it also teaches that, when the body of a Christian is dead, there is a fitness and meetness in burying it with decent honor. It is not for nothing that the burials of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, and Moses are carefully recorded in holy writ. It is not for noth- ing that we are told that John the Baptist was laid in a tomb ; and that " devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him." (Acts viii. 2.) It is not for nothing that we are told so particularly about the burial of Christ.
The true Christian need never be ashamed of regard- ing a funeral with peculiar reverence and solemnity. It is the body, which may be the instrument of commit- ting the greatest sins, or of bringing the greatest glory to God. It is the body, which the eternal Son of God honored by dwelling in it for thirty and three years, and finally dying in our stead. It is the body, with which He rose again and ascended up into heaven. It is the body, in which He sits at the right hand of God, and represents us before the Father, as our Advocate and Priest. It is the body, which is now the temple of the Holy Ghost, while the believer lives. It is the body, which will rise again, when the last trumpet sounds, and, re-united to the soul, will live in heaven to all eter- nity. Surely, in the face of such facts as these, we nev- er need suppose that reverence bestowed on the burial of the body is reverence thrown away.
Let us leave the subject with one word of caution. Let us take care that we do not regard a sumptuous funeral as an atonement for a life wasted in carelessness and sin. We may bury a man in the most expensive style, and spend hundreds of pounds in mourning. "We may place over his grave a costly marble stone, and in- scribe on it a flattering epitaph. But all this will not save our souls or his. The turning point at the last day 15