good, first perfect, and first fair. The wise identify themselves with their fellow creatures, and mourn with the mourner, and rejoice with the joyous; and have a voice for truth, and a heart for humanity, and energy and effort for improvement; and, therefore, it will be a blessing to them to join the assembly of the just, and become ministering spirits of the God of love, and do in heaven the will which, as far as they could, was done by them on earth. The wise have studied the character and attributes of the infinite God, and endeavored to imbibe his spirit, and bear his moral likeness, and, therefore, it will be a blessing to them, when 'they shall see his face,' and 'his name shall be in their foreheads,' and they shall surround his eternal throne. But what is heaven to him who has not thus, by its previous influences, been fashioned for its possession? What will his unquestioning faith, but a faith as unfelt as undoubted; what will his unquestioned conduct, but a conduct as devoid of the heart and soul of goodness, as it is free from the world's imputation-what will these avail him there? He may not be the subject of suffering; but what can he know and taste of the higher kinds of spiritual enjoyment? He has not prepared himself for the true heaven of the Gospel; he has been expecting some external, and arbitrary, and positive sort of reward; and it is to him like the gift of a rich and ample library to a man who cannot read; or of Grecian statues and Italian paintings to one who has no taste for, or perception of, the beauties of form and color, grace in the execution, or genius in the design. Why, let a man contemplate even a brief residence in a foreign land, and

he endeavors to make some previous acquirement which may increase his pleasure therein; he trains himself into some previous fitness. Let him expect the possession of some station of emolument or influence, and he does something to qualify himself the more fully to inherit its advantages or the more ably to employ its powers; and yet the fool in religion thinks to go to glory without those qualities of head, heart, and character; the piety and purity, and dignity and beneficence; which alone are fitness for heaven-which are an anticipated heaven while we are on earth, and without which there would be no heaven to all eternity. This 'hath the wise more than the fool;' in religion as in all things else, that he adapts the means to the end; prepares himself for the inheritance which is prepared for him, dies daily to live eternally, and retires from his good and faithful service, to enter into the everlasting joy of his approving Lord.

The question is answered, then; answered by Providence itself in a connected series of lessons, the instruction of which it is man's best wisdom to imbibe. Without common prudence, foresight, skill and industry, man cannot reasonably expect to gain wealth and competence: without the cultivation of intellect and taste, wealth cannot give more than a gross, unsatisfactory, and little better than animal enjoyment; without moral qualities, sympathies, social interest and efforts, the pleasures of intellect and fancy will satiate and pall: without reflection, judgment, solid principles rightly applied, those sympathies and interests will often run to waste and turn to bitter

ness; and that reflection and these principles conduct to pure religion for their completion, their strength, their crown; religion, which holds out the highest object and requires the noblest means: the one, happiness, infinite, and everlasting; the other, character, purified and elevated towards the utmost perfection of humanity. There may be dejection in the wise man's course; but though cast down, he is not forsaken. Black clouds may lower over the scene, but upon them is the rainbow, and after them comes a brighter sunshine. With all his aberrations and depression, his life is still a progression; and so is his immortality. In some disappointed mood he may ask, 'What hath the wise more than the fool?' But his calmer meditation on the course of his existence will be like the vision of Jacob; it will be as a ladder, set up on earth, but its top reaching unto heaven. The patriarch was sleeping at its foot-sleeping a brief time, while his frame was weary and his vision was blissful; but early in the morning he rose, the strength of his body and the piety of his heart alike invigorated; offered his vows to God, and went forwards on his way, trusting and rejoicing.

SERMON VI.

HUMAN BROTHERHOOD.

ACTS xvii. 26.

And hath made of one blood all nations of men.

Had the fact that Paul preached at Athens been mentioned without particulars, how great would have been our curiosity to know how he conducted himself who eminently ranks as a philosopher among the apostles, when he stood alone, an apostle among philosophers! This was the noblest arena on which he had ever struggled; he had fought with beasts at Ephesus, but at Athens he contended with the master spirits of mankind. He was at once in the very palace of intellect, and the sanctuary of idolatry. All that his writings and recorded actions have unfolded of his character rush upon our minds, and deepen our interest, and exalt our expectations, as we behold him, impelled by the fervor of zeal, and armed only in the simplicity of truth, advancing to glorify Jesus of Nazareth as the Lord of faith, in the awful presence of this world's wisdom. Well did he acquit himself, in a speech where reason lays the broad basis of a spiritual theism, and revelation rears the lofty structure of judgment and

immortality. He spoke, as apostle should speak at Athens, in language worthy of himself, and his illustrious character, and heavenly commission;—worthy of the dignified auditory before which he pleaded; worthy of diffusion and transmission to remotest countries and ages, for reverential study; and worthy to be the shrine of those fundamental and everlasting principles which constitute religious truth, and are Christianity. Nor is it to him alone that our interest clings; for, from the dawn of intellect and freedom, has Greece been a watch-word in the earth. There rose the social spirit, to soften and refine her chosen race, and shelter, as in a nest, her gentleness from the rushing storm of barbarism-there liberty first built her mountain throne, first called the waves her own, and shouted across them a proud defiance to despotism's banded myriads: there the arts and graces danced around humanity, and stored man's home with comforts, and strowed his path with roses, and bound his brows with myrtle, and fashioned for him the breathing statue, and summoned him to temples of snowy marble, and charmed his senses with all forms of elegance, and threw over his final sleep their veil of loveliness: there sprung poetry, like their own fabled goddess, mature at once, from the teeming intellect, girt with the arms and armor that defy the assaults of time, and subdue the heart of man: there matchless orators gave the world a model of perfect eloquence, the soul the instrument on which they played, and every passion of our nature but a tone which the master's touch called forth at pleasure: there lived and taught the philosophers of bower and porch, of pride and pleasure, of deep speculation and of useful