Now, says Job, if I were to do this, and wait for the accomplishment of your promises, I should be disappointed. Not that it would be in vain for me to serve God; but he would not appear for me in the way of which you speak. He will not deliver me from my present afflictions in this world; or recover me from the disorder under which I am ready to expire-No. The case is mortal and desperate-" If I wait, the grave is mine house."

see me no more.

The first

This leads us to make two remarks. connects itself with a passage which he presently uttered, and which has given rise to much dispute. I refer to his noble confession. There are some who contend, that he means only to express his hope of a temporal redemption, or the revival of his former greatness. But, in answer to this poor and low interpretation, not to observe the solemnity of the introduction, and the grandeur of the sentiment and diction, it is plain, not from a few, but many declarations, that Job entertained no expectation of being restored in this life. "The eye that seeth me, shall For now shall I sleep in the dust, and thou shalt seek me in the morning, and I shalt not be. My breath is corrupt, my days are extinct, the graves are ready for me. My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart. And where is now my hope? as for my hope, who shall see it?" "If I wait, the grave is mine house." He must therefore have a reference to the most glorious of all events when he says, "O that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter

day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me."

The second remark is, that when Job said, "If I wait, the grave is mine house," he was mistaken, Instead of a speedy dissolution, which he obviously looked for, "the Lord turned his captivity, and gavę him twice as much as he had before. And after this, Job lived an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations." How often, in the risings of his grace and of his providence, does he not only deliver, but surprise his people. The day seemed setting in with clouds and darkness, but at evening time it was light. "We would not, brethren," says Paul, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead: who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us." David, also, was soon able to refute his own unbelieving conclusion-"I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes nevertheless, thou heardest the voice of my supplication when I cried unto thee." And is there a Christian here, but can acknowledge, to his praise, that he has been better to him than his fears; and done for him exceeding abundantly, above all he was once able to ask or think?

-Yet Job's recovery, with regard to life, was not a cure. He was only reprieved. The sentence

Dust thou art, and

And thus, the words

was left suspended over him still unto dust shalt thou return." were true in his case "If I wait, the grave is mine house" and his house it was. And thus, my dear hearers, the words furnish a motto for each of you. Whatever be the object of your hope, here is your destination. You may wish, and you may wait; but here is the end of all your solicitudes. Whatever is your present abode, here is your last. You may now occupy a strait and mean tenement, or a large and splendid mansion: but you will neither be incommoded with the one, or delighted with the other, long-Here is the residence to which you are all hastening-hastening even while I speak-The grave is mine house. Let two things engage our attention.-Let us,

I. CONSIDER WHAT IS AWFUL AND REPULSIVE IN THE GRAVE.-And,

IT.

II. WHAT THE CHRISTIAN CAN FIND To relieve

I. CONSIDER WHAT IS AWFUL AND REPULSIVE IN THE GRAVE.

"The grave,

dread thing;

"Men shiver when thou'rt named. Nature appalled

"Shakes off her wonted firmness. Ah! how dark

Thy long-extended realms, and rueful wastes,

Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night.”

This is fine, but Job excels it. "Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death. A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness."

What a solemn grandeur pervades this representation! What an evidence does it furnish of Burke's observation, that obscurity is a source of the true sublime; and that, even in poetry, a powerful impression may be made, where no distinct imagery is presented. Let us take three views of the grave; they are all awful and affecting.

First, We may regard it as a monument of human guilt. What error can be named, that is not connected with diminishing apprehensions of sin? Hence we must seize every opportunity of producing the needful conviction, that it is an evil and bitter thing; evil with regard to God, and bitter with regard to ourselves. Men think lightly of it, but it is more poisonous than the gall of asps. They cannot be induced to hate it, and fear it: and yet they may constantly and easily see its hateful and fearful effects. If they will not believe in the hell that it has prepared for the devil and his angels in another world; they cannot deny the desolations it has produced among the children of men in this. Once all that moved upon the earth was buried in the deluge-Could you have witnessed the spectacle without horror? But the same sin which then destroyed all the human race at once, acts no less fatally now in killing them all successively and individually. The time is nothing, the execution is the same. Earthquakes, and wars, and pestilence, and famine, are of more rare occurrence, and few comparatively can view the effects: but you can all trace the ravages of disease; you can all see men going to their long home, and the mourners going about the streets. Repair to some Golgotha. Enter a church-yard.

Throw your eye over

the inscribed stones, and the turfed hillocks; think

of the undistinguished mass on which you tread-and then ask the question, which Jehu asked when he saw the remains of the sons of Ahab, "Who slew all these ?" Why every burying-ground, according to its size, is a jail with so many cells, some holding one, and some more prisoners: and they who are lodged there are not confined in consequence of a debt due to nature, but to the justice of God. There is no grave in heaven; there was no grave in paradise; and there would have been none in all the earth, but for sin. Man was indeed originally capable of dying, as his experience soon evinced; yet no accident without, and no malady within, would have endangered his being, or diminished his vigour, but for sin. While innocent, he was immortal-not from the inherency of any immutable properties of nature, but from the divine appointment and preservation, of which the tree of life in the midst of the garden was either the means or the pledge. "The wages of sin is death." "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death came on all, because all have sinned."

Secondly, We may view it as a state of extreme degradation. Whatever we are invested with, we must be despoiled of all at the gate of the grave. Even the costly and tempting attire that ministered so much to the vanity of the wearer, and the danger of the beholder, is here stripped off; and if any substitute be allowed, it is the shroud and the windingsheet-though thousands are denied even these. "We brought nothing with us into the world, and it is certain we shall carry nothing out." "As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he re