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Son of God, brother to us; that so he might dispense God's grace, and purchase our peace!" Lord, to "whom" else, then, "shall we go? Thou hast"thou only canst have" the words of eternal life."

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DISCOURSE XXV.

THE EXISTENCE AND EMPLOYMENT OF THE
HOLY ANGELS.

REVELATION, VII. 11.

All the angels stood round the throne.

AMONG the festivals of our church, we find one celebrated at this season of the year in honour of the holy angels. To justify such her appointment, and point out to you the many advantages to be obtained from it, is the design of the following discourse; in which some thoughts shall be offered on the existence of angels, their nature and condition, the perfect obedience paid by them to God, and the kind services rendered to man.

And, first, respecting the existence of angels.

It is needless to trouble you with the opinions of the Heathen concerning beings of this kind; because they could utter nothing but what was either merely conjectural, or else derived to them by tradition from an original revelation. We have better guides; we can go to the fountain head. Conjecture is useless where certainty can be had; and tradition is of no account when the revelation itself is before us.

Nor does it seem at all necessary, by a long series

of texts to demonstrate that there are such beings as angels. They who have ever looked into the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, can have no doubt upon this head. The fact is clear: our business shall be to convince you that it is interesting.

For it may be said, perhaps, to what purpose discourse to us concerning the inhabitants of a world future, remote, and of which our ideas are very confused and indeterminate? Let us rather attend to the world in which we live, and to them that dwell therein.

It would be perfectly right so to do, if the world in which we live were the only one with which we were connected, and death the final period of our existence. But no one person, I dare say, who now hears me, seriously imagines this to be the case. And if there be another world which is to receive us for ever, after our departure hence, the existence of its inhabitants, with whom we are to spend an eternity, becomes a speculation both pleasing and important. The state of our being, you say, is future. It is so to-day; but before to-morrow it may be present to some: a very few years must render it present to all. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the change is effected: every connexion with this world is dissolved, and we become at once citizens of another, and members of a society altogether new. You say it is remote. That by no means appears. It may not be far from every one of us.' A man who had lived always in the darkness of a prison, and only heard of the world we now enjoy, might fancy, from

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all which his own experience taught him, that it must needs be remote; whereas, nothing more would be requisite to convince him of his mistake, than to open the doors of his prison-house and lead him forth to liberty and the sun. Could a child in its mother's womb be made sensible it was to be born into a new world, it might entertain the same prejudice respecting the supposed distance; but when the appointed time for its birth came, a single instant would show that it was only a prejudice. The spiritual and eternal world, into which we are, at a destined hour, to be born, may be, like its Divine Maker and King, near us, and round about us, in a manner of which we are not aware, nor shall be till we enter it; till we burst the intervening shell, and all the glories of the invisible system present themselves to view.

But our ideas of this future world are confused and indeterminate. Not more so than those conceived by the man in prison, or the child in the womb, could it conceive any, of the present world in which we live; not more so, than the ideas formed of things not seen, by comparison with things seen. We have the divine assurance of God's word that such a world exists; and the pictures there drawn of it, if we considered them as we ought to do, must make us impatient to behold the original.

But the truth is, that whatever ideas of a future and invisible world may be, at certain times, impressed upon our minds, they are presently effaced by a tide of business or pleasure, and stand therefore in need of being continually refreshed and re

newed. Now, what can do this so effectually as frequent meditations on the blessed inhabitants of that world, the holy angels? We love to recollect a place by the circumstance of those friends we have in it. By thinking of them, we are led to think of the place where they are, and learn to love and desire it the An intercourse is by this means opened, a correspondence established, between heaven and

more.

earth.

And here give me leave to ask, whether we are not often guilty of neglecting and forgetting, in a manner unkind, at least, our friends who are gone before us to a better country? When once they are departed, we suffer the remembrance of them soon to slip our minds, as if we thought they ceased any longer to exist. To pray for the dead seems needless and absurd, unless we supposed their condition in another life still undetermined, and that they were undergoing pains, from which our prayers might contribute to release them. But to commemorate the day of their departure; to think of them, and their situation; to recollect their virtues, and express our wishes of seeing and being with them again, in God's good time-this surely would be an exercise equally pious and profitable, and to which no good protestant can have any reasonable objection. The spirits of the just, when gone hence, are with the angels; should think of them together, invigorating at once our faith, our hope, and our charity. Thus much for the instruction and consolation to be derived from the Scripture doctrine of the existence of angels. Still more will be derived from a consideration,

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