ous working. The peaceful land rivals not the noise of that quaking under the shock of arms. Yet the waving grain, the spreading sail, rising cities, and the factory's low hum, bespeak more toil than burning towns, and sinking ships, and smoking fields. So the same measure of sound, which, harshly given, stuns the ear, shall but gladden when expressed in melodious concord.

But the fruits of industry, the harmonies of music, are the faintest emblems of this sublimer peace of the soul. There are times they only can understand who have known them-when passion is dumb, and purest love maintains her whole dominion; when God is not cried to, but felt in holy influence, speaking to us more than we to him; the home-sick wanderer is happy in his Father's house; from the deep gladness, a forgiving wish flows forth to every wrong a fellow-man has done us; sighing winds and sweeping storms but strike some new string of the surpassing joy; calmly rise up the faces of our dear departed, no more to unseal the blinding tears, but for invisible embracings; and the soul, showing itself substantial amid all these earthly shadows, looks unfearing into the grave of the body. What are words to us now, - present and future, mortal and immortal? We live, how should we ever die?

Only in such seasons of our own experience can we know something of the Saviour's peace, which, passing understanding, refuses to be described. Alas that our own moral discords should so hide from us

the blessed vision! These inward discords are the great woe of life. There are those who are grieved by nothing so much as the scenes of battle still burning on the earth. They bend every energy to extinguish these dreadful flames, and long for nothing as for the accomplished prediction of peace on earth; and it is well. But this sounding pageantry, marching in its fit coloring of blood, melancholy as it indeed is, is but a sign of the real evil within. The clash of armor is but an echo of collision in the soul; and could you still at a wish the cannon's roar, the end would not be reached, without subduing too the conflicts there. It is not the results that are so mournful, but the cause. Outward suffering is the lot of human nature; and it is cheering to see it bravely borne even on the battle-field. The groans from the soldier's hospital are but a small part of the general groan of humanity. But, ah! those "groanings that cannot be uttered "—in the deep heart,— these ask our tears, and these our toils. Of these it is that war and slavery, rapine and murder, are but the hollow, earthly reverberations.

Hail to the lovers of peace and of freedom! But aim not merely at the surface. Cure the human mind by making your effort conduce to its cleansing from sin and its moral harmony. Touch your work with clean hands. Your passion but puts weapons into the hands of hostile passion: violence can propagate nothing but itself. The harmonious and peaceful soul, too, will multiply its image in deep engraving.

For human good, then, as for private joy, let us seek to receive the peace of Jesus, by being, like him, active, sinless, and holy. The heavenly proportion of his spirit, a harmony in itself, was alive in gladness to every touch of the Divinity, and made his life loving to all mankind. All nature, too, as it were conscious of his secret, changed her forms, stilled her waves, gave up her dead, at his voice; yielding herself his mighty witness, that he came from God and abode with him. And, though we may not have his power (the seal of a peculiar mission), he has left to every sincere follower a richer possession in his peace. Said he not to the seventy, whom he sent forth awhile entrusted with that seal, "In this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven"?

11*

DISCOURSE VII.

THE SPIRITUAL MIND.

Rom. viii. 6. TO BE SPIRITUALLY MINDED IS LIFE AND PEACE.

We often hear it said of one or another individual, "He is a very spiritual person," or "He is very unspiritual." What is meant by these expressions? What is it to be spiritual, or, as our text says, "spiritually minded"? In the first place, the passage containing our text informs us that "to bespiritually minded" is opposed to being "carnally minded." The sensual thought, the eyes that rove after, the imagination that shapes, the soul that hankers for, forbidden pleasure, are anti-spiritual.

Again, while the spiritual is opposed to the carnal mind, we learn from other passages of Scripture it is more than what we commonly signify by morality. A man may be honest in his worldly affairs, just in every business-transaction, blameless in every earthly relation, without being truly spiritual; for, besides the earthly and human relations in which we stand, we sustain relations heavenly and divine. God and immortality have a holy claim upon us. special duties, in the upward way, of prayer, medita

We owe

tion, self-surrender, and devotion; nor are we spiritually minded, unless we inwardly use ourselves to these motions of heart and soul, which run into no material or sublunary channel, but tend aloft beyond the sphere of the earth and the sun. A supreme, uncreated excellence and glory must haunt, elevate, sanctify, and draw us on to another citizenship than that we hold amid these clay-built abodes, before the spiritual mind, with its "life and peace," can be unfolded within us. We must not only find motives in God and the spiritual world to propel the current of moral duty from our hearts through the earth, but still more discover in the infinite majesty and holiness mighty attractions, towards which another stream of revering, obedient tributes shall constantly swell from the heights of inward homage, selfdenial, and pure consecration.

Once more: " to be spiritually minded," while standing in opposition to what is "carnal," and completing what is "moral," is also the signification of what is "formal." The outward observances and institutions of our religion have no sense but to express and awaken the exercises of our spiritual nature. They must, of course, be dull and naught to those who lack interest in spiritual things. They are dead forms, empty vessels, unless filled and enlivened by this holy element of regard for what is invisible and everlasting; but, as conductors and quickeners of this element, they have life and meaning. Were our religion a mere system of ethics, it could be written down in abstract propo