have too many enemies in this world to allow to peace a secure resting-place. They assault and banish it. They frustrate and abuse it. No wonder then that it comes not when we call for it. The cry is unheard and misery follows.

Alas! those enemies, armed with ten thousand weapons to sting and goad us, are almost every where met, in the assembly and in solitude; in sickness and in health; in joy and in sorrow. They are around, beneath, and within us. They are, in fact, ready in all places and at all times; and, unless we repel them steadily, will ultimately prevail against us. We become enemies one of another, and commit, if not mutual destruction, at least those violences which may lead to mutual destruction; often too upon the most trivial occasions, and as often upon the very slightest grounds. The Christian principle of love, if understood, is little illustrated in our practice; so little, indeed, that true friends are, by comparison, rarely seen in the world. Those alliances of sympathy and those bonds of affection by which we ought to be united, and which religion is, above all things, calculated to establish, are found at remote intervals, as spare exceptions to what ought to be the prevailing law; the wide space between those intervals being, for the most part, occupied by foes who do their best to harass us and one another, to our and their mutual dissatisfaction and distrust. Thus are enmities

rife among us. Strifes abound. Vexations mul

tiply. If men do not commonly rejoice in each other's misfortunes, they certainly feel little sympathy for those on whom misfortunes fall; much less do they try to ameliorate them, however heavily they may press. I refer to persons generally. I deny not that there are exceptions:there are many, though few by comparison with the aggregate of living agents. There are no doubt great exceptions too, as well as many, but of such it is not my purpose now to speak. We have all of us numerous foes; many more, in truth, than we need have, if we would only adopt the proper methods to disarm their acrimony and to assuage their hostility, by the due exercise of Christian charity. All spiritual enemies are to be resisted; all personal should be conciliated. The latter may be often won to reverence, where they are provoked to scorn. Over the former we shall accomplish no triumph, if we do not obtain the aid of Him who alone can render us "more than conquerors."

Death is our "last enemy," yet the most fearful. He is our last, because he takes us from the life we love, demands the forfeiture which we are commonly so reluctant to pay; reduces the body to its original elements; thus baffling all further hostility against it, in this mortal condition. He cuts short our progress in the march of time. His assaults are the last which our humanity is doomed to experience. They are brief but conclusive; often indirect, but always certain. They

terminate our day of grace, our period of hope, our term of trial. After this no grace will be vouchsafed; hope will be absorbed in consummation; trial will be succeeded by glory. When "the silver cord shall be loosed" that unites in life's mysterious links both heart and spirit, all worldly enmities shall cease. The former "shall return to the earth as it was," and the latter "shall return to the God who gave it."

No man can successfully resist this last great adversary; yet he will be eventually destroyed. There will be an end to his dominion. That fiat which proclaimed the doom of all things, proclaimed, likewise, the doom of Death. His short but conspicuous epitaph will be read in the ruins of a crumbling universe. He will extend his fiery wings over the globe, and amid the awful combustion, as the ashes of a consuming world are scattered into the darkened void of uncreated night, he himself will expire. He will raise his own funeral pile, and "reap to himself" destruction from the seeds of ruin scattered by him over the beautiful framework of creation. The King of Terrors has no immortal dominion, except in the world of outcast spirits. There, under a new aspect, he will sit enthroned. There his function will be torture, not destruction. Death temporal will cease for ever; Death eternal will "abide continually." Let us remember this, and beware that we come not within the sphere of his dreadful supremacy in the life everlasting.

Death, then, that is, the death of our mortal bodies-is not a final, but only a temporary, dissolution; the separation for an interval, of soul and body, which shall be restored at the general Resurrection, when "all that are in their graves shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation."

Then shall our "last enemy" be destroyed. Time and he shall cease together. Eternity

shall embrace and absorb the one; total destruction shall involve and close the dominion of the other. Neither shall subsist any longer. All things shall be put under subjection to Christ, the Creator of all; the Redeemer of all; the Judge of all. The universe shall be his footstool, and He shall crush it into the chaos, out of which it originally sprang, when called into being by the breath of His nostrils. He is an universal conqueror. Sin and Satan shall finally yield to the might of His omnipotence. Before Him even death shall succumb. "God hath put all things under his feet." The world, the flesh, with all their host of pleasures and of appetites, will be subdued by him. He will vanquish many foes, before "the great day of the Lord shall come." He will obtain numberless triumphs. He will accomplish innumerable defeats. But "the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."

Let us pause a moment to notice what kind of enemy is here spoken of. It is the last-that is,

the last in time; for, in eternity, there is one which shall never be destroyed. There is a 66 worm that dieth not."

Death was the enemy introduced into the world by sin. It was the fearful issue of the Devil's triumph in paradise. That triumph let in a host of evils upon the living world, every one bearing the seeds of mischief; all armed with the fatal elements of ruin. Before that sad victory over innocence, death reigned not. He had no existence; though he has since become a crowned monarch. His sceptre is a symbol of terror; his crown no crown of glory. What does he? Need I tell you? Listen, while I feebly attempt to pourtray his power. He threatens in the thunder; he acts in the lightning; and displays his awful energy in the storm. Accidents are his agents. Contingencies are his ministers. Vices are his instruments. He sets disease at work, to prepare victims for the sepulchre. He employs sorrow and destitution to turn "the house of mirth" into a "house of mourning." He ascends the high places of the land as well as the cotter's hut, leaving in each the odours and deformity of corruption. He separates soul and body long united; intimately associated-associated for immortality; defeating the first intention; tearing them asunder, often with the arm of violence; casting one to the worm, which shall gorge upon it in its unseemly decay; releasing the other to a destiny, depending upon the issue of that union