It is just so in religion. Salvation is an individual work; and destruction is an individual work. Satan plies his powers not on a community as an abstract thing, but on the individual, as if there were but one, and as if he had nothing else to do but to ruin that one soul. The man that becomes an infidel is an individual. The young female that is seduced from virtue is an individual. The young men that are made intemperate or licentious are individuals; and there is as definite and distinct a work in reference to each one as if he were the solitary dweller on earth. When the great tempter approached the bowers of Eden, he felt that if he was to be successful, he must approach the mother of mankind as an individual; he must find her alone. So the great poet sings:

And ever since, the work of destruction has been, and must be, a work on individual minds.

And so in the salvation of men. It is a work that pertains to individuals. Christ died for individuals; and each one who is brought to heaven is to be renewed, sanctified, guided, defended, as if he were alone. That child in your family is to be converted. That member of your Sunday school class is to be saved. That brother is to be renewed. That sister, daughter, wife, is to be brought to love the Saviour. These thousands and tens of thousands round about us, are individuals, and are to be saved as such. In each case it is an individual work. It is not a vague, intangible, unmeaning, and abstract generality. It is the work of saving individual sinners from the horrors of eternal despair; and each one is to be saved by the same anxiety, and effort, and prayer as if he were alone.

There is a fourth and final remark which I will make, in accordance with the views advanced in this discourse. It is this, that there is a large field of Christian effort, in which, without sacrificing any principle pertaining to you as an individual, you may co-operate with others in promoting the great end of all social organization. You labor on your own farm, or in your workshop, or in your own office or study, and promote your own welfare, and the good of your family. Yet, in entire consistency with your own

individual plans, you unite with your neighbors in building a bridge, or making a road for the public good; in erecting a school-house where your children may be educated together; or in building a church where you may worship God. You have your own views of poetry, architecture, and the arts. You have your own ways of tilling your ground, and your own theory about the succession of crops, and about the time of sowing your wheat. You build your barn and your apiary in your own way; and yet you can unite with your neighbor in promoting education, and temperance, and the love of peace-for then you meet on common ground. You are a Calvinist, and in your own place may maintain and enjoy your views of religion, and seek to promote them, and defend them when you are attacked in the best way you can. Another is an Arminian, and with equal freedom has a right to maintain his own principles, and make them the basis of his joys and hopes; but still, there are more vital points in which you agree than there are in which you differ; and you may stand up side by side in defending your common Christianity in opposition to all "Infidels, Jews, Greeks or Mohammedans ;" in distributing the Bible, the charter of your common hopes; in maintaining everywhere the doctrine of human depravity; the fact of the atonement, and the necessity of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and the duty of holy living. You are a Presbyterian, not from chance, and not because you deem your principles of no value, and not worth defending; and yet with Methodist, and Episcopal, and Baptist brethren, and with all "who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity," you can see that there is common ground which you can take in regard to the government of God, and the atonement, and the character of man, and the nature of true religion, and the doctrines of future retribution. Here we may stand together, compromising no principles; affecting not our influence as individuals; but blending our power into one, as beams of light come out from the sun and mingle together, pouring the flood of day on these worlds-yet capable, if we choose to do it, of being divided by the prism into red, and orange, and yellow, and green, and blue, and indigo, and violet, and all made up in fact of such rays; or as many little individual rivulets hasten down from the mountains to form the mighty river as it rolls on to the

ocean.

DEATH AND THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

BY REV. ISAAC HEADLEY.

EVERY shadow has a substance, and every substance a shadow, when light is reflected upon it. There is death, and there is the shadow of death, when that light which Christ has shed on the tomb is reflected upon it. "It is appointed unto all men once to die." And there never have been but two exceptions among all the countless millions of former generations; and we have no reason to believe there will ever be another, until the resurrection morn, when the bodies of those who are alive will experience a change equivalent to death:

To the impenitent, dying is a double death; for all their hopes and expectations die and perish with them, and they sink down into all the horrors of the second death. It is a fearful thing for a person and his hopes to expire together. To such, death is indeed the king of terrors.

