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table, censorious speech or violent deeds, think..not of the present only, but of the future? At leisure, how often have men repented of what they did in haste! How often have they recoiled, in mortification and bitter distress, from the opponents they had prostrated! How often has the cold corpse of a human being taught them too late that compassion which his living presence could not! How eloquent are the remorseful teachings of the grave, in which we sometimes hear men say they have buried their enmities! Alas if they have no other offering to the grave of a fellow-creature! Oh! yes: cold death teaches lessons which hasty life skips. Marble lips speak louder than living tones. Abel's blood, that cries to Heaven, is not unheard in the ear of Cain. There is a resurrection, not for the dead only, but for the injuries you fixed in their hearts, in the hearts, it may be, of those bound to your own, to whom you owed but all offices of gentleness.

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Who in old time attired with snakes and whips

The vengeful Furies. Beautiful regards

Were turned on me; the face of her I loved,
The wife and mother, pitifully fixing
Tender reproaches insupportable."

Oh my friends, avoid these fatal shafts shot from eternity! Now so forbear and forgive, that you may see looking at you, through the mists of the grave, only the faces which, before they went, you clothed in smiles; that you may behold in your dreams only loving features and beckoning hands. Guard yourselves in the armor of forbearance, even the panoply

of your own mercy, against the condemnations of the great Divine tribunal. For the Bible, passage after passage, makes God's forgiveness of us fearfully to hang on our forgiveness of each other: "He shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy." A ruffian having once struck a certain Mussulman, he thus addressed him: "If I were revengeful, I should render you outrage for outrage. If I were an informer, I should accuse you to the caliph; but I love better to pray God, that, at the day of judgment, we may both be received into heaven together!" And do we Christians need to be reminded, that "forgive as we forgive" is our only allowable supplication? If we need not, and expect never to beg, the mercy of God to ourselves, we may withhold our mercy from our fellows. If we have not the ten thousand talents to be forgiven, we may refuse, like the base servant, to forgive the hundred pence. It has been a custom with some, when the temptation to anger overtook them, to wait till they could repeat the Lord's prayer; - a good expedient, if we repeat it till we have truly learned it by heart!

John xiv. 27.

59

DISCOURSE VI.

SPIRITUAL PEACE.

PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU: MY PEACE I GIVE
UNTO YOU.

THERE are few whose idea of happiness does not include peace as essential. Most men have been so tempest-tost, and not comforted, that they long for a closing of all excitements at last in peace. Hence the images of the haven receiving the shattered bark, of the rural vale remote from the noise of towns, have always been dear to human fancy. Hence, too, the decline of life away from severe toil, rapid motion, and passionate action, has often a charm even beyond the kindling enterprise of youth. The cold grave itself repels not altogether, but somewhat allures, the imagination.

"How still and peaceful is the grave!

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There passions rage no more,

And there the weary pilgrim rests
From all the toils he bore."

Especially has heaven risen to the religious mind in this complexion of tranquillity. We cannot conceive of it but as free from all disturbance, broken

by not a sound save of harmonious anthems, which, like murmuring waters, give deeper peace than could be found in silence. It is the voice of the Christian enthusiast :

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"There shall I bathe my weary soul

In everlasting rest,

And not a wave of trouble roll

Across my peaceful breast."

But man so longs for the blessing of peace, that he not only soothes himself with these images from afar, but hopes to foretaste their substance. And what are his views to this end? He means to retire from business to some spot where he can calmly enjoy what he has in vain panted after in the chase of life. Perhaps he tries the experiment, but finds himself restless still, and learns the great lesson at last that peace is not in the landscape, but only in the soul; and that the calm sky, the horizon's circle, the steady stars, are only its language, not itself.

Perhaps he seeks peace in his home. Every thing there is made soft to the feet; each chair and couch receives him gently; agreeable sounds, odors, viands, regale every sense; and illuminated chambers richly replace for him at night the splendor of the sun. But here again he is at fault. Peace comes not to him, though some angel seems to have made his varied apparatus for producing it. He may be outshone by a neighbor; his high estate may draw envy and ill-will; these "precious" senses themselves may refuse the proffered bliss, and ache with disease. Peace is not in outward comforts, which

the constitution sharply limits; which pass with time, or pall upon the taste. The human mind is too great a thing to be pleased with mere blandishments; to smile, like an infant, at whatever glitters.

"Man has a soul of vast desires:

He burns within with restless fires."

And the solemn truth will come home irresistibly, at times, even to the easy epicure. Something is wanting still. There is more of pain than peace in the remnants of feasting, and the exhausted rounds of pleasure.

Man has sometimes sought peace in yet another way. Abjuring all sensual delights, he has. gone into the desert to scourge the body, to live on roots and water, and be absorbed in pious raptures; and often has he thus succeeded, better than do the hunters of pleasure. But unrest mingles with his tranquillity. His innocent, active powers resist this crucifixion. The distant world rolls to his ear the voices of suffering fellow-men; and even his devotions, all lonely, become selfish and unhappy.

How, then, my friends, shall we gain this peace so longed for, but in vain? There is one being who, we believe, enjoyed it, and promised it to his friends. He was neither voluptuary nor hermit. His life was as a holy hermitage in the midst of worldly excitements. And this peace of his he did not for others postpone to a distant day, or shut up altogether in heaven, but left to his disciples on the earth. What, then, was the peace of Christ?

The sufferings of Christ have had so prominent a

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