draw it from the clouds, and experimentalize on it in his laboratory. The awe created by a pestilence is passed, when it is found to be strictly under the guidance of natural laws. And the Romanist, or the semiRomanist, whose religion is chiefly a sense of the mysterious, the solemn, the awful, and whose flesh creeps when he sees a miracle in the consecration of the sacraments, ends, as is well known, in infidelity, when enlightenment and reason have struck the ground of false reverence from beneath his feet.

It is upon this indisputable basis that the mightiest system of modern Atheism has been built. The great founder of that system divides all human history into three periods. The first, in which the supernatural is believed in, and a personal Agent is believed in as the cause of all phenomena. The second, in which metaphysical abstractions are assumed as Causes. The third, the Positive stage, in which nothing is expected but the knowledge of sequences by Experience; the Absolute, that lies beneath all phenomena, being for ever unknowable, and a God, if there be a God, undiscoverable by the intellect of man.

This conclusion is irrefragable. Granted that the only basis of religion is awe, a worship of the mar vellous, then, verily, there remains nothing for the human race to end in but blank and ghastly Athe

ism.

Therefore has the Redeemer's Advent taught a deeper truth to man. The Apostle Paul spoke almost slightingly of the marvellous. "Covet earnestly the best gifts: yet show I unto you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or

a tinkling cymbal." Love is diviner than all wondrous

powers.

So, too, the Son of God came into this world depreciating the merely mysterious. "An evil and adul terous generation seeketh after a sign. No sign shall be given to it.""Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." Nay, His own miracles themselves, so far as the merely wondrous in them was concerned, He was willing, on one occasion at least, to place on the same level with the real or supposed ones of Exorcists among themselves. "If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out?" It was not the power, nor the supernatural in them, which proved them divine. It was their peculiar character, their benevolence, their goodness, their love, which manifested Deity.

Herein lies the vast fallacy of the French sceptic. The worship of the supernatural must legitimately end in Atheism as science progresses. Yes, all science removes the Cause of causes further and further back from human ken, so that the baffled intellect is compelled to confess at last we cannot find it. But "the world by wisdom knew not God." There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvellous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the Atheism of Science. It does not rest on the Wonderful, but on the Eternal Wisdom and Goodness of God. The Revelation of the Son was to proclaim a Father, not a Mystery. No Science can sweep away the Everlasting Love which the heart feels, and which the intellect does not even pretend to judge or recognize. And he is safe from the inevita

ble decay which attends the mere barbarian worship who has felt, that as Faith is the strongest power in the mind of man, so is Love the Divinest principle in the bosom of God: in other words, who adores God known in Christ, rather than trembles before the Unknown, whose homage is yielded to Divine Character rather than Divine Power.

XIV.

[Preached December 15, 1849.]

THE PRINCIPLE OF THE SPIRITUAL HARVEST.

GAL. vi. 7, 8.- "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”

THERE is a close analogy between the world of nature and the world of spirit. They bear the impress of the same hand; and hence the principles of nature and its laws are the types and shadows of the Invisible. Just as two books, though on different subjects, proceeding from the same pen, manifest indications of the thought of one mind, so the worlds visible and invisible are two books, written by the same finger, and governed by the same Idea. Or, rather, they are but one Book, separated into two only by the narrow range of our ken. For it is impossible to study the universe at all without perceiv. ing that it is one system. Begin with what science you will, as soon as you get beyond the rudiments, you are constrained to associate it with another.

You cannot study agriculture long without finding that it absorbs into itself meteorology and chemistry; sciences run into one another till you get the "con

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nection of the sciences; " and you begin to learn that one Divine Idea connects the whole in one system of perfect Order.

It was upon this principle that Christ taught. Truths come forth from his lips not stated simply on authority, but based on the analogy of the universe. His human mind, in perfect harmony with the Divine Mind with which it mixed, discerned the connection of things, and read the Eternal Will in the simplest laws of Nature. For. instance, if it were a question whether God would give His Spirit to them that asked, it was not replied to by a truth revealed on His authority; the answer was derived from facts lying open to all men's observation. "Behold the fowls of the air," -"behold the lilies of the field," learn from them the answer to your question. A principle was there. God supplies the wants which He has created. He feeds the ravens; He clothes the lilies; He will feed with His Spirit the craving spirits of his children.

It was on this principle of analogy that St. Paul taught in this text. He tells us that there is a law in nature according to which success is proportioned to the labor spent upon the work. In kind and in degree. Success is attained in kind: for example, ho who has sowed his field with beechmast does not receive a plantation of oaks; a literary education is not the road to distinction in arms, but to success in letters; years spent on agriculture do not qualify a man to be an orator, but they make him a skilful farmer. Success, again, is proportioned to labor in degree; because, ordinarily, as is the amount of seed sown, so is the harvest: he who studies much will