leading, the problem that tried the sage king in Jerusalem, carrying him into the labyrinth of thought, and the still deeper labyrinth of dangerous practice, loses its perplexity. The object of life is disclosed more plainly as we proceed in reference to it, as the mountain on the landscape towards which we travel widens and heightens on our view. It is disclosed in the harmony and constant enlargement of the powers we use faithfully, in the growth of the holy affections towards God and man which we cherish, in the ever-easier reduction of all events and deeds to the great scope of our pious design, and in the stronger assurance, so thrilling to the human heart, that continually gains upon us, "refining as we run," of immortal expansion in a boundless sphere, to which our human life, with its preliminary culture and discipline, with its crosses and changes, delights and hopes, joys and desolating sorrows, will seem as fitted as one kingdom of matter is to another, as the whole world is to our mortal senses, or as the thought of God and the sentiment of duty are to the human soul.

DISCOURSE XXV.

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NOW I KNOW IN PART.

1 Cor. xiii. 12. NOW I KNOW IN PART.

THE Scriptures abound in reflections upon the weakness and short-sightedness of the human mind. Now, it is observable that the atheist and sceptic have taken the strain of Scripture, and striven to turn its weapons against itself and its friends. "How blind and weak, how poor and miserable," they repeat, "the creature to whom you yet assign so splendid a destiny! You speak of the immortality of this worm, as you yourself call him; of this ignorant being, whose comprehension a grain of dust baffles; this impotent being, whom heat and cold, light and darkness, wet and drought, play with and scorn; this wretched being, whom sickness prostrates, and misfortune depresses, and sorrow dissolves in tears; the most helpless of all creatures at his birth, the most unsatisfied of all through his life; you prophesy for him 'glory and honor and immortality!'"

I accept the issue which atheism and infidelity thus present. I will reason for the magnificent prospects of man on the very ground here taken, of his weak

nesses and diseases, his griefs and fears. I will show that there is no incongruity in holy writ, when in one breath it tells of man's miseries and vanities, and in the next of his unending life and glories. For, "I know in part:" what does this mean, but that I have an idea of more knowledge than I actually possess, believe myself capable of greater acquisitions, and see the domain of wisdom stretching out beyond my present reach, and inviting my further pursuit? Why be straitened in my limits, but that my true element is the unbounded? Knowing so little, why not rest content with this small modicum ? Why, indeed, know that I am ignorant? Ah! it is this knowledge of my ignorance that contains the seed of my immortal aspiration. The brute, grazing in the field, is ignorant too, but dreams not of any insufficiency of information, aims at nothing more. But man's intellect puzzles itself ever upon new doubts and difficulties of investigation. Nor will I be sorry that there are points he cannot reconcile, questions he has reasoned upon for ages without settling, and sciences still imperfect and ill-understood. They are the promise of food for his eternal activity.

Could we glorify man's present spiritual advances, and celebrate the complete beauty of his intellectual furniture, the argument for immortality would not be so strong. We might think the mind had drunk its fill here, and accomplished its destiny. This crying at every point for something further and more is the very principle of its endless being. "Away, away!"

exclaimed one on hearing a rich strain of music : "thou tellest me of what in all my life I have not found," pointing to a purer state of existence and

sensation.

The same argument might be pushed as to all the limitations, sadnesses, and defects of our nature. We will admit that the human being is everywhere sadly incomplete, and nowhere has finished his work. There is, for example, truth in the melancholy lament so oft repeated at the death of friends. They were interrupted in the midst of their usefulness. They were taken away in "the dew of their youth," or withdrawn in the increasing fruit of their age. They were stopped before the accomplishment of their designs. With what a wreck of plans and hopes, enterprises and calculations, is the shore of eternity strewn ! If the soul's measure be in this weaver's shuttle of time, with no threads woven to reach across the span of earth, death is untimely and the tomb premature.

Look out upon all nature, and see the exquisite perfection of every object there. From the blade of grass to the everlasting stars, there is no deviation from the law of order or the line of beauty. Everything is still, as at first it was pronounced, good. Everything seems to accomplish its work, and fulfil its design. In the plant you see the end reached in the unfolding of the petals, or the ripening of the product. There is nothing more to be wished or expected, and no tendency to anything further, save to drop the seed of the same species through suc

cessive ages. In the animal there is a like definite organization, all its powers corresponding to the present world, or with only dim, uncertain signs of faculties suited to another. The same completeness appears in the globes on high, as they roll in precise orbits,

"Forever singing, as they shine,

The hand that made us is divine."

The astronomer detects no lawless course, no really, however for a time apparently, irregular or straying motion. So perfect is nature, from the fine dust of the balance to the revolutions of the sky.

But the human mind rises up the vast, lonely exception to this hair-breadth completeness of the world. Recognizer of the perfection of all things else, itself alone is imperfect. It is allowed on all hands to be imperfect. God and Christ, believer and infidel, demoniac tempter and good angel, here consent. It conceives of a knowledge transcendent. It conceives of a purity shaming its pollution. It conceives of a blessedness to which earth's joys are but glimpses of light and breakings in a stormy sky. Now God, the perfect One, deals not in fragments, like some weak human artist who may overlay the walls of his chamber with attempts at an entire beauty. This universe, the room he works in, is filled with perfect shapes, and tints all-beautiful. With him, however it may be with inferior artists, a part always implies the whole. But if this human soul, in the very beginning of its aspirings, in the