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wept:" yet when the child was no more, the patriarch "arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the Lord and worshipped." And when this change of conduct called forth the astonishment of his servants, David explained it: "While the child was yet alive, (said he) I fasted and wept; for I said who can tell, whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him; but he shall not return to me.' (2 Sam. xii. 15-23.) When Job received the thundering messengers, following close upon the heels of each other; the loss of his substance, his cattle, his servants, and finally closing in the tidings with the death of his children; the patient mourner, though he felt all the workings of nature, from such accumulated sorrow, yet he felt also the supports of grace. "He arose (it is said) and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground and worshipped, and said: Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord." (Job i. 13-21.) And to mention no more. When the prophet Ezekiel received the summons *from the Lord : "Son of man! behold I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke; yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep; neither shall thy tears run down. Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire of thine head upon thee, and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men. So I spake (said the prophet) unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife died. And I did in the morning as I was commanded." (Ezekiel xxiv. 15-18.)

Beholding such illustrious examples, and animated by the grace of God; I am come forth this morning from the house of mourning to the house of praise: and for a while to forget the circumstances of the dying and the dead among men; to speak to you, and to myself of the living, and life-giving God. Indeed, I hope, that I am come unto the church of our most glorious Christ this day with a message from the Lord. And if you

will open your Bibles at the place of Scripture, 11th John's gospel, 25th and 26th verses, you will behold the proclamation by the Lord himself.

SERMON III.

JESUS THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE.

JOHN XI. 25, 26.

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

I

BESEECH YOU to pause over those divine words. What a sublimity there is in them! We need not ask who is the Almighty Speaker; for we are told. And indeed it could be no other than He, "who is the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever." For what prophet, or apostle, yea, what angel or being among the whole creation of God, ever did, or ever could, assume such language, and say as Jesus did: "I am the resurrection and the life?"

And here I feel constrained to pause again, and to remark, that if, while the Lord himself makes this proclamation in your ears, the same Almighty God, by the influence of his Holy Spirit, were to give the saving unction and belief of it in your hearts, I might shut up my sermon, before I proceeded farther to enlarge upon it. For if the redeemed and regenerated child of God, thus taught of God, was enabled spiritually to receive those divine truths with full assurance of faith; to realize them in his mind, and conscience; to live upon them day by day; to bring them into constant exercise and use; that they might lie down with him, and rise up with him, and be as frontlets between the eyes; the sweet savour would lift him out of himself, and above

himself; and from all the sin and sorrow which he is the object and the subject of, from the Adam-fall transgression, and cause him to say with the apostle : "Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ." (2 Cor. ii. 14.)

But let us take a leisurely survey, in profound meditation, of this whole proclamation of our most glorious Christ; and examine, one by one, the sublime truths, and mark their various bearings, as they have reference, first, to his Almighty person; and then from their union with Him, as they relate also to his people.

And first of the Almighty Speaker, "Jesus said! I am!" This great I is he, whose being, and essence, is the sole cause of giving being to his people. For without him the whole body the church, whether in heaven or in earth, would be but as so many cyphers, so many nonentities. It is the Lord Jesus, by heading them, and standing before them, as the figure one in arithmetic, constitutes, their number, and being.

been; some now But of our most and will be, the

Next observe what the Lord declares of himself; "I am :" that is the only One, which is, and which was, and which is to come. (Rev. i. 8.) Of creatures it may be said; some have are; and some may be hereafter. glorious Christ; He was, and is, same, and unchangeably for ever. As the Lord expressed himself to the Jews: "Before Abraham was, I am!" (John viii. 58.)

But we must not stop here. The Lord proceeds, in giving this sublime statement of himself, to shew his eternal power and GODHEAD, by acts corresponding to the Almightiness of his person. "I am (he saith) the resurrection and the life." Observe; he is not only the cause of the resurrection, and the life; but he is himself both. All is in himself; as

well as by himself. It is not enough to say, that by the great and incommunicable salvation which he wrought he hath done all this for his people; but that he is himself the whole to his people. He is himself "the resurrection and the life.". His people were considered virtually all in him, and represented by him, when he did what he did, and suffered what he suffered, for their salvation. So that they were crucified with him; buried with him, "were raised up together with him, and made to sit together with him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." (Eph. ii.5, 6.)

Neither is this all. For the Lord Jesus adds, that his people shall know all these things, and spiritually enjoy them, when, by the divine effects he works in their hearts, they are brought into a spiritual and scriptural apprehension of them, in their minds and consciences. "He that believeth in me (saith the Lord) though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die." Here again, as in the former part of our Lord's words, his own sovereignty is asserted, and assured. Living in him is the cause of believing in him: and as the one is productive of the other, faith, or belief, in Christ will necessarily follow life in Christ. And such a life and faith become the fullest demonstration, according to the apostle's statement, of "being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,

the word of God which liveth, and abideth for ever.” (1 Pet. i. 23.) Oh! that this great truth, this glorious truth, was so fully incorporated in the soul of the Lord's redeemed and regenerated family, that every child of God, which is brought into an acquaintance with the plague of his own heart, could, and did, calculate rightly his vast privileges in Christ. He would then enter into the divine enjoyment of what John calls, "the record God hath given to his church of eternal life. For this life is in the Son:

and he that hath the Son hath life; and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life." (1 John v. 11, 12. John v. 24.)

Such is the soul-animating subject proposed to our spiritual meditation in those sublime words of our most glorious Lord. My intention is, as the Lord shall be pleased to direct me, in the first place, to call your attention to the contemplation of the Almighty Speaker, proclaiming himself and his divine person under those distinguishing characters: "I am the resurrection and the life." And when, (if the Lord so graciously teach) we have received spiritual and scriptural apprehension of the infinite greatness of his person, so as to stand impressed with the full assurance of his eternal power and GODHEAD, under those almighty characters; we will go on in the second branch of the discourse to look into the divine operations of the same in ourselves, and see whether we ourselves are the subjects and objects of this belief in him; the both will form a blessed matter of discourse to revive our drooping spirits under all that we are called to the exercise of, in this sorrowful, sinful, dying world. And the question, with which our glorious Lord closed this Scripture, will be the proper close upon the present occasion for you and for me each to put to ourselves, to discover our own personal interest in the whole: "Believest thou this?"

Let me however detain you one moment, to remark to you the vast and infinite importance of the subject itself; and to observe that the apprehension of it can only be understood spiritually. The new birth, or regeneration, is indispensibly necessary for an entrance into the kingdom of grace here, as well as glory hereafter. And this is solely the free gift of God: for the gospel saith, "to as many as the Lord gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name; which were born not of