they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things, declare plainly that they seek a country. They looked beyond the type to the antitype. From the earthly Canaan to the heavenly Canaan. And in the faith of the heavenly inheritance they died.

They that live by faith must die in faith; yea, and die by faith too. Faith must bring in their dying comforts. And oh how full and how near a treasure hath it to go to! To die to this world, is to be born into another. Beggars are best when they are abroad. The travel of the ungodly is better to them than their home: but the believer's home is so much better than his travel, that he hath little cause to be afraid of coming to his journey's end; but should rather every step cry out, Oh, when shall I be at home with Christ! Is it earth or heaven that you have prayed for, and labored for, and waited, and suffered for till now? And doth he indeed pray, and labor, and suffer for heaven, who would not come thither?

It is faith that overcometh the world and the flesh, which must also overcome the fears of death, and can look with boldness into the loathsome grave, and can triumph over both as victorious through Christ. It is faith which can say, Go forth, O my soul; depart in peace: thy course is finished thy warfare is accomplished: the day of triumph is now at hand: thy patience hath no longer work: go forth with joy: the morning of thy endless joys is near; and the night of fears and darkness at an end. Thy terrible dreams are ending in eternal pleasures; the glorious light will banish all thy dreadful spectres, and resolve all those doubts which were bred and cherished in the dark. They whose employment is their weariness and toil, do take the night of darkness and cessation for their rest; but this is their weariness: defect of action is thy toil; and thy most grievous labor is to do too little work; and thy incessant vision, love, and praise, will be thy incessant ease and pleasure; and thy endless work will be thy endless rest! Depart, O my soul, with peace and gladness! Thou leavest not a world, where wisdom and piety, justice and sobriety, love, and peace, and order do prevail; but a world of ignorance and folly, of brutish sensuality and rage, of impiety, and malignant enmity to good; a world of injustice and oppression, and of confusion and distracting strifes! Thou goest not to a world of darkness and wrath,

but of light and love; from hellish malice to perfect amity; from Bedlam rage to perfect wisdom; from mad confusion to perfect order; to sweetest unity and peace; even to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to the celestial glorious city of God! Thou goest not from heaven to earth, from holiness to sin, from the sight of God into an infernal dungeon; but from earth to heaven, from sin and imperfection to perfect holiness, and from palpable darkness into the vital splendor of the face of God! Thou goest not amongst enemies, but to dearest friends; not amongst mere strangers, but to many whom thou hast known by sight, and to more whom thou hast known by faith, and must know by the sweetest communion for ever. Thou goest not to unsatisfied justice, nor to a condemning, unreconciled God; but to love itself, to infinite goodness, the fountain of all created and communicated good; to the Maker, Redeemer, and Sanctifier of souls; to him who prepared heaven for thee, and now hath prepared thee for heaven. Go forth then in triumph, and not with terror, O my soul! The prize is won: possess the things which thou hast so long prayed for, and sought! Make haste and enter into thy Master's joy! Go view the glory which thou hast so long heard of; and take thy place in the heavenly choir; and bear thy part in their celestial melody! Sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God; and receive that which Christ in his covenant did promise to give thee at the last. Go boldly to that blessed God, with whom thou hast so powerful a Mediator, and to the throne of whose grace thou hast had so oft and sweet access. If heaven be thy fear and sorrow, what can be thy joy? And where wilt thou have refuge, if thou fly from God? If perfect endless pleasures be thy terror, where then dost thou expect content? If grace have taught thee long ago to prefer the heavenly and durable felicity, refuse it not now when thou art so near to the port. If it have taught thee long ago to be as a stranger in this Sodom, and to renounce this sinful world and flesh, linger not now as unwilling to depart; repent not of thy choice when all that the world can do for thee is past; repent not of thy warfare when thou hast got the victory; nor of thy voyage, when thou art past the storms and waves, and ready to land at the haven of felicity. Thus may faith sing our dying song, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,

according to thy word," even when the flesh is most loth to be dissolved.

But we must live by faith if we would thus die by faith. Such a death doth not use to be the period of a fleshly, worldly life; nor of a careless, dull, and negligent life. Nature, which brought us into the world, without our forecast or care, will turn us out of the world without it. But it will not give us a joyful passage, nor bring us to a better world without. It costs worldlings no small care to die in an honorable and plentiful estate, (if that they may fall from a higher place than others, and may have something to make death more grievous and unwelcome to them, and may have a greater account to make at judgment; and that their passage to heaven may be as a camel's though a needle.) And may a believing, joyful death be expected, without the preparations of exercise and experience in a believing life? Nature is so much afraid of dying, and an incorporated soul is so incarcerated in sense, and so hardly rises to serious and satisfying apprehensions of the unseen world, that even true believers do find it a work of no small difficulty to desire to depart, and be with Christ, and to die in the joyful hopes of faith. A little abatement of the terrors of death, a little supporting hope and peace, is all that the greater part of them attain, instead of the fervent desires, and triumphant joys, which the lively belief of endless glory should produce. O therefore make it the work of your lives! of all your lives! your greatest work, your constant work, to live by faith; that the faith which hath first conquered all the rest of your enemies, may be able also to overcome the last; and may do your last work well, when it hath done the rest.

