him ?—During a life so transitory, what lasting monu40 ment then can our fondest hopes erect?

My brethren! we stand on the borders of an awful gulf, which is swallowing up all things human. And is there, amidst this universal wreck, nothing stable, nothing abiding, nothing immortal on which poor, frail, dy45 ing man can fasten?

Ask the hero, ask the statesman, whose wisdom you have been accustomed to revere, and he will tell you. He will tell you, did I say? He has already told you, from his death bed, and his illumined spirit still whis50 pers from the heavens, with well known eloquence, the solemn admonition.

"Mortals! hastening to the tomb, and once the companions of my pilgrimage, take warning and avoid my errors--Cultivate the virtues I have recommended— 55 Choose the Saviour I have chosen--Live disinterestedly --Live for immortality; and would you rescue any thing from final dissolution, lay it up in God." Nott.

115. The Crucifixion.

When our Redeemer expired on the cross, sympathizing nature was convulsed! The sun was suddenly enveloped in midnight darkness, and confusion reigned! but I shall pass by these terrific events, in order to lead 5 your attention to more important objects. The cross erected on Mount Calvary was the standard of victory, to which even thought was to be led captive, and before which imaginations were to be cast down; that is to say, human wisdom and skeptic reluctance. No voice 10 sublime was heard sounding from a thunder-bearing cloud, as of old from the heights of Sinai! No approach was observed of that formidable Majesty, before whom the mountains melt as wax! Where, where was the warlike preparation of that power which was to subdue 15 the world? See the whole artillery collected on Mount Calvary, in the exhibition of a cross, of an agonizing Sufferer, and a crown of thorns!

Religious truth was exiled from the earth, and idola.

try sat brooding over the moral world. The Egyptians, 20 the fathers of philosophy, the Grecians, the inventors of the fine arts, the Romans, the conquerors of the universe, were all unfortunately celebrated for the perversion of religious worship, for the gross errors they admitted into their belief, and the indignities they offered 25 to the true religion. Minerals, vegetables, animals, the elements, became objects of adoration; even abstract visionary forms, such as fevers and distempers, received the honours of deification; and to the most infamous vices, and dissolute passions, altars were erected. The 30 world, which God had made to manifest his power seemed to have become a temple of idols, where every thing was god but God himself!

sy.

The mystery of the crucifixion was the remedy the 35 Almighty ordained for this universal idolatry. He knew the mind of man, and knew that it was not by reasoning an error must be destroyed, which reasoning had not established. Idolatry prevailed by the suppression of reason, by suffering the senses to predominate, which are apt to clothe every thing with the qualities 40 with which they are affected. Men gave the Divinity their own figure, and attributed to him their vices and passions. Reasoning had no share in so brutal an error. It was a subversion of reason, a derilium, a phrenArgue with a phrenetic person, you do but the 45 more provoke him, and render the distemper incurable. Neither will reasoning cure the delirium of idolatry. What has learned antiquity gained by her elaborate discourses her reasonings so artfully framed? Did Plato, with that eloquence which was styled divine, over50 throw one single altar where monstrous divinities were worshipped? Experience hath shown that the overthrow of idolatry could not be the work of reason alone. Far from committing to human wisdom the cure of such a malady, God completed its confusion by the mystery of 55 the cross. Idolatry (if rightly understood) took its rise from that profound self-attachment inherent in our nature. Thus it was that the Pagan mythology teemed with deities who were subject to human passions, weak

nesses, and vices. When the mysterious cross display60 ed to the world an agonizing Redeemer, incredulity exclaimed it was foolishness! But the darkning sun, nature convulsed, the dead arising from their graves, said it was wisdom! Bossuet.

END.