king? or is sense the blind wall through which even the divine glory may not pierce, or the message of grace and pardon sound? Is there not in every breast a holy apostate from the powers of evil, who can be reached by this tempting offer, accept this precious invitation of eternal life, and open the way to the universal triumph of Divine love?

Let those, however, who affirm such a triumph, beware lest they forget that it consists in a moral, not in a sensual, life and salvation. It is a comparatively low end for us to come at last to enjoy ourselves, and be perfectly happy. Our nature, in its nobler aspirings, owns not, but scorns, such an aim. It demands, beyond passive bliss, a sphere of exertion, duty, and self-devotion. Pleasure is but incidental; progress is proposed; and any views are injurious which would sink, even upon the line of farthest futurity, the prominence of this sublime endeavor. Heaven is no plain or valley, but an upland region; and our joy is to be in climbing its everlasting hills. The heroic martyr-spirit waives not, but claims, all the preliminary toil and agony that could fit it for the glad ascent. Even the guilty heart, in true self-knowledge, asks not to be excused from that purging fire whose rage is not quenched while any inner fuel remains. It would not have the heavy consequences of its impurity carried away, but bear its own load; and, by its expiation of sin, and satisfaction of justice, be nerved for holy achievements; blessing God in Christ for its deliverance, not from the results, but from the very essence, of iniquity. Only a low carnal sentiment fixes its

regard on felicity and luxury, even though it were the felicity and luxury of the soul's exalted imaginations and thoughts, as the heavenly portion and heritage upon which we are to enter. Our rest above is not sleep or indolence, but divine, harmonious effort. The song and harp there are not the mere utterance of sweet voices, and the twanging of melodious strings; but our very action shall be music, and our life a hymn. God's own love to us in this world is not a feeble indulgence of our inclinations, and humoring of our childish desires. It is no fond wish, but an eternal principle. It dispenses, not only smiles and gladness, but, for our good, darkness and frowns; so that we, in some of its manifestations, call it wrath, though it is still love perfect and alone. We should pitch our affection, our esteem and effort, on the same holy key, and lift it into the same godlike strain, as we contemplate the condition, and strive for the perfection, of ourselves and our fellowmen. We should enter into sublime sympathy with our Father in the tasks and sufferings he appoints; in the hard, long scourging he lays on the impenitent and impure, that he may open a better fate.

In fine, the inquiry, whether that fate will at any fixed period embrace every creature, and there be literally no such thing as sin or suffering in all God's universe, seems not within our power clearly to solve. We know not the origin of evil; we know not its end; we cannot measure the purposes which, under God, it may subserve; we understand not how extensively through the creation his training of erring and peccable natures is used, or how many

souls of his inspiration must pass through stages of weakness and folly, before attaining to wisdom and moral strength. To make any definite prophecy of the time when his plans shall be accomplished is a greater presumption than to predict the end of the world. Indeed, will his plans ever be accomplished, and nothing left for him to do? One space, we believe, is free from sin and remorse: that we call heaven. To our imagination and hope, as they expand in the light of Scripture, it is an ever-enlarging space. It may not only take in soul after soul, but reach from planet to planet, and from star to star. It is a space of spiritual existence. It is the fulfilment of the dream of a perfect society. It is a true community, and a moral harmony. As it spreads and advances, the regions of gloom dwindle, and the rebel forces of wrong diminish and retire before its predominant power. It is a pure and divine contagion of virtue. It is the adjustment of the spiritual and material worlds. It is the love of God, as a positive, manifest, and overcoming energy, adopted and exercised by his children, servants and saints. Reversing the application of the wonderful words in "Paradise Lost," it is hell" ruining from heaven." It is eternal life. Could we, with our faculties, conceive of a period or state when its tendency would be fulfilled, the universe would be all heaven. But our business is not a vain and foolish struggle to raise our speculation to a level with that of the Infinite Mind, but it is an unceasing endeavor to live the eternal life of God's spirit in our souls.

DISCOURSE XXIX.

CHANGE AND GROWTH.

Acts iii. 19. REPENT YE, THEREFORE, AND BE CONVERTED, THAT YOUR SINS MAY BE BLOTTED OUT, WHEN THE TIMES OF REFRESHING SHALL COME FROM THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD.

The

WHAT is the main principle or necessary condition of the Christian life and experience? Is it change, a change of heart? or is it growth, a growth of nature? Theologians and religious denominations. have been much divided on this point. The Orthodox sects have commonly insisted, that the needful process is change, suddenly expelling from our nature an evil, and introducing a good element. Liberal party has in general contended, on the other hand, that growth is the law; that the nature which God has given us needs no alteration, but only right development, by a method of orderly progress and gradual sanctification. Which party is right in this controversy ? May not both be right, and both wrong? To the true Christian life and experience, are not change and growth alike requisite, and equally recognized in the Scriptures? The real point is not to decide between these two principles, but to assign to each its just relative position. Let

us do this, not as identified with, or speaking in the name of either party, but hoping rather for the day when Christian believers shall no longer be styled Liberal or Orthodox, but Liberal and Orthodox; strict in truth, and catholic in love.

To proceed with our question. The liberal believer, in holding the Christian character to be a process of growth, relies much on the analogies of nature. "See," he says, "every living thing that God hath made, how it grows!-in the vegetable world, the flower by just degrees developed from a tiny seed, and the oak developed from the acorn; in the animal world, every creature rising, with no sudden starts, but by a perfect series of gradations, out of the very rudiments of existence. Why should not the same law be observed in the spiritual world, and all that is good and holy in character be evolved from a primary germ in the very nature of the soul; to use our Saviour's own analogy, 'first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear '? growth, being, in fact, the law of the universe." But to this it may be replied, that, if growth be a law of the universe, change is a law too: the light, the air, the earth, the water, changed into the plant; the body growing by change and assimilation of its daily food; the worm becoming a butterfly, not, as is imagined, by simple growth, but by transformation, as the waxing light and heat of heaven rend away the old covering, and alter the very mode of existence; every thing that has life brought into the world by mighty alteration; the earth itself, on which we dwell, reduced to its habitable condition