shall wandering thoughts annoy your heart nor idlewords flow from your tongue. While we, alas! must sore complain of vanity, perverseness, and disorder in mind, will, and affection.

Neither shall there be any more pain; for sorrow shall be turned into joy. O ye that rejoice in God above all, and in Christ Jesus, with joy unspeakable, though now you see him not; how shall you be comforted, when you shall behold his face in righteousness, wearing sweet smiles! Will it not be good for you to be with him who died for you? with him where he is, that you may behold his glory? Then shall you see those hands and feet that were pierced; that side which was wounded; that head which wore the thorny crown. Is this the man who groaned and died on Calvary for me? who descended into the grave for me? Yes; this is the man, the God-man, Jesus, the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever. No flight of years shall dissolve the mysterious union of his humanity with the divine person of the eternal Son.

All their springs of consolation are derived from this fountain of living waters; yet are there other considerations in which they shall rejoice, though with inferior delight. Then shall they come to you, ye innumerable company of angels; nor be startled at familiar interviews with you, though disembodied creatures, as they were in their mortal state. Here you were the spectators of their conflicts, and the guardians of their virtue; then shall ye be the associates of their bliss.

O comfortable society! Then, too, shall we come to the general assembly and church of the first-born. Those who lived in distant periods of the world shall meet in one congregation. The inhabitants of distant regions shall be there; those who dwelt in Bribain and Judea, O large communion which no distance of time, no length of sea and land can confine : no animosty shall corrupt, world without end. There our grand parents eat the tree of life, no flaming sword

forbidding all access. The patriarchs shall wander no more as pilgrims and strangers, having found the country they desired. There shall we see the venerable saint, whose faith enabled him to obey, without reluctance, the most difficult precept that ever was given; and him whose invincible patience triumphed over the greatest load of calamities. There shall we see the prophets who foretold, and the apostles who published the power and coming of his Majesty; and all the goodly company, who loved not their lives unto the death, but rendered their lives, by cruel tortures, for the love of the truth. How frequently is that complaint of the prophet to be taken up in these regions of sorrow, "wo is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, and there is no cluster to eat; the good man is perished out of the land !" But no sinner shall be there, no deceitful hypocrite in all the fair association.

Nor will they be insensible of joy from the glories of that delightful place where they shall dwell. O the novelty, the beauty, the grandeur of the heaven of heavens, the house not made with hands, the city that hath foundations infinitely surpassing the temple of Solomon, and the city of David! Beautiful was the earthly paradise, and beautiful the earthly Canaan; yea, beautiful is this habitable earth, where many of the enemies of God reside. What then must be the heavenly paradise, the heavenly Canaan, which God hath prepared for them that love him!

And, O with what fair bodies shall they be clothed, who have put on immortality!" The inhabitant of that land shall not say, I am sick;" but his countenance shall smile with rosy celestial youth for

evermore.

The hell they have avoided will accent their songs of salvation; and the world they have escaped will serve as a foil to the bliss. Thus it enhanced the miraculous deliverances of the Israelites, to see from the safe shore the wretched Egyptians tumbling in the ocean; and as the waste and howling wilder

ness gave additional charms to the land that flowed with milk and honey.

Nor will you be inactive through long eternity.You rest not day nor night; yet shall you be strangers to weariness and fatigue. To praise him shall be your element; to teach the arches of your lofty palaces to resound with the name of him you loved will be your delightful employment, while ages roll away.

For, O eternity! eternity! it is thine to crown the joys above. Thou art the knot which bindest the bundle of life together. Without the thought of thee, dim sadness would not spare the faces of the blessed, their songs would be marred with dreadful discordance, and all the blissful bowers would lose their charms.

