ment of possibly conflicting interests, toiling for twenty-seven years with unsparing faithfulness, in weariness and painfulness often, in afflictions, in anxieties, in sicknesses, until at length the overtasked frame gave way-the silver cord was loosed, and the pitcher broken at the fountain; it is not strange that the intelligence of his death vibrated painfully through the heart of the Church, and especially through the hearts of those who have been the special objects of his prayers and labors throughout the Home Missionary field. It is not for us to measure the relative influence of men in different departments of labor; but no one can doubt that, though never filling the pastoral office, yet, considering his connection with the vast work of supplying the destitute throughout the land with an evangelical ministry, and considering too his eminent qualifications for the office he filled so long, few if any can have accomplished more for the cause of Christ than he. Seldom has there been exhibited a more striking example of what an undivided purpose and an eye single to the glory of God will enable a man to accomplish.

Your thoughts, my brethren, anticipate me as they turn to the office in this Assembly made vacant by death. Dr. E. W. GILBERT held the office of Permanent Clerk of the Assembly from the memorable era of disruption, 1838, to his death. Long will his memory be cherished by all that knew him. We love to speak of his kindness and patience, of his promptness and fidelity, of his deep solicitude and earnest love for the Church of his affections, her order, her doctrines, her peace and her prosperity. I must be permitted in this public manner to express my own personal obligations for the timely suggestions of his riper experience, in the discharge of the duties to which I was called by the last Assembly. But it is to his language, in immediate view of death that I call your special attention. If I ever preach again,

is his language, I will preach Christ more. I have preached too

much to the intellect, too little to the heart. Thus to us all, will this work of preaching appear, as we look back from the bed of death. Could he have known, when we were about to dissolve the last Assembly, in a few months his work on earth would be at an end, I doubt not he would have arrested our proceedings by an appeal which would have thrilled our every heart.-Brethren, preach Christ more! And now from that bed of death he speaks to us in the earnestness of a soul that was seeing earthly things in the light of eternity, "Brethren, preach Christ more. Know nothing among men, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified."

SERMON DCXXVII.

BY REV. A. ELMENDORF,

PASTOR OF THE NORTH REFORMED DUTCH CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. Y.

THE EXCESS OF FUTURE GLORY OVER PRESENT SUFFERING. “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."-Rom. viii. 18.

THIS is not the language either of the feelings or of the imagination, but of a faith which is "the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen." It was uttered by that remarkable man whom the Son of God constituted a chosen vessel to bear his name "before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel," and respecting whom, he who has all power in heaven and earth, in the day of his conversion, said, "I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake." From that hour to the one when he gave expression to the words before us, embracing a long interval, he trod a path of thorns and stemmed the floods of affliction. His enemies hated and hunted him wherever he went; they treated him like a felon and an outlaw; they waylaid him on his journeys, dragged him before magistrates, stripped and scourged him in public assemblies; heaped on him every indignity, subjected him to every outrage, and inflicted on him every cruelty which a satanic ingenuity could invent or a ferocious hand could execute. Disaster, malevolence, and injury, seemed his heritage,-until, in tracing the record of his griefs, though they had by no means yet reached their consummation, he wrote," of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods; once was I stoned; thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches." Out of the depths of such an experience, but with a heart lustrous with the hope of immortality, and the blessedness of the eternal future beaming upon his spirit, Paul exclaimed, "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.'

The great theme of the chapter from which the text is taken, is the security of the believer,-the validity of his title to eternal life, a statement of the evidences which prove his right to it, and a protracted and glowing argument to show that nothing in all the universe shall exclude him from its possession. Having reached the very climax of the Christian's privileges, in asserting that he is an heir of God, and a joint heir with Jesus the elderborn son, the thought seems to occur to the Apostle's mind, that the afflictions incident to the present condition of the believer, may appear discordant with his exalted destiny, when he, at once, declares the necessity of these afflictions as a prerequisite to the end in question,-in the words, "If so be that we suffer with Christ that we may, also, be glorified together;" and then follows the language of the text,-in our reflections on which, we remark,

I. That the Apostle does not design here to underrate the sufferings of the Christian, either in respect of their real nature or their distressing effects on the present happiness of their subject. He does not mean either to adopt or to affect an unamiable and indurated stoicism, by asserting that pain should not be regarded as such, nor to teach that sorrow is the minister of immediate pleasure. But he institutes a comparison between the afflictions. of the faithful disciple and their results, and affirms that the latter so immeasurably exceed the former as to lose any appearance of proportion or correspondence; when thus contrasted they become, as he elsewhere expresses it, "light, and are but for a moment," while these constitute "a far more exceeding, even an eternal weight of glory." But let us briefly turn to the sufferings here referred to,-their character, designs, and alleviations.

