the champion of our redemption, he travelled into the dominions of Death and Hades, spoiling principalities and powers; and when he returned from their demolished thrones, he brought with him the keys of all their prisons; and in due time he shall descend to unlock every dungeon, and set at liberty them that are bound, and swallow up death in victory. "Them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him;" and O what rapturous greetings-what shouts of celestial welcome-when all the angels shall descend with songs of jubilee, and the disembodied souls of all the saints that have passed into paradise shall come down from their blessed abodes,

Again to visit their cold cells of clay,

Charmed with perennial sweets, and smiling at decay."

Here, beloved brethren, is your incentive to labor, and your encouragement to hope. Merely to witness such a scene, would be a thousandfold reward for all the service you can ever render your generation by the will of God. To stand off on some neighboring planet, and behold with immortal eyes the mighty procession and the magnificent coronation, were an ample indemnification for all the toil, and pain, and sorrow, and sickness, and weariness, and anxiety, and temptation, and persecution, and disappointment, and bereavement, and thousand-fold affliction, that all the faithful of every nation and every age have endured, even if all were wrung into the cup of a solitary servant of God. But O! you are not to be uninterested spectators-you are to join the host and swell the triumph. It is for you "the Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; " it is to gather your precious dust he shall send forth his angels to explore the cemeteries and sound the seas; and you, with all the subjects of the first resurrection," shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall you ever be with the Lord."

He who does

In view of such an issue, with what holy zest and fervor should we devote ourselves to the service of our generation by the will of God! Our vocations may differ; our aims should be identical. We are here to benefit our race and glorify our Creator. neither, by no means answers the end of his existence. He defrauds both God and man, and God and man will hold him to a stern responsibility for the perversion of his powers and privileges. O, Heaven! what wasted talents are treasured up for judgment! and who can bear the fierceness of Thine anger, augmented by the curses of ruined

souls, undone through his delinquency! The indolent and the vicious shall never be able to estimate the evil of their influence, till they awake in hell; and the wailing voices of eternity shall be ever preaching to them the infinite desert of their misdoing, and the infinite calamity of their loss!

"But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things which accompany salvation, though we thus speak." Some of you, at least would that I could say all!-have formed a proper estimate of life and its aims, of death and its issues. You have fixed your standard for time, and cast your fortune for eternity. You, especially, my beloved brethren, who minister at the altars of God, must often have felt a solemn significance in these mutual relations of life and death. Yours is a holy and blessed work. It shall sanctify your talents, ennoble your virtues, and give you a record with the man after God's own heart. There is a dignity in it which immeasurably transcends all earthly engagements. You are servants, but you are servants of God. You are shepherds, but you are shepherds of His flock. You are stewards, but you are stewards of His household. You are builders, but you are builders of His temple. You are workers, but you are workers together with Him. You are messengers, but your message was brought from heaven upon the wings of a thousand seraphim. You are detained awhile from paradise to seek the aliens over a blasted world; but fidelity to your high commission will prove your surest passport within the cherubguarded portal. A life of toil is before you, but there is an eternity of bliss beyond. Your path, amid the briar and the thorn, leads to the delectable mountains. "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy; and he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."

Among ministers, especially, "no man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself." Heaven and earth have claims upon us. The present and the future are alike interested in our labors. Men demand our energies-the blessing of our sanctified influence-in their behalf; while the eyes of witnessing angels range over our solemn assemblies, and departed friends from paradise stoop to listen to our vows. Let us magnify our office! Let us conceive worthily of our sublime vocation! Let us study to approve ourselves, both to God and to man, as workmen that need not be ashamed!

And O! to die after having done faithfully a work so great and

holy--to pass from the well-occupied pulpit to paradise--is it not stepping from the mountain-top, radiant already with the glory of God, into the Tishbite's chariot of fire? It is exchanging the throne of a petty province for that of an empire! It is graduating from a lower heaven to a higher! I have heard of men expiring in the pulpit, and I have desired such an end for my own. One moment to be standing so near to God, and the next to awake in his presence -one moment to be delivering his message to men, and the next to receive his welcome to my mansion-one moment to be pointing poor sinners to "the Lamb for sinners slain," and the next to grasp Him as my own eternal portion-one moment to be talking of the goldand-crystal city, and the thunder-chant of its teeming minstrelsy, and the next to enter the gates and join in the song-O, crucified Master! this were too much for such a sinful worm to hope for, but that nothing is too great for Thy infinite love to grant !

Finally, my brethren, remember that in serving your own generation you serve also the generations to come. The seed sown in the present will bloom and bear fruit in the future, and propagate itself in successive harvests forever. Your influence will outlive you; your work will remain when you are gone; and the good you shall have done will flourish over your tombs. David " served his own generation by the will of God," in the character of a poet, as well as of a prophet and a king; and this day a thousand temples are ringing with the voice of his psalmody, and millions of worshippers are melting to the strain of his penitence, and soaring on the wings of his piety; and through the coming centuries, the saints shall still make these sacred compositions their songs in the house of their pilgrimage; and "the harp the monarch minstrel swept " shall still soothe the troubled soul, and heal the broken heart, and breathe its angel melodies over the bed of death, and around the tomb of the departed; and "the sacramental host of God's elect" shall march to its music in the last great battle for the faith; and its living numbers shall modulate the movement of the resurrection anthem! Like David may you labor! With David may you rest!

THE DIVINITY OF THE CHURCH.*

BY C. B. PARSONS, D. D.

"And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her; and the highest himself shall establish her."-Psalms, lxxxvii, 5.

The great and distinguishing event in the history of time, is doubtless the founding among men of the Church of God; the setting up in the world, in accordance with the prediction of the prophet, the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. "And in the days of these kings, shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all other kingdoms, and it shall stand forever." To this kingdom, whose identity is to be recognised in the Church of Christ to its assurances, its purposes and its powers-the world is largely indebted for every excellence of enjoyment, both of present possession and of future hope. Like the material sun in the heavens, which lends from itself the beams of light that we see reflected from every lower and lesser orb, while in kingly radiance it presides over the whole, the Church is the centre power of a sublime moral system whose divine illumination is ultimately to fill the whole earth: "For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.") From this centre, which shows us God, proceed forth all those rays of moral and intellectual brilliancy, as well as spiritual effect, that are reflected upon the glassy surface of the sea of time, and are gathered into the many circling eddies of earthly worth. All these are obedient unto their parent cause, in whose divinity is the sovereign rule. For as "the head of every man is Christ, . . and the head of Christ is God," this also is of Christ and from God- "for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." This great and meri

A Sermon preached at the dedication of the First Methodist Episcopal Church South at Saint Louis, December 31, 1854. # Habakuk ii, 14.

+ Daniel ii, 41.

1 || 1 Cor. xi, 3.

John iii, 16.