Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live forever? But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? And they returned and said, Like as the Lord of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so he hath dealt with us....ZECH. i. 5, 6.

REFLECTIONS, upon the shortness of human life,

and the uncertainty of sublunary enjoyments, naturally present themselves, in the various changes which we daily observe, and daily feel. But alas, our reflections are too superficial and transitory, to produce habitual superiority to the world, uniform submission to the will of God, and efficacious impressions of eternity. Wasting and decaying every hour, we form and prosecute schemes for futurity, as if " our strength were the strength of stones, and our bones brass." Reasoning and reflecting as men, we live and act as children; and pursue the bauble of the moment, as if it were the pearl of great price." When the drama of human life

is ended, and the curtain drops, lo, it has shrunk to a measure so small, and contains events of so little importance, that it is difficult to render a reason why man should have existed at all; and we are constrained to cry out with the psalmist, "Verily, every man at his best state is altogether vanity; surely every man walketh in a vain shew; surely they are disquieted in vain," Psalm xxxix. 6, 7.

But my text greatly relieves this apparent insignificancy of our fleeting existence in this world, by conveying to us this important idea, that the Divine Providence is carrying on its great and wise designs, by feeble, short-lived, and even worthless instruments. And the date of our latter end is wisely and mercifully hid from our eyes; and every man is taught to consider himself, his life, his actions, as of importance, that we may exert ourselves to the last, and " do with our might whatsoever our hands findeth to do." Though our fathers are no more, and the prophets do not live forever, yet the words and statutes which God commanded his servants the prophets, " took hold of our fathers, and they returned and said, Like as the Lord of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways and according to our doings, so he hath dealt with us.' This leads us, in a direct road, to make a just estimate of the lives and actions of other men; and to consider seriously how we ought to order our own conversation, how we ought to spend our own days and years.

In the preceding Course of these Lectures, we endeavored, beginning at Adam, and ending with Abraham, historically to delineate, and practically to improve, the lives of those venerable men, by whom the world was first peopled, instructed, and governed: and who, in their persons, by their actions, or the events which befel them, successively typified, or foretold to their contemporaries, the great Saviour and Deliverer of the human race, during a period of more than two thousand years. By entering into the spirit of the

prophet Zechariah, in the words now read, we shall be enabled to review that period with profit and delight. And this review shall serve to introduce the history of the other lives, which the sacred volume, in succession, presents to our observation, and has sketched for our information and improvement.

*

In Adam, we behold at once our natural first father, and our federal head: from whom, as men, our existence is derived, and by whose conduct our character has been deeply affected, and our state in some respects determined. "Our father Adam, where is he?" He fulfilled his day, he accomplished the purposes of the eternal mind, he then fell asleep, and is now seen no more. But however remote the date of his formation, and of his death; however distant from us the region in which he lived; however apparently unconnected with us in interest, in fame, or fortune, we are, we know, we feel ourselves deeply involved in what he was, in what he did. In Adam, we all died; we all forfeited a natural, and lost a spiritual and divine life : and, in Adam, we received the promises which have since been fulfilled, and to him first were opened prospects, which the course of providence has realized, even the restoration of our fallen nature, by one "greater man," who has regained for us seats more blissful than those from which by transgression he fell; namely, the "seed of the woman, who has bruised the serpent's head." Our first father, where is he? Lost indeed to us, but not to God. All traces of him, excepting those only which perpetuate the memory of his guilt and its woful consequences, are effaced and forgotten; but his station before God remains unchanged, his importance undiminished. Dead to us, he lives to Him, with whom "a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years."

Can we meditate upon the first man who was created apon the earth, without rising in our thoughts to Him who created him out of the dust of the ground, and

"breathed into his nostrils the breath of life? And who has of one blood formed all nations of men to inhabit upon the face of the whole earth." Can we think of our father after the flesh; and not connect with him the idea of our Father who is in heaven? Is not the painful recollection of him in whom all died, happily relieved and done away by reflecting on the glorious second Adam, in whom an elect world is made alive! And O, how is the loss of an earthly paradise compensated by the promise of "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness;" that paradise of God, in the midst of which grows the tree of life, always blossoming, always bearing fruit, and exempted from the dangerous neighborhood of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Our brother Abel, where is he? Cut off in the bloom of life; fallen, fallen by the hand of a brother; but immortal by his faith and piety, qualities not liable to the stroke of death. "By faith he offered to God" an excellent and an acceptable sacrifice. In presenting the firstlings of his flock, he had a respect to the great Lamb of atonement, and thereby, "being dead he yet speaketh." Prematurely taken away, but not for a crime; a victim to malice and envy, he typified, Messiah, the Prince, cut off, but not for himself," crucified and slain in the prime of life, by the impious hands of his nearest kindred. And, living under the influence of the same principle, we too shall become immortal, shall endure as seeing Him who is invisible, and present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable service," Rom. xii. 1.

In the life, and more particularly in the exit of the patriarch Enoch, life and immortality were more clearly brought to light. Hitherto, men had terminated their earthly course by descending into the grave and seeing corruption. But, when we come to inquire concerning Enoch, "where is he?" The scriptures reply,