THESE words, my brethren, are impressively suitable to the present solemnity; especially when you consider that, if the life and health of your beloved pastor had been prolonged till to-day, he would probably have made them the subject of his own discourse. Having been engaged, for some time past, in preaching a course of sermons on some of the Epistles, he had proceeded in his expositions as far as the eighth verse of this chapter; and, by this time, perhaps, he would have addressed you on the following verses, including those of our text. He would, in that case, have enforced upon you the duty “to give diligence to make your calling and election sure;” and he would have encouraged you to do so by the promise, that “if ye do these things ye shall never fall; for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” But whatever intentions or expectations he might have formed respecting future sermons, they have all been frustrated by the stroke of death. Instead of urging upon you the performance of this duty by his living voice, he now admonishes you from the grave. Instead of animating your minds by this “exceeding great and precious promise,” he now enjoys the fulfilment of it himself, in all its richness and perpetuity; and instead of attempting, with mortal lips, to describe to you the glories of that “everlasting kingdom,” he has had ministered unto himself “an abundant entrance” into its celestial palaces, where all the inhabitants are made “kings and priests unto God.”