tions having taken place, God enters the soul, whispers His secret, becomes visible, imparts knowledge and conviction.

Now, these laws are universal and invariable; they are subject to no caprice. There is no favorite child of nature who may hold the fire-ball in the hollow of his hand and trifle with it without being burnt: - there is no selected child of Grace who can live an irregular life without unrest; or be proud, and at the same time have peace; or indolent, and receive fresh inspiration; or remain unloving and cold, and yet see, and hear, and feel, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.

Therefore the apostle preached the Cross to men who felt and to men who felt not the Revelation cou tained in it. The Cross is humbleness, love, selfsurrender these the apostle preached. To conquer the world by loving it; to be blest by ceasing the pursuit of happiness, and sacrificing life instead of finding it; to make a hard lot easy by submitting to it this was his divine philosophy of life. And the princes of this world, amidst scoffs and laughter, replied, Is that all? Nothing to dazzle-nothing to captivate. But the disciples of the inward life recog nized the Divine Truth which this doctrine of the Cross contained. The humble of heart, and the loving, folt that in this lay the mystery of life, of themselves, ud of God, all revealed and plain. It was God's own isdom, felt by those who had the mind of Christ.

.

The application of all this is very easy: Love God, and He will dwell with you:-Obey God, and He will reveal the truths of His deepest teaching to your soul. Not perhaps :-As surely as the laws of the spiritual

world are irreversible, are these things prepared for obedient love: An inspiration as true, as real, and as certain, as that which ever prophet or apostle reached, is yours, if you will.

And if obedience were entire and love were perfect then would the Revelation of the Spirit to the soul of man be perfect too.) There would be trust. expelling care, and enabling a man to repose; there would be a love which could cast out fear; there would be a sympathy with the mighty All of God. Selfishness would pass, Isolation would be felt no longer :-the tide of the universal and eternal Life would come with mighty pulsations throbbing through the soul. Το such a man it would not matter where he was, nor what to live or die would be alike. If he lived, he would live unto the Lord; if he died, he would die to the Lord. The bed of down, surrounded by friends, or the martyr's stake, girt round with curses,-what matter which? Stephen, dragged, hurried, driven, felt the glory of God streaming on his face when the shades of faintness were gathering round his eyes, and the world was fading away into indistinctness, "the things prepared" were given him. His spirit saw what "Eye had never seen." The later martyr bathes his fingers in the flames, and while the flesh shrivels and the bones are cindered, says, in unfeigned sincerity, that he is lying on a bed of roses. It would matter little what he was, the ruler of a kingdom, or a tailor grimed with the smoke and dust of a workshop. To a soul filled with God, the difference between these two is inappreciable: as if, from a distant star, you were to look down upon a palace and a hovel, both

dwindled into distance, and were to smile at the thought of calling one large and the other small.

No matter to such a man what he saw or what he heard; for every sight would be resplendent with beauty, and every sound would echo harmony: things common would become transfigured, as when the ecstatic state of the inward soul reflected a radiant cloud from the frame of Christ. The human would become Divine,-life, even the meanest, noble. In the hue of every violet there would be a glimpse of Divine affection, and a dream of Heaven. The forest would blaze with Deity, as it did to the eye of Moses. The creations of genius would breathe less of earth and more of Heaven. Human love itself would burn with a clearer and intenser flame, rising from the altar of self-sacrifice.

These are "the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." Compared with these, what are loveliness, the eloquent utterances of man, the conceptions of the heart of Genius? What are they all to the serene stillness of a spirit lost in love: the full, deep rapture of a soul into which the Spirit of God is pouring itself in a mighty tide of Revelation?

11.

[Preached June 6, 1849.]

PARABLE OF THE SOWER.

CONFIRMATION LECTURE.

MATT xiii. 1-10.-"The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the seaside. And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up. Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth; and forthwith they sprang up, because they had no deepness of earth: and when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundred-fold, some sixty-fold, some thirty-fold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear."

BEFORE the reception of the Lord's Supper on Sunday next, I have been anxious to address you, my young friends, once more, in order to carry on the thoughts, and, if possible, deepen the impressions of Tuesday last. During the last few weeks, you have been subjected to much that is exciting; and in proportion to the advantage is the danger of that excitement. A great part of the value of the rite of Con firmation consists in its being a season of excite. ment or impression. The value of excitement is, that

it breaks up the old mechanical life, which has become routine. It stirs the stagnancy of our existence, and causes the stream of life to flow more fresh and clear. The danger of excitement is the probability of reäc. tion. The heart, like the body and the mind, cannot be long exposed to extreme tension, without giving way afterwards. Strong impressions are succeeded by corresponding listlessness. Your work, to which you have so long looked forward, is done. The profession has been made; and now, left suddenly, as it were, with nothing before you, and apparently no answer to the question What are we to do now?-insensibly you will feel that all is over, and the void within your hearts will be inevitably filled, unless there be great vigilance, by a very different class of excitements. This danger will be incurred most by those precisely who felt most deeply the services of the past week. The parable I have selected dwells upon such a class of dangers.

No one who felt, or even thought, could view the scene of Tuesday last without emotion. Six or seven hundred young persons solemnly pledged themselves to renounce evil in themselves and in the world, and to become disciples of the Cross. The very color of their garments, typical of purity, seemed to suggest the hope and the expectation that the day might come when they shall be found clothed with that inward righteousness, of which their dress was but a symbol; when "they shall walk with Him in white, for they are worthy." As yet fresh in feeling, as yet untainted by open sin, who could see them without hoping that?

My young friends, experience forces us to correct