sible, so the Word of God hath assured us that it is certain. The texts of Scripture are so many and clear to this purpose, and so well known to all Christians, that I will produce none. I shall only tell you that as it is expressly revealed in the Gospel, so our blessed Saviour, for the confirmation of our faith and the comfort and encouragement of our hope, hath given us the experiment of it in his own resurrection, which is "the earnest and first fruits of ours." So St. Paul tells us that "Christ is risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept." And that Christ did really rise from the dead, we have as good evidence as for any ancient matter of fact which we do most firmly believe; and more and greater evidence than this the thing is not capable of; and because it is not, no reasonable man ought to require it.

Now what remains but to conclude this discourse with those practical inferences which our Apostle makes from this doctrine of the resurrection; and I shall mention these two:

The first for our support and comfort under the infirmities and miseries of this mortal life.

The second for the encouragement of obedience and a good life 1. For our comfort and support under the infirmities and miseries of this mortal state. The consideration of the glorious change of our bodies at the resurrection of the just can not but be a great comfort to us, under all bodily pain and sufferings.

One of the greatest burdens of human nature is the frailty ana infirmity of our bodies, the necessities they are frequently pressed withal, the manifold diseases they are liable to, and the dangers and terrors of death, to which they are continually subject and enslaved. But the time is coming, if we be careful to prepare ourselves for it, when we shall be clothed with other kind of bodies, free from all the miseries and inconveniences which flesh and blood is subject to. For "these vile bodies shall be changed, and fashioned like to the glorious body of the Son of God." When our bodies shall be raised to a new life, they shall become incorruptible; "for this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality; and then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory." When this last enemy is conquered, there shall be no "fleshly lusts" nor brutish passions "to fight against the soul; no law in our members to war against the laws of our minds;" no disease to torment us; no danger of death to amaze and terrify us. Then all the passions and appetites of our outward man shall be subject to the reason of our minds, and our bodies shall partake of the immortality of our souls. It is but a

very little while that our spirits shall be crushed and clogged with these heavy aud sluggish bodies; at the resurrection they shall be refined from all dregs of corruption, and become spiritual, and incorruptible, and glorious, and every way suited to the activity and perfection of a glorified soul and the "spirits of just men made perfect."

2. For the encouragement of obedience and a good life. Let the belief of this great article of our faith have the same influence upon us which St. Paul tells it had upon him. "I have hope to ward God that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust; and herein do I exercise myself always to have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man.” The firm belief of a resurrection to another life should make every one of us very careful how we demean ourselves in this life, and afraid to do any thing or to neglect any thing that may defeat our hopes of a blessed immortality, and expose us to the extreme and endless misery of body and soul in another life.

Particularly, it should be an argument to us, "to glorify God in our bodies and in our spirits ;" and to use the members of the one and the faculties of the other as "instruments of righteousness unto holiness." We should reverence ourselves, and take heed not only how we defile our souls by sinful passions, but how we dishonor our bodies by sensual and brutish lusts; since God hath designed so great an honor and happiness for both at the resurrection.

So often as we think of a blessed resurrection to eternal life, and the happy consequences of it, the thought of so glorious a reward should make us diligent and unwearied in the service of so good a Master and so great a Prince, who can and will prefer us to infinitely greater honors than any that are to be had in this world. This inference the Apostle makes from the doctrine of the resurrection. "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord; forasmuch as ye know that your labor shall not be in vain in the Lord."

Nay, we may begin this blessed state while we are upon earth, by "setting our hearts and affections upon the things that are above, and having our conversation in heaven, from whence also we look for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself."

"Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make us perfect in every good work to do His will, working in us always that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever. Amen."

DISCOURSE TWENTIETH.

ISAAC BARROW, D.D.

THE "first of English sermon-writers," as Barrow has been styled by high authority, was born the same year as Howe and Tillotson, 1630, in London. His idie habits and wayward disposition led his father to desire that "if it pleased God to take away any one of his children, it might be his son Isaac." His conduct, however, ultimately changed; and in 1649, as the fruit of patient application, he was chosen fellow of Trinity College. At this time he directed his special attention to medicine, natural philosophy, and mathematics, in which he became distinguished. He was, successively, professor in Cambridge and Gresham Colleges, and of a mathematical lecture, established at Cambridge which he resigned in favor of his friend, the great Isaac Newton. He then gave himself to divinity; and in 1672 was appointed Master of Trinity College and chaplain to the king. But his brilliant career was suddenly cut short; for in his forty-second year, after a brief illness, he expired. A marble monument, surmounted by a bust, was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey.

