THE BRITISH PULPIT: A COLLECTION OF SERMONS BY THE MOST EMINENT DIVINES OF THE PRESENT DAY. IN SIX VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: PRINTED FOR THOMAS TEGG, 73, CHEAPSIDE. 1844. THE PULPIT. THE NATURE OF THE HEAVENLY REST. REV. J. SANDFORD, A. M. LONG ACRE CHAPEL, JUNE 8, 1834. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."-REV. xiv. 13. THE subject of the text, my friends, is surely interesting to us; it embraces considerations common to all; it comes home to every heart and bosom, and to it the sensibilities of all are certain to respond. Other topics will engage attention in proportion as they suit the individual bias; but this is sure, more or less, to affect all men. All know that they must die, and that according as they are found in death, will be their final portion. We are all, therefore, susceptible of the impressions which the scenes and memorials of mortality effect: and these impressions are rather connected with a sense of our individual liability to the event which is recorded, than to any of the circumstances which may, or may not, accompany it, and invest it with an adventitious importance; such we mean as our previous acquaintance with the deceased, or the sight of the distress of surviving relatives, or the melancholy experience of external woe, or the awful solitude of the place of interment. In the receptacles of the dead, where the dust of many generations is contained, and wherever the eye wanders it lights upon some grim emblem of death, a sentiment of awe will be experienced, not necessarily connected with thoughts of our individual mortality or when we are associated with a company of mourners at a funeral, and the sombre visage, and the whispered salutation, and the sable vestments, all indicate the sad occasion on which we are assembled, it may be difficult to determine how far our seriousness is attributable to the mere contagion of sympathy. But when we encounter death in the highways and thoroughfares of London, beneath the blaze and light of day, and with the scenes and the sounds of ordinary business and traffic around us; or when, in the crowass |