ing the bosom of childhood to lie often free and open to our influence, and giving precious opportunity how earnestly and eagerly to be improved, as we remember that the time of freedom - and, if we watch and prevent not, it may be wilful, wayward freedom is indeed soon coming when

"The wintry hour

Of man's maturer age

Will shake the soul with sorrow's power,
And stormy passion's rage;"

while we may so now operate on the pliable purposes and ductile dispositions of the soul, that the energy of will and passion may run in the way of duty, consecrate itself to religion, and promote the glory of God.

The question to which our preliminary reflections have brought us, grows only more fearfully weighty with every consideration that can be proposed. Do we fulfil the conditions of our work; — fulfil them in regular and faithful preparation for our office, preparation of our lesson and preparation of our soul; — fulfil them in giving the flower and strength of our interest and zeal to a matter of such unspeakable concern; - fulfil them in nourishing an earnest and tender love for every one of our children or pupils, carrying them in our hearts through the week, bearing them to God in our prayers, coming to them in the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ; adapting our instructions to their individual capacities and sensibilities; convincing them, by our whole temper and deportment, that we really seek their good; showing to them, by our own constant

attendance on the institutions of religious worship, that our example is as good as our precept, and does not shamefully contradict it; pursuing their souls the more affectionately, as what has been called "the dark age" of boyhood comes over them; and being continually to them as those fresh from the presence of God, and encircled with the light of religion? If we fulfil these conditions, if we stand to them for what is right and pure and godly, we shall not labor in vain, however gradually we accomplish our end; not in vain, any more than they who perseveringly, though slowly, cut away the hill for their iron road, or clear the forest for their farm and habitation. Said a wise elder in the ministry of the gospel to a younger laborer in the vineyard, "If you want to save the souls of your people, you will." So if it be the real absorbing object of your desire and devotion to lead your little flocks into the ways of pleasantness and peace, you will at least set them in that blessed direction.

And what reward of your labors greater than even their partial and commencing success? What should one so desire to do in the life he lives in this world, as to give to a soul the tendency of virtue, and inflame it with the love of God? What ambition beneath the sky so great and far-reaching, upon whose achievements and empire the sun will not set, nor the heavens themselves close when they are wrapt together like a scroll! As I sit in the Sundayschool, and think of it; as I look over the written lessons, many of which hands but little practised have prepared, perhaps the first lines they ever traced;

or cast my eye around to mark the fixed attention that has drawn all the members of a class here and there into a living cluster about the teacher, from whom, in the apostle's phrase, they "desire the sincere milk of the word," that they "may grow thereby; " and then, as I gaze forward upon their future career, and see their earthly relations, domestic, social, and civil, blessed and sanctified by this early nurture; or, glancing still further on beyond the grave into the world of spirits, behold, what I doubt not is the very fact while we here meet and meditate, many an angel of God tracing back to such a beginning the crown and palm and harp of his glory, joy, and praise, and pointing his brotherangel to what he did for him in that beginning, following the lines of influence from a little room to that measureless canopy on high, the material vocations, the perishable accumulations, the shining reputations of this world, fade and dwindle before the solid, everlasting work.

"The cloud-capped towers, "the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."

But the virtue to which you have trained a living soul, the sentiment of worship you have inspired, the great thought of God you have awakened, the devotion to duty you have kindled, the love you have made to glow for a heavenly Father and his rational offspring, oh! these things will outlast all, and abide for ever.

105

DISCOURSE X.

FAITH THE SUBSTANCE AND EVIDENCE.

NOW, FAITH IS THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS HOPED for,
THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN.

How shall we prove the reality of things which we denominate spiritual and unseen? We talk much about such spiritual things; but how show that there is any substance corresponding with our language; that it is not, after all, mere shadow and illusion, on which we feed our thoughts? The author of our text answers this question, by declaring that faith is itself the substance or ground of things hoped for,the evidence of things not seen.

In an age characterized as an age of scepticism,— certainly an age of extensive questioning of longreceived dogmas; with a deep feeling, on the part of many, of great uncertainty in the religious views in which they have been bred, or which are proposed for their acceptance; and a persuasion, on the part of others, that every thing put forth and canvassed among men about a spiritual and invisible world is mere cant and superstition; when doubts about the Scriptures, and denial of all that is supernatural, busily pave the way for sweeping infidelity and utter

irreligion, at such a time, it may be well to examine what real foundation there is at all for faith in spiritual things.

senses.

As the text declares, so I would maintain, that faith itself, the believing faculty, as a power and native tendency of the human mind, belonging to us originally and fundamentally, but best developed by our religion, is the basis and evidence of what we hope for. In other words, an unseen and heavenly world is required to correspond to our faith, just as much as a material world to correspond to our I stand in the midst of nature on some lovely spring-morning. The sweet and pleasant light salutes my eyes. The fresh and bland breeze mingles with the warmth of the sun, fanning his beams as they fall to give that perfect and temperate luxury which makes the feeling even of physical life a delight. The fragrance of flowers from every bright and waving branch, dressed in pale and crimson, floats to me. The song of matin birds falls on my ear. All this beauty, melody, and richness are the correspondence to my nature of the material world through my senses.

Now, there are inward perceptions and intuitions, just as real as these outward ones, and requiring spiritual realities to correspond with them, just as much as the eye requires the landscape, or as the ear asks for sounds of the winds and woods and streams, for the song of birds, or the dearer accents of the human voice. To meet and answer the very nature of man, a spiritual world, more refined modes of existence, action, happiness, must be, just as