thing, which is 'to understand the loving kindness of the Lord.' As these religious views possess themselves of the soul, the gloom and pain excited by what is temporary become evanescent in the lustre of the good which alone is eternal, and shall be universal. If men would but exercise their minds upon the great plan of Providence, learning more and more of the principles on which it proceeds, the ways in which it works, the end to which it advances, how much of unhappiness, of disappointment, of despondency, would be precluded! There is nothing so practically beneficial, such a spring of hourly pleasure to the heart, as the growing enlightenment of the mind on the nature and tendency of the Divine dispensations. Indolent ignorance is punished by the needless suffering occasioned by its own narrow notions. It is eminently true of religious 'knowledge,' that it is 'power,' power which purifies, and power which blesses. Evermore to see God in his works, to know what he does, and why he does it is evermore to rejoice. And if this be far beyond our attainment here, as to the particular workings of the mighty machine, we yet may grasp the principle, cultivate an increasing sense of its truth and beauty, and increasing acquaintance with its applications, and thus approximate towards our final state of perfect knowledge and perfect enjoy

ment.

The means we have described were those which Paul and his fellow-apostles and disciples employed; and by which they succeeded, in spite of the most formidable array of external circumstances against them. They were men of prayer, habitual and fer

vent.

Their activity was ceaseless. When Christ commissioned them, it was as if he had made the winds his messengers, and flames of fire his ministers.' They went forth into all the earth, and made the Gospel proclamation universal as the shining of the stars of heaven, for there was 'no speech nor language where their voice was not heard.' No vain expectation buoyed them up, to plunge them afterwards in misery; they laid their account with toil, opposition, calumny, persecution, exile, chains, and death. Every passion. and every thought they compelled into subjection to Christ. They knew nothing but him, the crucified one. To live in all good conscience towards God and man, was that for which they exercised themselves. And they ever studied to know more of the unsearchable riches of God in Christ. They laid the foundation of principles, and then went on, and exhorted to go on, towards perfection. And with all their toils, and all their persecutions, they were happy men. Through all the painful records of the historical parts of the New Testament, and through all the arguments and controversies of its Epistles,there runs a spirit of calm rejoicing. They brought themselves even to 'glory in tribulation,' and the sorrow of the Christian is a 'sorrow not without hope.' They could do all things, through the Gospel of Christ which strengthened them; and in whatever external state they were, they learned therewith to be content. When the first martyr was borne away to death, his face was as the face of an angel. They sang their hymns of praise in prisons—they rejoiced in being thought worthy to suffer. The power of evil could go no farther

against them—the baffled world, in its fury to work their woe, only saw them rejoicing, more and ever.

more.

Thus, then, not in undevout, irrational, animal pleasure; not in indolent repose; not in vain and falla-. cious reverie; not in tumultuous and unbridled passions; not in the sacrifice of right feeling and right conduct; not in careless, superstitious, or slothful ignorance; but by a mind enlightened with God's truth, and observant of God's ways; a conscience void of offence; a hope pointing heavenwards and making not ashamed; feelings well cultivated and well directed; and love to God and man, showing itself in filial piety and active goodness; may we aim at, and, as far as earth's clouds and changes and our own infirmities will allow,advance towards, a state of conformity with the precept to rejoice evermore.

SERMON XIII.

MORAL INCONGRUITIES.

PROVERBS XXv. 20.

As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart.

By these two similitudes, the proverb describes that aggravation of the suffering of an individual which is often occasioned by selfishness, or by mere heedlessness, or even by kindness, when tact and judgment are wanting in its manifestations. The first of them needs no explanation; and of the second, it may suffice to say that the substance called nitre was not that which the word designates with us, but an alkali, used in washing;—' wash me with nitre and I shall be clean;' the same thing as the Smyrna soap-earth; and pouring vinegar upon it would make it bubble, and effervesce, in a manner affording no unapt comparison for a state of annoyance and irritation. Such is his work who pours gay ditties in a sorrowing ear. It implies a want of thought, of judgment, or of feeling; a deplorable want of thought if, when we are with persons in a state of suffering, we do not advert to the effect which our own behaviour may have upon them; a want of judgment, if we expect to change that

state by showing a total absence of sympathy in it, or exhort them, as by an act of volition, to spring abruptly from grief to gladness, while gloom is pressing heavily upon their minds; and a want of feeling, if our own merriment be unrepressed by a sense of the painful contrast it must present to them, of its utter uncongeniality with their condition, and by all the other stirrings within the bosom of that disposition which impels to weep with them that weep, as well as to rejoice with them that rejoice.

When this evil arises from a want of feeling, it is only one symptom of a great moral disease which requires the concentrated and persevering attention of the individual for its correction. The man who is deficient in this, has a most important part of his nature undeveloped. He has to acquire some of the first principles of goodness. He must acquire them before he can ascend in the scale of moral excellence. The descriptions which one sometimes hears of very good people, but with not much feeling, of cold and crabbed Christians, are altogether incongruous and absurd. In religion and morality, the faculties of the head and the heart are coordinate; they should both be diligently cultivated, and their growth and expansion should be proportionate. The men who have done great things in the world; who have raised large classes of their fellow-creatures from suffering and degradation; who have abolished miseries; the moral heroes who have slain the monsters that ravaged cities and made earth a wilderness; while they have been distinguished from others by the clearness of their intellect, and the activity of their lives, have