But not so with dying believers; though they too must pass through the valley, yet faith enables them to do it without fear or dismay, for it is only the shadow of death through which they pass into their long-desired and wished-for home, and rest with their God and Saviour in heaven; hence they can say with the Psalmist, "Though I walk through the valley and shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." Although the Christian knows he must die; must put off this earthly tabernacle before he can enter heaven; must have a conflict with death; and although he knows he must fall in the conflict, yet faith assures him though he falls he will conquer-will gain the victory, through the Captain of his salvation, who has won it for him; he can therefore by anticipation shout the triumph even before he engages in the conflict, "O death, where is thy sting; O grave, where is thy victory?" As the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law; and as Christ has become the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth; hence he has disarmed sin of its power, and death of its sting.

To real Christians death has, as it were, changed his form, yea, even lost his substance, and nothing of him is left but his shadow; sleep, merely the image of death. It is death, not the Christian that dies. He just begins to live; he falls asleep in Jesus, and his soul

awakes in immortal life, glory and blessedness, where death can never enter or have any more dominion over him forever. Death is not only a conquered enemy, but he is also transmuted into a friend. Death is yours," saith the apostle; yours to deliver you from all sin, sorrow, and suffering; yours to introduce you into the presence of your God and Saviour, and into all the pure and holy joys and felicities of heaven.

Who would not wish to die the death of the righteous, and have their last end like his? And whose inmost soul does not shudder at the thought of dying the death of the wicked, and have his last end and final portion like theirs? What cause have we to thank God for giving to feeble, dying mortals, such a victory over the monster death, as to enable them to contemplate the closing scene of life not only with composure, but with pleasing anticipation, "having a desire to depart and be with Christ.' And many oth

ers, "who through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage," yet when the time of their departure drew near, and they were about to step down into the lone valley, have found death so disarmed of his sting, and disrobed of his terror, that they could, while passing through his shadow, triumphantly sing

"Lord, lend your wings, I mount! I fly!

O grave! where is thy victory!
O death! where is thy sting!"

O what a debt of love, gratitude and praise do we owe the everblessed Saviour, who has purchased all this for us by his own sufferings and death; he encountered and conquered death in his most horrid forms, that he might give his faithful followers an easy and triumphant victory over him.-N. Y. Evangelist.

NATIONAL PREACHER.

No. 8. VOL. XXIV.

AUGUST, 1850.

WHOLE NO. 528.

.

SERMON XV.

BY SAMUEL M. WORCESTER, D.D.,

PASTOR OF THE TABERNACLE CHURCH, SALEM, MASS.

THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE.*

"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh; (for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds ;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."-2 COR. x. 3-5.

IN the "lively oracles," both earlier and later, "the knowledge of God" denotes or implies true religion. As used by the apostles, it is but another expression for the gospel, or "the truth as in Jesus." Evidence of this we have in the text, and in many other passages of the New Testament.

"The knowledge of God," important as it is to the welfare of man, both in this life and the future, has never had free course. "The carnal mind," because of its "enmity against God," has desperately resisted "the grace that bringeth salvation, teaching us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world." With a very obvious, if not also a peculiarly impressive significance, in the times of Paul, the self-denying and perilous exertions and exposures of himself and other followers of Christ were represented as a "warfare,"themselves, as "soldiers,"-their means of operation and defence as "swords" and "helmets,"-and even the "Prince of Peace,"their Leader and Lord--as the "Captain of Salvation."

What the apostle intended by "strongholds" is partially intimated by what he says of "imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God." There can be no doubt, that he comprehends in this description all the vain speculations, conceits, devices, and pretenses of self-righteousness, selfsufficiency, and self-delusion; in short, everything which can be arraigned in opposition to "the truth of God and the faith of

Jesus."

And how did he and his associates prosecute their "warfare" against "spiritual wickedness?" Although "in the flesh," and therefore subject to many and great infirmities and temptations, they did not strive to obtain their "incorruptible crown," or to accom* Preached before the Massachusetts Pastoral Association, at Boston, May 28, 1850.