in the fulness of time, makes it to the full, so the Holy Spirit, in perfect harmony with the Father and the Son, unbinds, liberates, and frees the Church and "children of the Most High." And so essential is this liberation of the blessed Spirit, that nothing can be known either of the freedom of the Father or the Son without it; for by nature, through sin, every soul is shut up in darkness, death, and unbelief, and but for a timely and personal liberation, must perish for ever. Hence, then, is it the work of the blessed Spirit, to free the "captive exile, that he may not die in the pit;" in pursuance of which sovereign and gracious work, he frees from death, sin, curse, law, world, flesh, and devil-unties the hard knots that sin has made, and takes off the fetters of death and darkness, and liberates the prisoner. But this, beloved, great as it is, is but a part of the freedom with which the saints are favoured: they have another sacred portion in having a freedom with the Father in and through the Son, and a freedom with the Son through the drawings of the Father, and the sacred anointings of the Holy Comforter. There is the freedom at a throne of grace, and the freedom of a child of grace to say "Abba, Father," so there is the freedom of and with the Gospel, in all its blessings, precepts, promises, and encouragements, for "Brethren, ye have been called unto liberty, only use not that liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but by love serve one another." So that is the freedom of the soul at death, and the body at the resurrection, and soul and body to all the blessings of eternity for ever and ever, as says our gracious Redeemer, "Father, I will that all those whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory."

Thus, my dear S-, I have had it laid upon my mind that I should, write to you, and these are the things to which the Lord has led me since I began. May they be made useful to thy poor, cast down, frequently heavy laden and desponding mind. Cheer up, my dear child, as sure as God liveth thou art a child of liberty, and so thou hast in a measure proved, and so thou wilt prove, from time to time, till thy God shall call thee home to be with him and see him as he is, and be like him, there to enjoy an eternity of freedom with Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.

Gloucestershire.

Amen.

R. R.

THE STING OF DEATH EXTRACTED, AND VICTORY OVER THE GRAVE OBTAINED.

Being the Substance of a Sermon preached on the occasion of the Death of Mrs. Ann Underwood, of Newick, and Mrs. Lewry, of Northlands, Dane Hill.

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (1 Cor. xv. 55.) DEATH, the monarch whose sway is universal, and whose authority imperative, whose pale horse shall ride triumphant over all the heirs of transgression, and from whose battle-field there is no discharge-his dominion must run coeval with time, and the voice that shall proclaim, "Time shall be no longer," will also announce "There shall be no more death." It is called the firstborn, and so it is, as sin is its parent, for lust when it is conceived, bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death, which devours and destroys the strength of man, and fills them with the terror or dread of it. Thus argued Bildad, when answering Job, "Terrors shall make him afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet. His strength shall be hunger-bitten, and destruction shall be ready at his side. It shall devour the strength of his skin even the first-born of death shall devour his strength" (Job xviii. 11-14). While he is thus considered as king over all the children of pride, he is spoken of triumphantly as the Christian's last enemy, whose destruction is sure. "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction; repentance shall be hid from mine eyes" (Hosea xiii. 14). "He will swallow up death in victory" (Isa. xxv. 8). "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (1 Cor. xv. 26).

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We notice in the first place, death and its sting. When the Lord created our first parents, and placed them in the garden, he gave unto them a prohibitory law respecting a certain tree planted therein, the breach of which would not only give death an existence, but arm it with that sting, whose moral poison should infect the whole fabric of nature, and, like an insidious gangrene, bring all the posterity to death (Job xxx. 23). "But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" or in dying thou shalt die (Gen. ii. 17). And very plain is it that this referred not to the death of the body, as immediately to take place, as both of them lived some years after, but to that spiritual death, or deadness of the spirit, which has so evidently been set forth in the enmity of the carnal mind, and the utter impossibility of the natural man receiving the things of God (Rom. viii. 7; 1 Cor. ii. 14); and, indeed, upon this foundation the whole dispensation of the Gospel rests; for, as we are dead, we are said to be quickened, not created (Eph. ii. 1), and

the great act wrought for us as taught by the Lord Jesus, when conversing with Nicodemus, was regeneration, which must have a reference to a former being, otherwise it is not strong enough to enforce what is meant thereby; thus regeneration is a repetition of a former act. Read John i. 13; John iii. 5; 1 Peter i. 23. "The sting of death is sin" (1 Cor. xv. 56). Sin is that poison which drinketh up the spirit, which sets in array against us the terror of God (Job vi. 4), that serpent which stingeth without hissing or giving notice of his approach (Eccl. x. 11). It goeth softly yet surely after its prey, but at the last it "biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder" (Prov. xxiii. 32). It has deluged the whole world without granting a "letter of licence to the favoured eight (Gen. vii. 1; 1 Peter iii. 20). By it creation hath been marred, but not decomposed (Jer. xviii. 2-4); relative ties are broken from its strength (Jer. ix. 21); the vitality of life is not destroyed (Phil. i. 21); the impetus roll with which it hath swept over past generations, shall receive no check until destruction and death say "We have heard the fame thereof with our ears (Job xxii. 28); and "Under his feet hath he put all his enemies" (1 Cor. xv. 25); "Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rom. v. 12). As with its reign so are found the effects in the alienation of the mind, and awful apostacy from God as evidenced in all the members of the family. So very conclusive are the Scriptures upon this point that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established. Paul declares, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. iii. 23). John speaketh after this manner, "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John i. 8); and James, "Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world, is an enemy of God" (Jas. iv. 4), while Ezekiel pronounces the irrevocable sentence from the Lord, "Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: THE SOUL THAT SINNETH IT SHALL DIE (Ezekiel xviii. 4, 20). Herein is "the sting of death."

