for a moment faltering, in the path of duty and trial, will cheer us on our way, as we recognize and are led by the print of his passage.

Thus every faculty and affection in our nature will be brought out in its intended power and beauty. As each kind of vegetable or animal existence shows a result more distinct as its germ is more developed, so every human soul will be more marked and individual as it becomes more perfect. It will not, as some philosophers fancy, be absorbed in God, but be in harmony with him, and will serve him better with the clearer disclosure of its proper worth and each higher stage of its personal power ; liberty and love, with equal step and parallel ad- · vance, bearing it from point to point along its endless career. But logical deduction and imagination would alike fail in an attempt to infer or anticipate the condition of glory and joy to which personal religion will conduct the children of God. In his unbounded universe, there is room for each spirit he inspires to grow without limit, and attain more than we can conceive. The fancy may be but a feeble one, that there are in heaven individual intelligences, whose knowledge exceeds the united wisdom of the human race, and to whose charge and executive talent the affairs of worlds may be entrusted. To such a sublime consummation, the weak germ of infancy, now nursed and protected by divine tenderness, may arrive! What a privilege to enter the company of such beings! Simple as they are wise, gentle as they are mighty, with more than the "giant's strength," which they use in no "tyran

nous" way, but are energetic only to love, counsel, and bless those around them; while, with all their abilities and acquisitions, they can come into no comparison with or comprehension of the Infinite One.

"In vain the archangel tries

To reach the height with wondering eyes."

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DISCOURSE XXII.

HUMAN NATURE.

Mark x. 14. OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

REVELATION gives but little express and formal instruction concerning human nature, because perhaps of the little need of any supernatural information about that which every body may know from the world and his own heart. The inspired writers generally take man as they find him; assume his character, as it appears at particular times and in special circumstances. Those passages, whose strong language is so eagerly quoted as decisive, are almost always local in their application, and their force definitely restricted by the context.

Still, not alone for speculative but practical reasons, we would know, if we may on divine authority, - and not merely judge by experience, or reason on grounds of philosophy, what our nature is. There are, to this end, some sentences in the New Testament, whose conclusiveness I feel there is no way of resisting. Observe that we wish to know, not the acquired character, but the original nature of the human soul. This nature exists pure only in the

child. This, the advocates of the doctrine of total depravity, I presume, all admit; for their language is that we are born depraved, that sin is innate, hereditary, substantial in the very essence and constitution of the mind. The soul of a child is therefore its absolute principle and embodiment. Now, we have six parallel declarations of the evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, on this very point, expressing, not what they thought of the child's nature, but what Christ thought and declared; that is, six passages giving the decision of the highest authority in religion ever in the world. The burden of these passages is, that of such as little children is the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven; that to be converted, and become like them, is the only and necessary title of entrance into that kingdom; that to be humble as a child makes one the greatest in that kingdom; that to receive a child in Christ's name is to receive him: and, in still another passage, he gives it as a warning against despising one of these little ones, that their angels (by which, I think, he must mean the spirits of departed children) do always behold the face of his Father in heaven. Strictly speaking, I know not that there are in the Christian records any other testimonies upon the primary, simple nature of man; and upon these testimonies I decline all reasoning.

Leaving, then, the words of Jesus Christ, it may be alleged that this is not a full and fair account of the Scripture-representations on this subject; that the Bible abounds in descriptions of iniquity, and rebukes of the ungodly; that it contemplates men as estranged

from God; that its whole object, the very reason of its existence, is to cleanse them from corruption : while it may also be maintained, that the nature of a being is not to be learned from its feeble, infantile elements, but from what, when brought out and developed, it necessarily and always becomes. The Bible speaks of the wicked: for their restoration and salvation it speaks. Christianity regards men in general as alienated more or less from their Father. But how alienated? By wicked works. Their sins have separated between them and God, not their nature; and their own sins, not another's who lived ages before them; while these, not born but actual sinners, Scripture regards as existing in every variety of acquired character, and calls each one to repent of his own transgression.

Moreover, does not the Bible speak of the good as well as the bad, commending the former even more earnestly than condemning the latter? And, in the settling of this question of human nature, are the good to have no voice or witness? Are the defective and injured specimens of any thing to be admitted to testify, and the sound, complete ones excluded? You sow good seed in the field. Some of it, deprived of its fit nutriment, or exposed to cutting blasts or biting frost, is blighted, and does not ripen. The rest is brought to rich and large perfection. Will you take and hold up the black, drooping ears to show the nature of the seed, or the sweet golden kernels? The Bible, as I said, takes human. nature as it is; therefore, all varieties of excellence and unworthiness lie, as a tracery of sunbeams