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye might be partakers of the Divine nature,-2 Peter i. 4.

THE promises were given, the text tells us, that we might be partakers of the Divine nature. So it was at first. Man was created in the image of God. And so it shall be again. Man shall be renewed in the image of him that created him, in righteousness and true holiness.

The moral nature of God, thus to be participated by believers, may be summed up in the three terms, knowledge, holiness, and love. On each of these we may briefly dwell.

1. Knowledge. The power of knowing is the property of spiritual beings. It is not merely to perceive, in the low degree which belongs to irrational animals, but to apprehend, to remember, to compare, to infer, and from particular, to bring out general truths, which are to be laid up in the mind for meditation or action. In this respect, all rational creatures bear an image, though a faint one, of God the infinite intelligence. That knowl edge, however, in which St. Paul says we are created anew, after the image of God, is not mere intellectual capacity. This we may have before this spiritual renovation; and though, in this world, religion may profitably exercise it, it is not always that even religion improves it. This knowledge is the knowledge of things as good or evil, as right or wrong, as tending or not tending to our own happiness, and that of the whole creation. Infinitely perfect is this knowledge in God. He can not mistake the nature and tendencies of things; and it is this which gives his laws their perfection. He can not enjoin evil, and he restrains us from nothing good. What he commands, is necessary; what he inhibits, prejudicial to our own welfare, and the harmony and blessedness of the whole universe of being. But man has lost this knowledge; and the consequence is sin, disorder, and misery, both in himself and in the world. Every act of a sinner is a stab to his peace and real interest, and to those of society at large. These precious promises, however, open to us the restoration of what we have lost. God himself, by his own revelations, "hath showed thee, O man, what is good." He has marked the moral differences of things, in order to our choice of that which is excellent. And by the indwelling of his teaching Spirit, opening the truths to our mind, and rendering us discerning to apply them, he makes us partake, in our degree, of his own knowledge, his infallible judgment of things. Then it is that we walk in the light. Our path becomes an open path. We no more put good for evil, or evil for good. We are no more cheated and deluded by mere appearances. We find a sure way for our feet, and so are enabled to escape the snares of death.

2. Holiness. This is essential to God. It is that principle in him, whatever it may be, which has led him to prescribe justice,

mercy, and truth, and to prohibit their contraries under penalties so severe; that principle, which is more than a mere approval of the things which he enjoins; which makes him love righteousness, so that his countenance doth behold the upright with complacency, and the wicked with such displeasure and abhorrence, that even their prayer is an abomination; that, for the restoration of which among his creatures, he sent his own Son into the world. This we call holiness.

The holiness of a creature, as to actions, is conformity to the will of God, which is the visible declaration of his holy nature. That conformity implies justice, a rendering to all their due ;—a large duty, referring, not only to man, but likewise to God, to whom are to be given the honor and worship he requires from us: perfect truth and sincerity in every thing, so that all outward acts shall concur with the heart, and the heart with them: and the strict regulation of every temper and appetite, so that they may be kept within the bounds prescribed, beyond which they become impurity and sin. But there must be principle from which all this must flow, or it is only external and imitative; and that principle is found only in the new man, that which comes from this participation of the Divine nature. It is that new disposition and tendency of all his faculties and affections, produced by the inward working of the Spirit of God, which makes him approve of what is right, and true, and excellent, universally, and disapprove of what is contrary. This sacred influence lays hold of the will, and so causes the will to lay hold of whatever is holy; it lays hold of the affections, and holiness thus becomes a delight, an object of love, desire, and enjoyment. This is the state to which the gospel calls us, so that our regard to holiness is not to be partial and unsteady, or implying a cold approbation of what is right, but full and affectionate, flowing from the new nature which God gives, and which God must by his presence sustain. Thus shall we be holy in all manner of

conversation.

3. But the Divine nature is love. Who can doubt this, when he sees the happiness of the creatures so manifestly the end of their creation? when we can trace all misery to another source? when we see the mercies he mixes with his judgments, always bringing some good out of evil? when he spared not his own Son, but gave him freely for us all? when he so con