of Africa to our own continent, the deep must be strewn, and the bottom of the sea, at some portions of the way, paved with the remains of those who have been torn from their country and home, by the orders or connivance of the slave-trader, to perish on the ocean. In the day of the resurrection that galaxy of skeletons will rise; and the voice of wailing and accusation, stilled for centuries beneath the waters, will be lifted up to be stilled no more forever. And so it may be said of every other form of wickedness, of which those that sail in our ships are rendered the instruments or the victims. The keeper of the dram-shop, or the brothel, where the sailor is taught to forget God and harden himself in iniquity, will not find it a light thing, in that great day of retribution, to encounter those whom he made his prey. The seaman may not have died on the premises of his tempter, in drunken riot; but out upon the far ocean he may have carried the habits there acquired, and died, the victim of intemperance, or profligacy, in a climate far removed from that where he was first lessoned in the ways of ruin, sinking perhaps in a shipwreck, caused, as many shipwrecks have been caused, by the intoxication of the commander or his crew. But the sea does not contain all the victims among its sons, who have thus been destroyed by the vices learned of the landsman. Many a sailor thus corrupted has perished on shore in a drunken broil, or pined away in some foreign hospital, or ended his days in a prison. Human laws seized not on those who first ensnared him; but will divine laws be equally indulgent, or equally remiss? The literature of the shore will be called to account for its influence on the character and well-being of the seaman. The song writer, who, perhaps, a hungry and unprincipled scribbler, penned his doggerel lines in some garret, little careful except as to the compensation he should earn, the dirty pence that were to pay for his rhymes, will one day be made to answer for the influence that went forth from him to those who shouted his verses, in the night watch, on the far sea, or perchance upon some heathen shore. The infidel, who may have sat in elegant and lettered ease, preparing his attacks upon the Bible and the Saviour, thought little, probably, but of the fame and influence he should win upon the shore. But the seeds of death which he scattered may have been wafted whither he never thought to trace them. And in that day of retribution, he may be made to lament his own influence on the rude seaman whom he has hardened in blasphemy and impiety; and who has sported with objections derived by him at the second hand or third hand from such writers, whilst he figured amongst his illiterate and admiring companions, as the tarred Voltaire or Paine of the forecastle and the round-top, the merriest and boldest scoffer of the crew.

The meeting, then, of the dead of the land with the dead of the sea will be one of dread solemnity, because of the ties of kindred and influence that bound them together-and because multitudes of those buried in the deep died in the service of the landsman, or

in his defence, many by his neglect, and many as the victims of the varied wickedness in which he had instructed, hardened, or employed them. Those who have been allied in sin, and accomplices in transgression, will find it one of the elements of their future torment, to be associated together in the scenes of the last judgment, and in those scenes which lie beyond that day. The animosity, revenge, and hate of the unregenerate heart, then released from all restraint, and exasperated by despair, will find vent, and rage uncontrolled through the sinner's long eternity of woe.

In conclusion, let us dwell on some of the practical results of the theme we have considered.

1. The dead shall rise, all shall rise, and together. From the land and from the sea, wherever the hand of violence, or the rage of the elements have scattered human dust, shall it be reclaimed. And we rise to give account. We rise to be judged. If, my hearers, we would anticipate that judgment, we might, as the apostle assures us, escape it, "for if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.' If, feeling our sins, we do, as penitents, confess and forsake them, and flee to Christ and implore the Spirit, the dawn of that day will bring to us no terrors, and the sound of that trump be the welcome summons to a higher degree of blessedness. Cleansed in the Saviour's blood, renewed by the Spirit, and arrayed in the righteousness of Christ, we may in that day stand accepted, confident, and fearless. But, out of Christ, judgment will be dam

nation.

2. If the reappearance from the seas of the sinner, who perished in his sins, be a thought full of terror; is there not, on the other hand, joy in the anticipation of greeting those who have fallen asleep in Christ, but whose bones found no rest beneath the clods of the valley, and whose remains have been reserved under the waters until that day, while, over their undistinguished restingplace, old ocean with all its billows has for centuries pealed its stormy anthem? Then to see them freed from decay, and restored to the friends in Christ who had loved and bewailed them-this will be joy. Ensure, Christian parent, the conversion of your sea-faring child, and then, whatever may betide him, it shall be well. His body may rest as safely amid coral and sea-weed as in the churchyard; and his soul fly as swiftly to the bosom of Christ from the midst of engulfing waters, as from a death-bed, attended by all the watchfulness and all the tender sympathy of weeping friends.

