There is nothing more important than that we should exercise a living faith in a future and happy existence beyond the grave.  This alone can afford the mind “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”  There is in every human bosom an unceasing uneasiness, an aching void that nothing on earth can satisfy or fill.  Old and young, ignorant and learned, heathen and christian feel the same dissatisfaction with the objects of momentary duration.  The heathen, in the midst of all his self-denials and self-tortures to appease his gods, and in the conscientious discharge of all his devotional duties, is still a dissatisfied and miserable being.  God has so constituted the human mind that it cannot repose in error, however sincere may be the faith it exercises.  There is still a growing vacuum within that nothing but the powers of truth can fill.  Philosophy has endeavoured to search out that system of moral duties, in the rigid performance of which, that happiness, peace and joy might be found, for which all mortal beings pant with the same aspirations of strong desire, but has sought in vain.  From the earliest ages, one system after another has been invented, and in succession abandoned, but all have come short of discovering any thing solid on which to rest their hopes of earthly felicity.

Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, has alone accomplished what all the penetration of Pythagoras and all the moral lessons of Seneca and Socrates failed to discover.  With a bold, firm and untrembling hand he has drawn aside the curtains of the tomb, and pointed the human family to a second birth from the dark womb of death into mansions of incorruptible felicity in the kingdom of God, where they shall die no more, and where all the inquietudes, appertaining to this fleeing existence, shall be unknown.  This future state of being, he has not only revealed, but has demonstrated its certainty by those incontestable evidences, which can never be shaken by all the powers of infidelity combined.  He has burst the icy bands of death and risen triumphant beyond its solemn shade, and begot in us those lively hopes, those fond desires, that ease the aching heart—­that communicate unbroken peace amidst the various ills of life, and afford it divine consolation and joy in the trying moment of death.  In those interesting truths the believer confides, and in every condition in life is enabled to rejoice in the hope that when “this earthly tabernacle is dissolved, he has a building of God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.”  In this faith, man’s countless wants are satisfied, inasmuch as God has secured his dearest interest.  In this faith the believer is entered into rest, is born of God, and is translated into his kingdom.  He knows that by faith he has passed from death unto life, for his soul is filled with love to God and man.  This love, this divine enjoyment, is the natural effect of faith, inasmuch as it works by love, purifies the heart and