at home? When your capacities of thought and emotion have been aroused by some special providence of God, have you not realized that the earth itself, the old familiar earth, was to you as a far place and foreign country, and you had still to seek for your native land? Then have you felt as did those old Hebrew pilgrims, when "they confessed that they were strangers on the earth." "For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And" (with what pathos continues the Scripture!)" truly if they had been mindful of," thinking of, "that country whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly."

This is the only solution and satisfaction of the soul's yearning desire, coeval with its intelligent history, through all Pagan and Christian times. We, different from the lower creatures, have aspirations this world cannot limit, spiritual abilities which it cannot employ, but only that "better" and "heavenly country" can satisfy; and never, to the sojourner in foreign parts, did the songs of his native land sound so sweetly, as to the soul, really knowing its own wants, do the teachings of Jesus respecting the many mansions of the Father's house, and the place he goes to prepare.

But if you have not had this scripture feeling of the "stranger on earth," seeking and in Christ finding your true home and country above the skies, then I would fain stir your hearts from the pressure

of worldly custom up to it. For nothing do you so much need, and nothing will be so rich in holy, practical results, even in your moral conduct among men, as this adjusting, under Christ, of your relations of citizenship in that celestial abode, which the prophecies of Judaism looked forward to, and which gospel and epistle, the mouth of Christ and pen of his messengers, declare. The little child morally sleeps for awhile in the natural, kindred relations of earth; but the unfolding mind that advances to manhood and womanhood will at length transcend them. Unless bound in the stupefactions of sense, or crusted over with habits of worldliness, it will perceive that the conditions and contingencies of this life cannot meet its whole nature, or fill its final need. I would call you to contemplate this simple issue. By the terrors of doubt that cloud the prospect of the unspiritual, I would warn,- by the satisfactions of Christian hope, I would win you, vitally to embrace the peculiarity of the gospel, in the ties of fellowship it offers you, not only with the living and present, but with the unseen beings of another world, -no longer the dim, shadowy, flitting, uncertain phantoms they were to the pagan faith,— with the saints, truly worthy that name, elder and younger, in "the household of God." As the New Testament is true, this association is offered us. Death, terrifier of the world, stands back to let the light stream through his gloomy house, and reveal the holy and happy assembly. Sorrow bends aside her head, so as not to obstruct the inspiring vision. Sickness lifts from

the couch her heavy eyes, to catch a glimpse of it. What refinement! What elevation! What generosity and joy! What motive and impulse! There, alive, appear to us the good departed, whom we have known here below, and those we have not known; the celebrated in the calendar, and the uncanonized, as worthy as they; those whose names stand as monumental exemplars on the page of the Bible, with names no less pure, written only in the Lamb's book of life; - and we strangers on the earth," in these crumbling garments of clay, are invited to be fellow-citizens with them all.

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But there are conditions. We must give up our selfishness, we must give up every shape of sin. We must leave behind our spiritual sloth and our sensual excess. We cannot accept the invitation so long as we regard this as our true home; so long as our most valued interests are concentred in the world; so long as the visible earthly scene, with its comfort and pleasure, with its gain and honor, yea, or its friendship and love, seems to us the only solid reality. We must have faith in that higher state before we embark for it our heart's treasure, as Columbus had faith in this western world before he risked all to reach it.

But, in fine, whether we have or not the peculiar and lofty feeling expressed in our text, it is obvious to you, that not only a feeling is expressed in it, but a fact. As a matter of fact, our position is that of "strangers on the earth." Have we not just arrived here? Are we more than very partially acquainted

with the place we are visiting? Even to a child's question, respecting many things, must we not frankly answer, that "we are strangers," and cannot tell? Is not the conveyance preparing, which is to take us away from the spot where we have transiently alighted? Have we not seen our companions carried out? Will it not soon be our turn to follow? Let us not, then, be blind to the fact, if we are dead to the feeling. Let us be neither blind nor dead. But, if we suffer ourselves so to be, ah! the immutable reality! - the fact will not thus be negatived, or the feeling finally kept off.

"Yet a few days, and thee

The all-beholding sun shall see no more

In all his course.

Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant-world; with kings,
The powerful of the earth; the wise, the good ;
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,

All in one mighty sepulchre.

The sons of men,

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years,

Shall, one by one, be gathered to thy side

By those who in their turn shall follow them."

"So live," says our subject to us, cultivate such sympathies with the departed "wise " and "good," that, when the body goes to mingle with theirs in the dust, the soul may meet theirs in the heavens, not as an alien and a stranger, but as a fellowcitizen and a friend.

DISCOURSE XVIII.

NATURE, CONSCIENCE, AND REVELATION, DECLARING GOD, DUTY, AND DESTINY.

Rom. i. 20. FOR THE INVISIBLE THINGS OF HIM FROM THE CREATION OF THE WORLD ARE CLEARLY SEEN.

Rom. ii. 15. -WHICH SHOW THE WORK OF THE LAW WRITTEN IN THEIR

HEARTS, THEIR CONSCIENCE ALSO BEARING WITNESS.

Rom. ii. 16.-IN THE DAY WHEN GOD SHALL JUDGE THE SECRETS OF

MEN BY JESUS CHRIST.

In the text, chosen out of several closely related verses, are indicated the three great sources of religious knowledge, Nature, Conscience, and Revelation. The apostle, writing to the Romans, who were members of the great Gentile nation, citizens of the world more than any others whom he addressed, undertakes a larger account than elsewhere of the whole subject of religion. He is led thus to consider the particular light dispensed respectively in the three directions already named, Nature, proclaiming God in his "eternal power;" Conscience, while echoing that proclamation, enjoining also duty; and Revelation, while re-echoing God and duty to the soul, disclosing still further human destiny.

God, Duty, and Destiny

these are the great