E are here convened to dwell on themes of deepest moment, to engage in heavenly ministrations, and to redeem a few sweet hours from the evil days of earth's corroding cares. How sacred the moments which are thus ransomed through the divine and pervading efficacy of the name of Jesus--of him by whom we are ourselves redeemed from death and ransomed from the grave! To him may they each one be consecrated! To him may each one bear the tribute of its praise!

      It is here that solemn thoughts become us! It is here that soul-absorbing themes await us in the vestibule of heaven to lead us to the inner temple of the divine abode. It is here that we [105] are presented with the memorials of that death omnipotent which has doomed the grave itself to desolation and forever abolished the domination of the powers of darkness. It is here that we are permitted to approach that perennial fountain of love from which we derive eternal life and joy.

      How solemn should be our thoughts of futurity! How serious our communings with the unseen world to whose eternal shores we hasten! How mysterious the gloom in which it is enshrouded! How eventful the moment when that gloom shall vanish from before the unsealed vision of the soul! Surely that approaching future may command our soberest thought, and claim our deepest and most strict regard! Surely its immutable decisions may well engross the hopes and fears of deathless beings awakened to the dread realities which Truth reveals!

      Who can contemplate the dissolution of the material frame without emotion! Who can meditate upon the inevitable hour of death, and prepare to resign this pleasing, anxious being without one longing gaze of fond remembrance! [106] But, ah! if death be momentous, how much more solemn is the thought of life! How much more serious the reflection that we live--that we are raised from the senseless dust to breathe the vital air; to gaze upon the works of God; to hear his words; to move, and act, and feel; to realize that we are moral and responsible beings, that our every word and action is chronicled in heaven, and every thought reported by an unseen but unerring stenographer of the soul! Ah! no; it is not death, the sleep of mortality; it is not the calm and dreamless repose of the tomb, nor peaceful rest in the bosom of Abraham from the sorrows of the world, that may be truly deemed of serious moment in comparison of life!

      Yet, ah! how few there are who truly realize the dread mystery of life, and the momentous character of its eternal results! How many sport with time! How many waste away the sacred hours of life in thoughtless levity, or in the dreamy stupor of unawakened ignorance and unconscious guilt!

      Salutary may be the repose of the body, but the sleep of the soul is fatal. And, ah! how [107] often doth the soul sleep--exposed, unwatched, and undefended--to become a prey to the spiritual assassin, or a hapless prisoner manacled with fetters of dark despair! How often doth even the Christian slumber, lulled by the treacherous cup of earthly pleasure, and insensible to the life, and light, and joy of that divine radiance which shines forever in the blissful realms of the King eternal, immortal, and invisible! How important, then, the admonition to those that wake, to watch and pray lest the sleep of the soul should steal upon them and steep their spiritual sensibilities in lethal oblivion; and how appropriate to each of those who sleep, the solemn call: "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light!" [108]

[CITS 105-108]