Coleridge remarks, that "Barrow must be regarded as closing the first great period of the English language." When Lord Chatham was asked the secret of his dignified and eloquent style, he replied, in part, that he had read some of Barrow's sermons as many as twenty times, and even learned them by heart. The critics are all agreed as to the superior merit of Barrow as a writer. Doddridge pronounces him the most laconic writer among the English divines. "Nothing," he adds, "is more elaborate than his discourses; most of them having been transcribed three times over, and some of them oftener." Says Dr. James Hamilton, his biographer, of the sermons of Barrow, "he must be singularly fa tilious, or singularly dull, who can read them without pleasure; and either perfect in eloquence, or prodigiously incapable of it, who can read them without advantage."

Barrow had traveled extensively, and, among other places, visited Constantinople where he spent twelve months. Here he fell in with the works of Chrysostom, the prince of preachers, and read page by page.

each folio of the great Greek Father. To this circumstance, beyond doubt, is attributable, in no small degree, the wondrous wealth of matter, and fertility of rhetorical illustration, every where met with in reading Barrow's discourses. Some are far superior to others; and most of them are wanting in richness of Evangelical doctrine, disappointing the reader in not evolving more clearly the great elements of the Gospel scheme. But, throughout, Barrow is a mine of gold and precious stones. He thoroughly exhausts his subject-some of his sermons requiring hours in their delivery and often rises to majestic heights of eloquence, which thrill with his own passion the soul of the reader. Perhaps no works extant are more deserving of careful perusal for the purpose of cultivating vigor, pith, nervousness and beauty of style, than those of Isaac Barrow. The sermon which follows is the second of two on the Death of Christ. It was the last which he preached, and is pronounced "the noblest specimen of sacred eloquence which has survived him." He is here treating of the manner and kind of Christ's death, having in the first sermon considered some of the "notable adjuncts." A few particulars in the opening are here omitted.

THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST.

"But we preach Christ crucified."-1 COR. i. 23.

I shall now proceed to handle the rest of the particulars which I proposed in the beginning of the last discourse.

I. We may consider that His suffering was most bitter and painful. We may easily imagine what acerbity of pain must be endured by our Lord, in His tender limbs being stretched forth, racked, and tentered, and continuing a good time in such a posture; by the "piercing His hands and feet," parts exquisitely sensible, with sharp nails (so that, as it is said of Joseph, the iron entered into His soul), by abiding exposed to the injuries of sun scorching, wind beating upon, weather searching His grievous wounds and sores; such a pain it was, and that no stupifying, no transient pain, but a pain very acute, and withal lingering; for we see that He, and those who suffered with Him, had both presence of mind and time to dis course; even six long hours did He continue under such torture, sustaining in each minute of them beyond the pangs of an ordinary death. But as the case was so hard and sad, so the reason thereof was great, and the fruit answerably excellent; our Saviour did embrace such a passion, that in being thus ready to endure the most

grievous smarts for us, He might demonstrate the vehemence of His love; that He might signify the heinousness of our sins, which deserved that from such a Person, so heavy punishment should be exacted; that He might appear to yield a valuable compensation for those everlasting tortures which we should have endured; that He might thoroughly exemplify the hardest duties of obedience and patience. Further,

II. We may consider this sort of punishment as most sharp and afflictive, so most vile and shameful; being proper to the basest condition of the worst men, and "unworthy (as Lactantius saith) of a freeman, however innocent or guilty." It was servile supplicium, a punishment never by the Romans, under whose law our Lord suf fered, legally inflicted upon freemen, but only upon slaves, that is, upon people scarce regarded as men, having in a sort forfeited or lost themselves; and among the Jews likewise, that execution which most approached thereto, and in part agreed with it (for they had not so inhuman punishment appointed by their law), hanging up the dead bodies of some who had been executed, was deemed most infamous and execrable; for, "cursed (said the Law) is every one that hangeth upon a tree;" cursed, that is, devoted to reproach and malediction; "accursed of God," it is in the Hebrew; that is, seeming to be deserted by God, or to be exposed to affliction by His special order.

Indeed, according to course of things, to be raised on high, and for continuance of time to be objected to the view of all that pass by, in that calamitous posture, doth breed ill suspicion, doth provoke censure, doth invite contempt, scorn, and obloquy; doth naturally draw forth language of derision, despite, and detestation, especially from the inconsiderate, rude, and hard-hearted vulgar; which commonly doth think, speak, deal with men, according to event and appearance, whence to be made a gazing stock, or object of reproach to the multitude, is accounted by the Apostle as an aggravation of the hardships endured by the primitive Christians: and thus in the highest degree did it happen to our Lord; for we read that the people did in that condition mock, jeer, and revile Him; they drew up their noses, they shot out their lips, they shaked their heads at Him; they let out their wicked and wanton tongues against Him; verifying that prediction in the Psalm, "I am a reproach of men, and despised of the people; all they that see Me laugh Me to scorn; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted in the Lord, that He would deliver him; let Him deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him :" in this case the same persons who