drooping spirits, and roused them to prompt and immediate exertion. The dangers which before appalled them in their mission to evangelize the world, now were counted as nothing, and braved with the consciousness, how ineffectual their power to defeat the heavenly commission with which they were entrusted. An apostle's faith alone can account for an apostle's life and exertions. Knowing what they believed, we cannot wonder at the altered course which they pursued. With the prospect of that home of everlasting rest and happiness, we do not wonder that they willingly endured all things to spread the knowledge of blessings so invaluable in a benighted and sinful world.

Exertions no less persevering, though not perhaps so arduous, we are called to make. It is no small matter fully to obey the gospel which they preached. It is no light task to adopt good principles, to subject the life entirely to their influence. It is not easy to bear the afflictions that attack us, to be resigned under them, not to permit them to make us neglect remaining blessings, nor to cause us to neglect incumbent duty. The path in which we should walk is a strait and narrow path; the life of faith, to be effectual, must be a life of obedience. 'Tis hard to escape the snares of the world, to mix with evil and suffer no contamination. And though a life of sin can never be a life of happiness, a life of virtue it requires labour and watchfulness incessant to lead. Much to urge us to this

will arise from its effect upon our happiness in this present world; but who would neglect those higher motives which futurity furnishes ? Who would not, while wandering in this vale of tears, think of his heavenly Father's house, and the mansions prepared for his reception there? To this, if we are not negligent of our own welfare, approaching age directs our thoughts. Then in the course of nature we are nearer our final home; how melancholy, if we are not growing daily more prepared to enjoy it! But the lessons which admonish us to set our affections on things above, we begin very early to receive; and as we "know not the day nor the hour when we shall be called," at the earliest period of life when we can comprehend the beautiful and interesting truths which Jesus taught, we should endeavour to treasure them in our memory, to fix our affections and hearts upon them, and to regulate our whole lives by their purifying and ennobling influence. Then shall we dwell in this life "as strangers and pilgrims," and declare plainly by the whole course of our life, that we are "seeking a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God."

DISCOURSE XI.

WISDOM FOUND IF EARLY SOUGHT.

PROV. viii. 17.

I LOVE THEM THAT LOVE ME, AND THOSE THAT SEEK ME EARLY SHALL FIND ME.

In this passage wisdom is personified and made to address mankind, promising affection to those who cherish love to her. This figure of personification is that in which inanimate things are spoken of as if they possessed life and the faculties of intellectual beings. It is a very It is a very bold and very striking figure, and is of frequent occurrence in the Old Testament. While it is one of the most daring forms of figurative language, it is quite natural—a form to which the imagination is prone to recur in almost every case in which it is strongly excited. And as the imagination is apt to mislead the judgment, this propensity to personify things and qualities has been the cause of much of the idolatry which has prevailed in the heathen world. Not merely have the sun, the moon, the woods and

rivers, and other great objects of nature been adored, addressed, and worshiped as real beings, able to hear and bless by a voluntary agency; but power, wisdom, cunning, evil passion, grace and beauty, love and hatred, fortune and fate, have been made gods and goddesses; have had their temples and their priests, their statues and their altars, and their crowds of blind but devoted worshipers. Judaism and Christianity have united to expose these follies, to correct these errors; but though they have done much, they have not yet succeeded altogether to destroy them. And even Christians are misled by taking the figurative for the simple form, and believing in the existence of that which is nothing more than a personification of some quality, and has no real existence in nature, nor amongst the works of God.

There is no danger of this sort in the text and the animated description of wisdom which occupies the whole chapter out of which our text is taken. Though wisdom is described as standing in the top of high places—as crying at the gates and entry of the city-as calling to the sons of men-as speaking with her mouth, and holding wickedness an abomination to her lips-as dwelling with prudence and finding out knowledge of skilful inventions-as possessing riches and honour, durable riches and righteousness-as existing before all the works of God, before the earth was, when there were no depths and no fountains abounding with water-as present

when God prepared the heavens, when he set his compass upon the face of the deep, when he gave to the sea his decree that the waters should not pass his commandment, when he appointed the foundations of the earth-as dwelling in a palace and saying, "Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors,"-even a child must be very young and very uninstructed not to know that it is no real person that is thus made to speak of itself, that it is a quality which God in perfection possesses, which necessarily belongs to the Divine attributes, which man may acquire by preparing his mind for the reception of knowledge, and for the appropriation of it to the purposes of life.

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Wisdom is practical knowledge conducive to the welfare of mankind; and it is very desirable for all persons to know that all knowledge is not wisdom. A man may be a great linguist, he may know languages that are now dead, and unused by any people, and remain only in books; he may be intimate with living languages spoken by the different nations of the earth, and his skill in all these may profound, aware of their idioms, not unacquainted with any of their niceties, able to read them with fluency, to speak them with readiness; and yet such a man may have no wisdom. He has the means of acquiring it more perfectly than the man who has not his advantages; but his attainments, great as they may be, are not wisdom. The arts and

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