fanatical austerity. The adoption of so grand an object of life, taking in our whole career, does not abolish the minor callings and aims of activity, of study, or traffic, or mechanical skill, in this world. It but leavens them with a higher spirit, and turns them to a nobler influence. It polarizes the wandering and aimless affairs of time and sense, makes all our dealings not only serve temporary purposes, but, in their effects on our hearts, point to permanent results; and, while we sail over the sea of life, touching at every slight occasion of human service and success along the shore, it steadily, as a great magnet, draws us ever nearer to a blessed eternal destiny. It puts a new question into our mouth, which the changeling slave of temporal expedients and little ends does not think to ask, a question that rightly comes up with every transaction we engage in, every conversation we hold, every plan we form, every measure we execute, - Are we promoting here in this very thing, however great or trifling it may look, the object of life? If not promoting, but defeating this object, it bids us beware and abstain. It does not shut us up in a narrow place of hermit stiffness and seclusion, but goes with us over the broad ocean of worldly business, only asking that it may stand a divine pilot at the helm. It lays no bar upon pleasure, tasted with an innocent moderation, -as the preacher himself, after being swept clean away by the gulf-stream of excess, solemnly judges it best to taste it, but it converts pleasure itself from the foe into the friend and servant, as it well may be the true friend and faithful

servant, of virtue. It does not condemn the acquisition of wealth as a means which may accomplish the very ends of religion; but it inquires with a searching whisper at the very confessional of man's spirit, and which, beside God, only the man himself can hear, whether the heart is given to wealth, delighting in it, hovering round and settling down over this sweetness of gain, which it would hive, with supreme habitual desire; or, on the contrary, as a steward regarding it as God's loan, as a worshipper proffering it for his sacrifice; while, on the wings of its chief and ardent aspiration, itself ever rises to him as the Infinite Good, takes the breath of his Spirit in return for the incense of its praise, and, from the elevation of its prayer, brings down the counsels of his majestic law upon its mortal conduct.

Have you discerned and adopted such an object of life, ye advancing men and women in the human generations? Are you pursuing such an object, or do ye drift towards eternity? They that drift are sure to be cast away; and only they are safe whose chart is large and complete, reaching to the farthest shore they must visit. Ye, too, that are young, have you stretched your thought, as you well may, to conceive that God gave you existence for a great object, which you may continually pursue by reverent, trustful doing of his revealed will? But we all, young, old, and middle-aged, have a surer proof than argument, or even Old-Testament authority. Jesus, our great exemplar, many hundreds of years after the author of our text, without the process of his embarrassing search, repeats and embodies his

conclusion. He felt he was born for an object, "to bear witness to the truth." "He came eating and drinking; but he said, his "meat was to do the will of Him that sent him, and to finish his work." He, the sinless one, had a baptism of painful, perfecting experience to be baptized with; and how was he straitened, losing no time or strength by the way, till it should be accomplished! How he pressed on, without a deviation, through gladness and grief, entering into the marriage-festival, passing by the funeral bier, going with his disciples when they plucked the ears of corn, or bearing his cross alone, still on to the object of life and the end of his being! We talk much of his nature, and our relationship to him; but, my friends, when we follow him, then only do we truly commune with, or even understand, him. And we can see to follow him, only when the same master-light of religious duty illumines our path, and reveals the whole, however circuitous, track, through which Providence guides, as the nearest road to heaven.

So far as we surrender ourselves to this divine leading, the problem that tried the sage king in Jerusalem, carrying him into the labyrinth of thought, and the still deeper labyrinth of dangerous practice, loses its perplexity. The object of life is disclosed more plainly as we proceed in reference to it, as the mountain on the landscape towards which we travel widens and heightens on our view. It is disclosed in the harmony and constant enlargement of the powers we use faithfully, in the growth of the holy affections towards God and man which we cherish,

in the ever-easier reduction of all events and deeds to the great scope of our pious design, and in the stronger assurance, so thrilling to the human heart, that continually gains upon us, "refining as we run,' of immortal expansion in a boundless sphere, to which our human life, with its preliminary culture and discipline, with its crosses and changes, delights and hopes, joys and desolating sorrows, will seem as fitted as one kingdom of matter is to another, as the whole world is to our mortal senses, or as the thought of God and the sentiment of duty are to the human soul.

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DISCOURSE XXV.

NOW I KNOW IN PART.

1 Cor. xiii. 12.- NOW I KNOW IN PART.

THE Scriptures abound in reflections upon the weakness and short-sightedness of the human mind. Now, it is observable that the atheist and sceptic have taken up the strain of Scripture, and striven to turn its weapons against itself and its friends.. "How blind and weak, how poor and miserable," they repeat, "the creature to whom you yet assign so splendid a destiny! You speak of the immortality of this worm, as you yourself call him; of this ignorant being, whose comprehension a grain of dust baffles; this impotent being, whom heat and cold, light and darkness, wet and drought, play with and scorn; this wretched being, whom sickness prostrates, and misfortune depresses, and sorrow dissolves in tears; the most helpless of all creatures at his birth, the most unsatisfied of all through his life; you prophesy for him 'glory and honor and immortality'!"

I accept the issue which atheism and infidelity thus present. I will reason for the magnificent prospects of man on the very ground here taken of his weak