On the manifestation of the Son of God in human flesh,

THE seventy weeks of Daniel were now elapsed; and they who looked for salvation in Israel, were wrapt in silent expectation of the Messiah coming in the name of the Lord to save them. Long had the Gentile nations walked in their own ways, and the Jews practised the ceremonies of Moses. But neither could the precepts of the philosopher retrieve the ruins of our fall, nor could the carnal ordinances of the law make them perfect, who had recourse unto them, as touching the conscience. For as yet the daily oblation had not ceased; nor the temple smoked in ruin, into which the messenger of the covenant, according to the ancient prediction, was suddenly to come. The sceptre of David was now sunk into the hatchet of a carpenter, and his tabernacle was fallen down.Tiberius swayed the sceptre of Rome; Herod was king in Judea; John the baptist had been six months in the womb, who was to be the harbinger of his coming; and a profound peace reigned over the world

as a presage of his birth, whose name is called, the Prince of Peace. When the almighty King, who is ever mindful of his covenant, dispatches from the blessed abodes, lo the angel Gabriel, (none of the least of the heavenly throng, and not now first employed in embassies of love to man,) to salute the blessed virgin, the mother of our Lord. The obedient angel flies, and punctually discharges his commission. But, O ye papists, though he honors her as a saint, he wor ships her not as a goddess. A new thing indeed it was in the earth, that a virgin should conceive;" but by no means impossible unto the Holy Ghost to bring about by his over-shadowing power. If once a woman was formed out of the substance of a man, why should not that same divine power be fully able to produce a man out of the substance of a woman? May we not humbly judge that it came from Him who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working, that for the general honor of our nature, the Savior did spring from that feeble sex which was first in the transgression? For, 66 as the woman is of the man, even so also the man is by the woman; but all things are of God." O condescending Savior, blessed, beyond all peradventure, was the womb that bare thee, and those paps that gave thee suck; nor is it easy to conceive how a sinful woman could be more highly honored, than to carry thee in her womb, unless by having thee formed in her heart.

Here let us forego all idle speculations, about what other methods are possible to God, by which to send forth his Son into our lower world; and let us rather be willing to discern the characters of wisdom that are evidently instamped upon this dispensation, such as it is. For had a body been prepared him of nothing, of the dust of the ground, or of some heavenly materials, he would not have been of the same flesh and blood with those he intended to redeem. Or had it been produced in the ordinary method of human generation, he would have been involved in the same guilt of Adam's originating sin with the rest of mankind,

whom he represented in the first broken covenant.As in the former case his relation to us would (for what appears) have been too remote; so in the latter, he would (in all appearance) have been too like us; not only in qualities of our nature, but in the guilt of our pers sons. But now he is born of a woman, and therefore of our bone, and of our flesh. And because his mo ther is a virgin, we easily understand how he is holy, undefiled, and separated from sinners. But here a difficulty arises to our thoughts; for, if she is a virgin that shall be with child by the Holy Ghost, who shall preserve her character from the unjust aspersions of the world? It is far more fitting, that her holy child Jesus shall confirm the truth of his divine extraction, by the tenor of his deportment, when adult, than that she shall be the assertor of it. Therefore she is betrothed unto a husband, who is at once the witness and the guardian of her virginity.

But leaving the sacred embryo to be curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth by the fingers of the Almighty, let us next see in what manner the heavenly infant was ushered into the light, " for thou Bethlehem Ephratah, though little among the thou sands of Judah," according to the prophets, "shalt give birth to the Ruler of Israel." But though the blessed virgin can trace her genealogy from David, and from Abraham, she is a resident of Nazareth, from whence no prophet was expected to arise. How then shall the prediction be accomplished? The emperor of Rome issues a royal edict, that all his large dominion shall be taxed. He meant to fill his coffers with money; but a greater sovereign than he intended the fulfilling of his promises. While every man repairs to his city to be taxed, in obedience to the imperial mandate, Joseph his father, as was supposed, repairs among the rest to Bethlehem, the city of his family, -being of the house and lineage of David. And now he is arrived with Mary, his espoused wife; who be ing near the time of her delivery, had been directed by providence, or special instinct, to accompany her