best account, and whether their pleasures are substantial and durable.-When they are persuaded to have recourse to thought and retirement, they not unfrequently, on the other hand, enter upon them in a wrong method. They seem, then, often to apprehend that their Religious "knowledge" is utterly defective, and that all their conceptions of the "mysteries" and of the "faith" of the Gospel, must be entirely new modelled and changed; or they suppose that the freedom of social intercourse is in itself sinful, and that the common appearances of the amusements and relaxations of life, however in themselves innocent and productive of sentiments of kindness, are inconsistent with the awful responsibility attached to the condition of man upon earth. It would seem, my brethren, as if it were almost with a view to obviate the melancholy of such impressions, that the glowing picture of Christian charity is revealed to us, in all its diffusiveness and generosity of sentiment, on the very eve of our being called to private retirement and meditation ;-it would seem intentional, that we are, in these moments, particularly, warned against the supposition, that it is to the depth of the "mysteries," the "knowledge," or the "faith" of the Gospel, that our secret thoughts are principally to be turned ;-or that, in leaving the world for a season, we are to look upon it from our retreat with the spirit of censure, or with the indulgence of any one unsocial feeling. No, it is not to make any new discoveries of Gospel truth that we are now called, but to meditate on the great truth which is as old as creation itself, but which the Gospel has most mercifully brought home to the darkened spirits of wandering and sinful creatures ;on the love of God to every being which He has made, and on the only constant and effectual returns which we can make to that love, in our conduct and dispositions towards our brethren. It is to call all our ways to mind in which we have either sinned against their peace, or omitted to do them good, or looked upon them with cold and uncharitable affections, or forgotten them, and their concerns, in the chace of selfish pleasures, or low pursuits, or vain imaginations;-It is to this earnestness of practical meditation, not to any refinement of opinions, or of emotions, that we are now summoned; nor is it to censure the common uses and customs of the world that we are call ed, but to repent of our own erroneous abuse of them. And what is to be the result of our penitence or our tears? Is it that we are to give up the business of the world?—No, assuredly, but that we are henceforth to place that business chiefly in our social duties!-Is it that we are to abandon its pleasures? No, but that we are to find these more in the sympathies and less in the selfishness of our nature; ever to remember that " love worketh no ill to his neighbour," and that love is not only the fulfilling of the law, but the true source of all human enjoyment! 66 Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies they shall fail,-whether there be tongues they shall cease,-whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away." When, my brethren, we meditate on our past lives, we feel the vanity of all such transitory studies or pursuits as cease with the moments in which they have passed, or have tended merely to swell the notion of our own individual importance; and we are conscious that it is in such alone in which good has been done, or happiness communicated, that there is any stability or endurance. In them we discover the seeds of immortality; they proceed from unperishing affections in ourselves, and they awaken corresponding affections in others; they are designed to brighten and perfect themselves in purer and better worlds; and it is, too, from the prevailing love alone of High and Holy Beings towards us, that our entrance into those abodes of perfection is secured. What great things have been done for us to raise us from the impurities and disorders of our present earthly state, and to enable us finally to aspire to the reign of perpetual bliss and love,—we must now be satisfied to "see, as through a glass, darkly," and amidst the imperfections of our human "knowledge" and "faith." Yet these principles, if we rightly apply them, are sufficient to kindle within us the spirit of devout gratitude, selfhumiliation, resolute obedience, and unconquerable charity; and where we have failed in these graces, as which of us does not fail every day?—may we now, in the hours of penitence, obtain pardon and forgiveness through Him who gave himself for us even to the death ;whose Charity never faileth, and who can alone |