Whatever of trial or trouble affects the child of God, though by no means peculiar to his calling,-even if it be such as is common to humanity,-because it befalls him, exerts a specific influence on him and accomplishes gracious ends with respect to him, --is, in a certain sense, sacred, and becomes Christian suffering. And here we see one group of God's anointed in the depths of poverty. We advert not now to those who while the winter's wind sweeps over the northern hills, gather around a blazing hearth, or lie down on an easy and well-covered bed; whose persons are warmly clad and whose table is always supplied with what befits a wholesome and generous appetite; but who yet, it may be from pride and unthankfulness, call themselves poor, because they have not all the luxuries and hoards of the wealthy. No, we allude to those who, like their Master, have scarcely where to lay their heads; whose thin garments every breeze penetrates; who can tell of bitter nights and days of hunger, and who as the scanty repast of the evening was finished have often grown faint as the child asked, "Father, mother, what kind hand will bring us bread to-morrow?" There too, as we divide the household of

Christ into classes, we discern a numerous band who all their days struggled against the billows of temptation,-Bunyans, and Tennents, and Paysons, and multitudes of lesser name, or of obscure station,-whose conflicts with the powers of darkness no human pen has rendered illustrious, but whose record still is on high, and the least of whom is dearer to God than the pride and the idol of nations. Yonder, is a crowd pale with the sicknesses of months and years, their countenances sombre with disappointments, or their limbs tremulous with the anguish of recurring, and perhaps, utter bereavement. In another part of the congregated body of God's elect, we behold thousands suffering reproach and persecution for his name's sake. We mean not those who by their inconsistencies and sins provoke the disapproval and criminations of their brethren; but those who choose rather to obey God than men; who contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints; who worship God in the spirit, and glory in the cross of Christ; who do what conscience bids and live as Heaven commands, in the face of the fulminations of usurped power, the fires of the stake, the horrors of the rack or the scaffold, the sneers of the world, and the hatred of hypocrisy and self-deception, and who, in consequence, because Jehovah has so decreed,--"shall suffer persecution" while the present dispensation endures. Yes --the condition and the law of discipleship is suffering; from some quarter, or in one or another form the earthly lot of the true Christian is sorrow. Exceptions there may be, but these are isolated and singular, while the mass of the believing enter the kingdom of God through much tribulation.

The purposes for which infinite wisdom has instituted this otherwise wholly mysterious arrangement, are to remove from the regenerated heart its idols; to cause it to seek its happiness from and place its entire trust on its Redeemer; to withdraw its affections from perishable objects and fix them on what is satisfying and eternal; to bring out to the view of others, and to try and invigorate its graces,-polishing the diamond that it may disclose its beauty; passing the gold through the crucible that its own. lustre and specific gravity may be shown; pruning and bruising the vine that its clusters may become larger and more abundant; tasking the already well-knit and manly frame, that it may achieve yet higher deeds of strength and endurance; exposing the cedar of Lebanon to a ponderous pressure, that it may strike its roots deeper, and grow the more sturdy and the more noble.

Nor are the people of God left to bear their calamities without consolation or support. They feel confident and assured that it chastisement be ministered to them, the rod is in the hand of a kind and loving Father, and that every stroke is directed by wisdom, moderated by mercy, and designated by beneficence to a gracious end. In every trial, whatever its nature or however severe, they have the pledge of the faithful and true witness,—“ My

grace is sufficient for thee; as thy days so shall thy strength be; fear not, for I am thy God." They know, too, that their Saviour, who passed through the same struggles, now sits on the eternal throne, and while he sympathises with his afflicted followers, he will dispense to them all the aid they need that they may glorify him and attain ultimately his blessedness. This world they regard as the theatre of discipline, and these the processes by which they are to be prepared for a bright and lasting future. And from the force of such considerations the Apostle exclaimed,-as many have done after him,-"We glory in tribulations, also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."

From its issue, therefore, sanctified affliction is greatly profitable; from the gracious alleviations and supports which accompany it, it may become not only tolerable, but the source of high comfort to the soul. Yet to say that pain, and want, and loss, and injury, and blasted prospects, and desolated affections, were in themselves desirable, or that they were productive of pleasure in their legitimate and natural results, would be as discordant with the dictates of a sound philosophy as they are with the principles of a genuine religion. My experience teaches me that

"The flesh will quiver where

The pincers tear;"

that in the day when I became a Christian, I did not cease to be a man; that when a bright earthly hope is blasted; when lover and friend are put far from me, and my companion descends into the darkness of the sepulchre; when frowns and reproaches are heaped upon me; when I seem to be forsaken by man, and it may appear, abandoned by God; when the waves of tribulation swell into a tempest and dash over me on every hand, nothing but a strong faith in the Divine promises, and the sweet glimmerings of the day-star of immortality, can keep me from sinking into that deep sickness of the soul which is full of agony and despair. All my observation shows me that but few have stood firm in the conflicts of a stern and protracted adversity. And I hear a voice from heaven declaring,-"no chastening for the present scemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby." Which leads us to remark,

II. That when contrasted with the blessedness which is to succeed them, the sufferings of the Christian in this life shrink into a shadow and a trifle; "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." Here we are the subjects of afflictions because we are sinful, and their distressing influence on us is owing to the fact that we are weak, frail, sensitive beings. In the