I. The memory of the just is blessed, self-evidently so, for the mind blesses it and reverts to it with complacency, mingled with solemnity,--returns to it with delight from the sight of the living evil in the world, sometimes even prefers this silent society to the living good. They show in a most evident and pleasing manner the gracious connection which God has constantly maintained with a sinful world. His uninterrupted connection with it by justice and sovereign power has been manifest in mighty evidence: but His saints have been the peculiar illustration of His grace, His mercy, acting on this world. II. It is so, when we consider them as practical illustrations, verifying examples of the excellence of genuine religion; that it is a noble thing in human nature, and makes, and alone makes, that nature noble;--that, whatever scoffers may say, or this vain world would pretend to disbelieve, here is what has made such men as nothing else, under heaven, could or can. III. Their memory is blessed while we regard them as diminishing to our view the repulsiveness and horror of death. Our Lord's dying was the fact that threw out the mightiest agency to this effect. But, in their measure, His faithful disciples have done the same. When we contemplate them as having prepared for it with a calm resolution--as having approached it--multitudes with a calm resignation and fortitude, and very many with an animated exultation;--as having passed it, and emerged in brightness beyond its gloom--they seem to shine back through the gloom, and make the shade less thick. IV. It is blessed, also, as combined with the whole progress of God upon the earth--with its living agency throughout every stage. He has never, and nowhere, had a visible cause in the world, without putting _men_ in trust with it. . . . Think of what men have been employed and empowered to do in the propagation of truth, in the incessant warfare against evil, in the exemplification of all the virtues by which he could be honoured.--_John Foster._ Verse 11. A Church is but a body of righteous men. What would the world do without the Church? The influences of a Church, and that a land is ruined without a Church, and that one generation hands on the worship of God to another, are all illustrations on a grand scale of how _the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life._ A good man will constantly be doing good to others. But "wrong covers the mouth of the wicked," so that he can give no blessing; so keeps him from any possible usefulness, that he cannot utter good, or make his mouth, as the righteous can, "a fountain of life" to all about him.--_Miller._