2ndly. The existence of death's sting, from the deadly poison it sends forth, gives unto the grave a victory, which is said to swallow up, or to receive all whom the other hath slain; and like the drought and heat, which consume or dissolve the snow water, so doth the grave those that have sinned (Prov. i. 12; Job xxiv. 19). Thus the going down unto it is compared unto the cloud that vanisheth. They that go down to the grave "shall come up no more" (Job vii. 9). It is the house appointed for all living; and all admit of their being certainly brought there in the prospect of his destruction (Job xxx. 23, 24). Its cruelty is proverbial, as being one of those four things never satisfied; that it is never heard to say, "It is enough" (Prov. xxx. 16); yea, are never full, though enlarging his desires, and gathering into "all nations, and heapeth together all people" (Prov. xxvii. 20; Hab. ii. 5). We are daily observers that the grave exhibits no partiality in the choice of its victims. "Death reigned from Adam to Moses over those who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's Psgression" (Rom. v. 14),

and "the sinner an hundred years old shall die" (Isa. lxv. 20), and as Job expresses it, so the solemn events before us exemplify, "One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet; his breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with marrow; and another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never eateth with pleasure" (Job xxi. 25). Of one who is removed from us, just in the meridian of days, we might have expected, had not invidious disease made so rapid a progress, we should have long enjoyed her as a companion in this vale of tears; but the Lord saw otherwise, therefore the husband hath lost the desire of his eyes, the wife of his youth-and this Church bows to the dispensation which has severed another link from the chain of union by which we are bound; on the other hand, life had extended almost to the boundary of its days of fourscore years, and the hoary head was indicative of the weary pilgrimage she had trod, and to whom for a long season there had been the appointment of wearisome days and nights; "But they shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them" (Job xxi. 23, 26). To them the clods of the valley shall be sweet under which they repose, waiting the voice of the archangel and the trump of God; and while every one shall lie down after them-as there are innumerable gone before them-we will, in the exercise of faith, join them in their triumphal challenge, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

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3rdly.We notice the ground of the Christian's triumph in the extraction of this sting, and the obtaining of this victory over the grave. It is in Christ, who is "the first-begotten of the dead" (Rev. i. 5); "the first-fruits of them that slept" (1 Cor. xv. 20); "the first-born from the dead" (Col. i. 18); "He that liveth and was dead," yea, lives for evermore, at whose girdle hangs "the keys of hell and of death" (Rev. i. 18). The base upon which this triumph rests is love: As Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smelling savour " (Eph. v. 2). Hence, as there is no condemnation, so there can be no separation from him, "For I am persuaded that neither DEATH, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor heights, nor depths, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. viii. 38, 39). From this love springs that union which gives us a title to all those things we enjoy now, or shall enjoy hereafter, "For all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are your's, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's " (1 Cor. iii. 21-23). Death's sting being extracted, "through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once" (Heb. x. 10), who, in the end of the world, appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, yet, that he might be fully qualified for the great transaction, he must enter the field with a proper understanding what was the nature of the sting he was about to extract, and the foe he had engaged to vanquish. Had it been the pleasure of Jehovah, he could, by a word, have annihilated the evil; but not so, "For he hath made him sin for us who knew no sin." Under the weight he

goes forth to meet the foe, being in the sight of heaven, earth, and hell, a curse, while he redeems us from the curse of the law (1 Cor. v. 2! ; Gal. iii. 13); gave himself for our sins that we might be delivered from this present evil world (Gal. i. 4); destroys the power of the devil in regard to death (Heb. ii. 14); abolisheth death, and brings life and immortality to light (2 Tim. i. 10); swallows it up in victory (Isaiah xxv. 8); baffles the end and design of Satan in furnishing the sting, and gives his people over it that triumph as they draw near the gates, to challenge, in the apostle's language, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" and with the Psalmist to say, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" (Psalm xxiii. 4).

Further, we remark, the Christian hath warrantable grounds for triumph, in the extraction of this sting, inasmuch as it is effected in so complete and wonderful a manner. He that could have torn the mountain up by the roots at once, chose to meet it in single combat; and in pursuing it through all its pathways, has set an end to the darkness thereof, and hath searched out all perfection, yea, "the stones of darkness and the shadow of death" (Job xxviii. 3); so that before our Zerubbabel the mountain is become a plain (Zech. iv. 7), for sin is removed, broken down as that barrier between God and his people, and purged from the conscience by the application of the blood of sprinkling. "In those days, and at the same time, saith the Lord, if the offence of Israel be sought there shall be none found; if men inquire for the sin of Judah there shall be none; for I will be merciful to them whom I suffer to remain over (Jer. 1. 20, old reading). Still we who are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened (2 Cor. v. 4); death is swallowed up or lost in the victory obtained; its intended victims ransomed from its power, and redeemed from its dominion; the works of the devil destroyed, and the whole sickness proved to be, not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby (1 John iii. 8; John xi. 4; John xii. 31).

But again, from what is before us in the bereaving dispensations we might be led to conclude, "death hath inflicted its sting, and the grave obtained a victory." In looking at the things which are seen with the natural eye it has that appearance in the desolation and vacancy beheld and felt; but faith's bright lurid and single eye, which penetrates beyond the twilight of time, discovers the victory is on our side; for those who die in the Lord, as our sisters have died, are the gainers, for they have done with sin and sinning, sorrow and weeping, and are led to the fountain of living waters, our dear and precious Lord Jesus, have in their appearance among "the spirits of just men made perfect," seen of the travail of his soul, while with satisfaction, pleasure, and delight, he welcomes them as the blessed of his Father, to those mansions which he had for them prepared, while even we, who are called to sustain the characters of those that mourn for a season, are not ignorant concerning them that are asleep, for "We sorrow not even as others