his body became as dead men, with fright; it was then that he was declared with power, and that with his own power, to be the Son of God.

For who will listen to that cold interpretation of this and other the like passages, which makes them to assert no other sonship of Christ, than that sonship which we shall all partake, when we are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection; though we shall rise by no power, and with no will of our own, but through the power of Christ's resurrection, and at his bidding. No, far be that temper from any of us, which employs the very expressions of our privileges, in derogation of the person of Him, through whom, and from whom, and in whom, are all our privileges! And such is the temper which can be content to make Christ the Son of God, only as being a son of the resurrection, and the first born from the dead; for who would ever have dreamed of such an interpretation of the text, unless it had also been said of us, that we are thus sons of God? No, we are sons of God, but it is by adoption: He is the Son of God by an eternal generation. We are sons of God as children of the resurrection; but it is in him that we rise, and by the power of his resurrection. He is the Son of God, and this his resurrection declares with power, for with the power of God, he raised himself from the dead.

What may be expected from such a view of one of the evidences of our religion, and of the godhead of our

Lord, as I have now presented to you, it becomes not me, brethren, to assert. For the conviction of any who may yet waver between infidelity and Christianity, or who may be fluctuating between a false and an orthodox confession, such a view of the evidences of Christianity must be very ineffectual; since, from the necessity of adducing but a very minute portion of the argument, or of crowding much into a small space, and saying it weakly, such statements as may be made in a single discourse, are really but ill adapted to the conviction of heretics or infidels. But as the wind, touching but the face of the sea, causes at first but a ripple, and awakens but the gentle hum of waters; but at last, because of the extent of the surface which it sweeps, and the depth of that which lies below, lashes ocean waves into a monstrous tempest, and calls forth the mighty roar of the great deep; so perhaps, rather from the resources of your own knowledge and piety, than from their proper force or depth, may such suggestions as I have now offered, call up in your minds that full and long array of evidence on which reasonable faith, God's best service, depends; and awaken in your bosoms some fresh actings of that confidence and affection, which is so great a part of piety to your Saviour; and give occasion to such expressions of wonder, love, and praise, as the Holy Spirit himself delights to dictate, and which are due to our blessed Lord on account of his mysterious nature. And, happy art thou, in thy faith and piety and love, Oh! thou Christian soul, to whom it hath been so this

day! And happy he who may hope now, and hereafter perhaps may know assuredly, that he hath endeavoured not in vain, to excite in one who loves the Lord, and whom the Lord loves, so noble and so ennobling a train of devotional sentiment.

172

SERMON X.

HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN, AND SITTETH ON THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY.

MARK xvi. 19.—After the Lord had spoken to them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

THERE are certain subjects of inquiry, concerning the nature and destinies of man, which are rescued from the very possibility of neglect by their extreme interest; and which will ever afford scope and exercise to the loftiest intellectual powers of those who engage in them. So soon as the progress of civilization has enabled some individuals to give their chief attention rather to the cravings of the mind than of the body, they will begin to speculate on the existence and condition, on the hopes and habitation of the soul of man, after his body has mouldered in the grave, or been consumed upon the pyre; and after the very earth, which contains within itself the seeds and signs of dissolution, and has received for successive ages so great accessions of death and corruption, has been resolved into its elementary forms.

But not only does the engrossing interest of such

questions as these ensure them attention from man; and their high scope and mysterious aspect promise a noble and severe exercise to his intellectual powers: but so decidedly beneficial is the general habit of giving to them a serious consideration, and so surely does every sober and rational opinion which such inquiries suggest tend to the amelioration of the condition and habits of men; elevating their intellectual and purifying their moral character, and throwing over the present something as well of the refinement and spirituality, as of the restraints and sanctions of an unseen futurity; that we may venture to infer the will of our Creator from the innate tendency of man to speculate upon such subjects, together with that degree of aptitude which he possesses to their study: And as we argue that it is the will of God that we should form societies and live in them, from the natural impulse to do so, and the social capacities with which we are endowed, and the happy results of their exercise; so may we argue that we ought to give our minds to the consideration of the philosophy, so to speak, of a future state, since we are instinctively impelled to such an exercise of the understanding, since we are in no slight degree capacitated for it, and since we are so much benefited by its results.

Upon these subjects of interesting and profitable speculation Christianity has thrown a new and clearer light partly by a direct communication of truth, which revelation alone could supply; but chiefly by exemplifying the several stages of our existence in the