would shove them by an inch from their place; but, admitting the latter, maintain the supreme importance, the predominating position, of the former.

Let the soul within us become our solemn preacher, and speak in its own person, according to the dramatic representation in our text; and what would it say from the breast of each one of us?"I need the air of heaven for outward breathing; and I need the light of heaven for sight. I need the bodily sustenance on which the vigor and clearness even of my own operations depend. I need the decencies of a customary appearance and deportment in my external association with men. I need that exemption from galling and ceaseless labor which shall give me opportunity to develop my understanding. But " and is not the tone in which it speaks deepening, and the accent more thrilling?"I need other, greater things. I need, oh! I need inward peace. I need 'a conscience void of offence towards God and man.' I need a religious courage, and a trust which the fluctuations of the world, on which we are borne as a little boat on the sea, cannot unseat, nor its sudden changes of life and death, severing the closest cords, overthrow. I need objects vast enough and holy enough to absorb into themselves these yearning affections, content with no created good. I need to live, not for mere eating and drinking and clothing, and passing selfishly through my career; but I need-oh! how deeply!-to be endeared by sentiments of love, and deeds disinterested, to my fellowbeings. I need to make the world better that I have

lived in it, to leave some other monument and memorial of myself than a grave-stone, or a flattering epitaph cut by the hand of friendship in its cold surface. Verily I need,—God knows it, and my heart knows, -I need to bless those around me, to be united to them, not by ties of blood alone, or transient convenience, but by deep, indissoluble, immortal bonds. And in order to all this, I need Christ, the Son of God, for my Saviour, and God himself for my friend."

If the soul speak not thus within us, it slumbers, or is "dead in trespasses and sins." If the soul speak not thus within us, we have not encouraged it to speak at all. Or if, from within, the soul utter instead the voice of worldly contentment and of old self-complacency in the text, it hath faculties,— faculties from God, and which it must answer for, but "hath never used," and needs it does not "know."

The dull caterpillar may be content with lying upon the ground, hardly appearing animated, like a lump or brown leaf, when the wings are actually folded up within, to bear it into the sunshine and among all the blossoms of the landscape. So a man may be content with a low, earth-bound life, a state of half-manhood, because unconscious of the heavenbestowed capacities by which he might live above the world. But the mere force of nature will not unfold the man as it does the insect. He may discourage and keep down these wings of the soul. He may, by sin and his rebellious will, wound and

mutilate them as they instinctively strive to expand. Yet he cannot remain forever unconscious of their existence. He cannot exercise them in the mean ways of the world in which he treads. Lacking their true element and use, they will pine and wither with dissatisfaction and remorse, and his upbraiding spirit turn away from the sources to which he so confidently carries it for supply, as the lean, travelworn, thirsty camel turns in gaunt despair from the empty well in the desert. We need the principle of devotion to God and others' good. We need the practice of the two great commandments of love to God and man. We need to be humble, need to be patient, need to be meek, to the Father above, and our brethren below. We need these dispositions, not only as paying our debt to them, though they are our debt, but as the indispensable requisites of our own well-being. Our Saviour said no strange, unnatural thing, when, after long abstinence, to his disciples' request that he would "eat," he answered that he had meat to eat they knew not of, " to do the will of Him that sent him, and to finish his work." For the deepest need of every one of us will not be supplied, till to omit daily prayers, and daily services of good-will, shall be like taking away our daily food. Service, the communication of benefit as a child of the All-bountiful, is indeed the solemn and uncompromising demand that human nature—say what we will of that nature, disparage it as we may - makes of itself; is what, whenever it truly knows itself, it requires itself to do. Yea

"The poorest poor

Long for some moments in a weary life,

When they can know and feel that they have been
Themselves the fathers and the dealers-out

Of some small blessings; have been kind to such
As needed kindness, for this single cause,

That we have all of us one human heart!"

It is said that the priest and familiar counsellor of William the Conqueror, when asked by his master respecting the rewards he would have for his advice, in turn asked him, "Dost thou not love fame for the sake of fame?" And the baron replied, "Yes." Then, turning to the minstrel, he asked, "Dost thou not love song for the sake of song?" And he replied, "Yes." "Wonder not, then," proceeded the religious scholar, " that the student loves knowledge for the sake of knowledge." And not till we love truth and goodness for the sake of truth and goodness, not till we hold them as the breath of our life, live in them as the inspirations of our soul, and pursue them as the very terms of our spiritual existence, shall the great need of our nature be appeased; all its faculties, which God gave and Christ came to satisfy, opened; and our true place vindicated on the scale of being. But then indeed we shall have learned, that the needy are not one particular class, but the whole of God's family; and we shall satisfy the need of the poor and unfortunate, and our own need, by the same generosity of word and act.

DISCOURSE XXIV.

OBJECT OF HUMAN LIFE.

Eccles. vi. 12. -FOR WHO KNOWETH WHAT IS GOOD FOR MAN IN THIS LIFE?

WHEREFORE am I alive? What is the object or the use of life? This is the problem of our text, and of the whole book in which the text is found. Certainly it is the most interesting of problems, and one that must have occurred to every serious mind. What is the use, the meaning of my life? for what purpose was it given? to what end shall it aim? I can trace uses, adaptations, in other things. One part of the world is suited to another, and the whole world is made to correspond to my senses and organs; but for what were my senses and organs themselves, all my powers of body and mind, bestowed? Is there, above the little tasks and tradings in which I am occupied, any single presiding object, or only a swift succession and blind complication of small, shifting aims and designs? Is life an instrument ministering to some solid purpose, or a fleeting phantasmagoria, that leaves no lasting result? Such, substantially, was the inquiry of the preacher three thousand years