3. This community especially owes a debt to that class of men, who go down to the sea in ships, and do business in the great waters. The providence of God seems to indicate that our city is yet to become the Tyre of this western world. Some have estimated the seamen who yearly visit our port at more than seventy

* 1 Cor. xi. 31.

thousand, and suppose the average number constantly in our harbor to be from three to five thousand. Contributing as they do to the comforts and prosperity of every home, and guarding, as in time of war they do, this commercial metropolis, do they not demand and deserve a still increasing share in our sympathies and aid?

4. It is, again, by no means the policy of the church, to overlook so influential a class, as that of our sea-faring brethren. They are in the path of our missionaries to the heathen. If converted, they might be amongst their most efficient coadjutors, as, whilst unconverted, they are among the most embarrassing hindrances the missionary must encounter. They have, it should be also remembered, in their keeping, the highways of the earth, along which travel its literature, its commerce, and its freedom. What would be thought of the statesmanship or patriotism of the man who, in time of war, would propose surrendering to the enemy all the roads and bridges of the land, in hopes of retaining possession of the rest of the territory? The mere proposal would be regarded as combining folly the most absurd, and treason the most disastrous. Yet what else is the church doing, if she relinquish the sea-faring class to the influence of sin and to the will of the destroyer of souls? She would be proposing virtually a most ruinous truce with Satan, when resigning these to his unresisted control, and when offering to abandon to his keeping the keepers of the highways of the

nations.

5. While humbled in the review of her past negligence, and in the sense of present deficiencies, as to her labors for the seaman, the church has yet cause for devout thankfulness in the much that has recently been done for the souls of those who go down to the sea in ships, and in the perceptible change that has already been wrought in the character of this long-neglected class of our fellowcitizens and fellow-immortals. God has poured out his Spirit even on the incipient and uncertain efforts of his people; and from many a cabin and forecastle the voice of prayer even now ascends, and on many a deck the words of this salvation are read. Let us not be weary in well-doing."

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6. And now, lastly, we ask each of you: In that day, when earth and sea shall meet heaven in the judgment, where do you propose to stand? Among the saved, or the lost-the holy, or the sinful-at the right hand of the Judge, or at his left? Purposes of partial reformation or of future repentance cannot save you. Christ is now willing to be gracious. He who will at last appear as the Judge, now comes as the Redeemer. He is now an Advocate; soon he will be the Avenger. Heaven stoops to win you. Hell rises to allure and destroy you. Oh, yield not to Satan. Reject not Christ; for the Judge is at the door. And not this soul only of yours, but this body also must live-must live forever; and can you wish it to live in endless, hopeless misery? A throb

bing brow, or an aching tooth, are now sufficient to embitter all the enjoyments of life. What will it be when the whole body is cast into torment? Can you desire to meet your impenitent friends, to spend an eternity together in growing hate and mutual recrimination to face your pious friends, a godly father, or a praying mother, and catch your last glance of hope, your last sight of happiness, as you see them mounting to glory, whilst you sink yourselves into a sea of fire-the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone forever and ever?

V.

THE SCRIPTURAL ESTIMATE OF PHILOSOPHY.

BY REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D. D.

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE PURITANS, NEW YORK.

"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."-COL. ii. 8.

THE glorious richness of the epistle of Paul to the Colossians is all owing to the fulness and vastness of its presentation of Christ. The glory of Christ there rises like a sea of light, and swallows up everything else in its bosom, and on its waves the soul is borne onward, entranced, itself, in glory. And as this epistle begins with the supremacy, the infinite pre-eminence, the all-in-all-ness of Christ, in all worlds, all beings, and all things, in all God's universe, and then applies, out of this infinitude of glory and absoluteness of reign, the consequent rule of perfection and obedience for believers in Christ, so the first thing we are to consider, prior to opening the leaves of this text, is the completeness of the Christian in Christ, and the all-in-all-ness of Christ to the Christian.

"Ye are complete in him." All your real need is to be in Christ, and all your anxiety should be, to be rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith in him, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. For he is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning of grace, and the completion of glory. All that we need, for time and eternity, we find in him; and he is made unto us, of God, our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. This secures our independence of all mere human wisdom. You are entirely superior to that, you have no need of that, just in proportion as you are rooted and grounded in Christ, and have access, by faith in him, through the ministration of the Spirit, to the unsearchable riches of his Word, and all God's treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Ye are complete in him; and therefore, when men come to you in all the puffing majesty and parade of human science and speculation, beguiling you with enticing words, and assuring you that this or that philosophy or speculation must be mastered by you, before you will comprehend the genius of Christianity, or that it is only through this or that ingenious theory, as through a new-constructed telescope, that you can see Christ Jesus as he is, or the wonders of