_The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night_. 2 Pet. iii. 10. The watchfulness, therefore, recommended by our Lord, and implied in the text, comprehends an habitual spirit of prayer; hence the exhortation, _Watch and pray—habitual sobriety_; _Watch and be sober_; Thes. v. 6;—holiness in conversation; _Set a watch before my mouth_; Psal. cxli. 3;—a patient, yet ardent expectation of the Lord’s arrival; and a cautious avoidance of every care, of every pleasure, and of every entanglement, which might ensnare the heart, captivate the senses, and immerse the affections in sloth and self-indulgence. All which is enjoined in that concise but most solemn and comprehensive exhortation of the Son of God, _What I say unto you_, _I say unto all_. WATCH! Mark, xiii. 37. SERMON X. ON THE DEATH OF MR. I. A. “_He shall enter into peace_.” ISAIAH, lvii. 2. THE great and irreversible decree of Heaven, respecting the whole human race, is, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” This sentence, originally pronounced upon the transgression of the first man, evidently included also his whole posterity to the end of time. It has already received its solemn execution upon the generations that are past: we see with our eyes, its effects in the multitudes, that are daily passing from time to eternity: nor shall its influence cease, until the wide-extended dominion of death be destroyed, and mortality swallowed up of life. The divine appointment, through which the grave becomes the common receptacle of all men, is not more awful, than it is _just_: for, “the _wages_ of sin is _death_.” Man _deserves_ to die, because he hath _sinned_. Hence, there ariseth a necessary and inevitable connexion between our origin and our end. So that, if we wish to trace the innumerable calamities attendant upon death, to their source; we shall soon find, that they all originate from SIN. “As by one man SIN entered into the world, and _death_ by sin, and so death passed upon _all_ men, for that all have _sinned_.” Rom. v. 12. It is sin that hath brought universal disorder into the natural and spiritual world. It hath sown the seeds of mortality in the human frame; hath filled the heart with alienation from God; and rendered body and soul obnoxious to the sentence of everlasting separation from the kingdom of heaven. Sin hath given death his sting; and furnished that king of terrors with his formidable message and tremendous appearance. It hath opened the horrors of the tomb, and expanded wide the mouth of hell. It hath armed the law with a curse, more to be dreaded than death; hath given the sword of justice its sharpest edge; and hath awakened the indignation of that God, who is as a consuming fire. It is the great bar of separation between the creature and the Creator; and is that moral evil, which, when finished, brings forth death, temporal and eternal. It brought a flood of waters upon the