examined, and exhibited in all the most seductive. forms of imagery. You would be shocked at seeing. your son in a fit of intoxication; yet, I say it solemnly better that your son should reel through the streets in a fit of drunkenness, than that the delicacy of your daughter's mind should be injured, and her imagination inflamed with false fire. Twenty-four hours will terminate the evil in the one case. Twenty-four hours will not exhaust the effects of the other; you must seek the consequences at the end of many, many years. I speak that which I do know; and if the earnest warning of one who has seen the dangers of which he speaks realized can reach the heart of one Christian parent, he will put a ban on all such works, and not suffer his children's hearts to be excited by a drunkenness which is worse than that of wine. For the worst of it is, that the men of our time are not yet alive to this growing evil; they are elsewhere, in their studies, counting-houses, professions, - not knowing the food, or rather poison, on which their wives' and daughters' intellectual life is sustained. It is precisely those who are most unfitted to sustain the danger, whose feelings need restraint instead of spur, and whose imaginations are most inflammable, that are specially exposed to it.

On the other hand, spiritual life calms while it fills. True it is that there are pentecostal moments when such life reaches the stage of ecstasy. But these were given to the Church to prepare her for suffering; to give her martyrs a glimpse of blessedness, which might sustain them afterwards in the terrible struggles of death. True it is that there are pentecostal hours when the soul is surrounded by a kind of glory, and

we are tempted to make tabernacles u as if life were meant for rest; but o cloud there comes a voice telling of bidding us descend into the common simple duties and humble life. This seems to be contained in the text.

The apostle's remedy for this artifici "Speaking to one another in psalms a spiritual songs."

Strange remedy! Occupation fit for simple far for men: as astonishing as th scribed by the prophet to Naaman - to water, and be clean; yet therein lies a v truth. In ancient medical phraseology, h of healing natures were called simples: in tory, all things that heal are simple — all ments, all the deepest, are simple too. fills his banquet-hall with the glare of sp fevers as well as fires the heart; and, at t hour, as if by intended contrast, the quiet steal forth, shedding, together with the de the profoundest sense of calm. One from edge of the sources of natural feeling the no appeal has said that to him

"The meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for te

This is exceedingly remarkable in the lin No contrast is more striking than that pres thought that that deep and beautiful life v the midst of mad Jerusalem. Remember man standing quietly in the porches of Bet the streets all around were filled with the

innumerable multitudes, who had come to be present at the annual feast. Remember Him pausing to weep over his country's doomed metropolis, unexcited, while the giddy crowd around Him were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" Remember Him in Pilate's judgment-hall, meek, self-possessed, standing in the serenity of Truth, while all around Him was agitation -hesitation in the breast of Pilate, hatred in the bosom of the Pharisees, consternation in the heart of the disciples.

And this, in truth, is what we want: we want the vision of a calmer and simpler Beauty to tranquillize us in the midst of artificial tastes. we want the draught of a purer spring to cool the flame of our excited life. We want, in other words, the Spirit of the Life of Christ, simple, natural, with power to calm and soothe the feelings which it rouses; the fulness of the Spirit which can never intoxicate!

X.

[Preached August 11, 1850.]

PURITY.

TITUS i. 15. "Unto the pure all things are pure: b are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but eve conscience is defiled."

FOR the evils of this world there are ty remedies: one is the world's, the other is world proposes to remedy evil by adjus cumstances of this life to man's desires. says, Give us a perfect set of circumstan we shall have a set of perfect men. T lies at the root of the system called Social ism proceeds on the principle that all mor physical evil arises from unjust laws. be remedied, the effect will be good. Bu ity throws aside all that, as merely chi proves that the fault is not in outward cin but in ourselves. Like the wise physician, of busying himself with transcendental improve the climate and the outward ci of man, endeavors to relieve and get rid o encies of disease which are from within, C leaving all outward circumstances to ameli selves, fastens its attention on the spirit wh

deal with them. Christ has declared that the kingdom of heaven is from within. He said to the Pharisee, "Ye make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within ye are full of extortion and excess."

The remedy for all this is a large and liberal charity, so overflowing that "unto the pure all things are pure." To internal purity all external things become pure.

The principle that St. Paul has here laid down is, that cach man is the creator of his own world; he walks in a universe of his own creation.

As the free air is to one out of health the cause of cold and diseased lungs, so to the healthy man it is a source of great vigor. The rotten fruit is sweet to the worm, but nauseous to the palate of man. It is the same air and the same fruit acting differently upon different beings. To different men a different world: to one all pollution; to another all purity. To the noble, all things are noble; to the mean, all things are contemptible.

The subject divides itself into two parts.

I. The apostle's principle.

II. The application of the principle.

Here we have the same principle again: each man creates his own world. Take it in its simplest form. The eye creates the outward world it sees. We see not things as they are, but as God has made the eye to receive them.

In its strictest sense, the creation of a new man is the creation of a new universe. Conceive an eye so constructed that the planets and all within them should be minutely seen, and all that is near should