to trust in God rather than in man to teach: in God and God's light in the soul. You choose a guide among precipices and glaciers, but you walk for yourself; you judge his opinion, though more experienced than your own; you overrule it if needs be; you use your own strength, you rely on your own nerves. That is independence.

You select your own physician, deciding upon the respective claims of men, the most ignorant of whom knows more of the matter than you. You prudently hesitate at times to follow the advice of the one you trust most, yet that is only independence without a particle of presumption.

And so precisely in matters of religious truth. No man cares for your health as you do; therefore you rely blindly upon none. No man has the keeping of your own soul, or cares for it as you do. For yourself, therefore, you inquire and think, and you refuse to delegate that work to bishop, priest, or church. Call they that presumption? Oh, the man who knows the awful feeling of being alone, and struggling for truth as for life and death, he knows the difference between independence and presumption.

3

Second, Humbleness. There is no infallibility in man; if so, none in us. We may err: that one thought is enough to keep a man humble. There are two kinds of temper contrary to this spirit. The first is a disputing, captious temper. Disagreement is refreshing when two men-lovingly desire to compare their views to find out the truth. Controversy is wretched when it is an attempt to prove one another wrong. Therefore Christ would not argue with Pilate. Religious controversy does only harm. It destroys the humble inquiry after truth: it throws all the energies into an attempt to prove ourselves right. The next temper contrary is a hopeless spirit. Pilate's question breathed of hopelessness. He felt that Jesus was unjustly condemned, but he thought Him in views as hopelessly wrong as the rest: all were wrong. What was truth? Who knew any thing about it? He spoke too bitterly, too hopelessly, too disappointedly to get an answer. In that despairing spirit no man gets at truth: "The meek will He guide in judgment..

Lastly, Action. This was Christ's rule-"If any man will do His will. A blessed rule: a plain and simple rule. Here we are in a world of mystery, where all is difficult, and very much dark-where a hundred jarring creeds declare themselves to be the truth, and all are plausible. How shall a man decide? Let him do the right that lies before him: much is uncertain-some things at least are clear. Whatever else may be wrong, it must be right to be pure-to be

just and tender, and merciful and honest. It must be right to love, and to deny one's self. Let him do the will of God, and he shall know. Observe-men begin the other way. They say, If I could but believe, then I would make my life true: if I could but be sure what is truth, then I would set to work to live in earnest. No: God says, Act make the life true, and then you will be able to believe. Live in earnest, and you will know the answer to "What is truth ?”

Infer the blessedness of belief. Young men are prone to consider skepticism a proof of strong-mindedness-a something to be proud of. Let Pilate be a specimen-and a wretched one he is. He had clear-mindedness enough to be dissatisfied with all the views he knew enough to see through and scorn the squabbles and superstitions of priests and bigots. All well, if from doubt of falsehood he had gone on to a belief in a higher truth. But doubt, when it left him doubting-why, he missed the noblest opportunity man ever had-that of saving the Saviour: he became a thing for the people to despise, and after ages to pity. And that is skepticism. Call you that a manly thing?

To believe is to be happy; to doubt is to be wretched. But I will not urge that. Seventy years and the most fevered brain will be still enough. We will not say much of the wretchedness of doubt. To believe is to be strong. Doubt cramps energy. Belief is power. Only so far as a man believes strongly, mightily, can he act cheerfully, or do any thing that is worth the doing.

I speak to those who have learned to hold cheap the threats wherewith priests and people would terrify into acquiescence to those who are beyond the appeal of fear, and can only yield, if at all, to higher motives. Young men, the only manly thing, the only strong thing, is faith. It is not so far as a man doubts, but so far as he believes, that he can achieve or perfect any thing. "All things are possible to him that believeth.”

XXII.

THE ISRAELITE'S GRAVE IN A FOREIGN LAND.*

"And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die; and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt."-Gen. 1. 24–26.

ever.

THERE is a moment when a man's life is re-lived on earth. It is in that hour in which the coffin-lid is shut down, just before the funeral, when earth has seen the last of him forThen the whole life is, as it were, lived over again in the conversation which turns upon the memory of the departed. The history of threescore years and ten is soon recapitulated not, of course, the innumerable incidents and acts which they contained, but the central governing principle of the whole. Feverish curiosity sometimes spends itself upon the last hours: and a few correct sentences, implying faith after the orthodox phraseology, would convey to some greater hope than a whole life breathing the Spirit of Christ

* [This sermon was formerly published by the Author in a separate form, and the following Preface to that publication explains so well the circumstances under which all the other sermons have been preserved, that it has been thought best to reprint the Preface here.]

"For the publication of the commonplace observations contained in the following pages, the commonplace excuse may, perhaps, suffice, that printing was the simplest way of multiplying copies for a few friends who desired them. Perhaps, too, the uncommonness of the occasion may justify the writer in giving to an ephemeral discourse an existence somewhat less transient than the minutes spent in listening to it.

"The sermon is published as nearly as possible as it was spoken. It was written out concisely for a friend on the day of its delivery, with no intention of publication. Afterwards, it seemed better to leave it in that state, with only a few corrections, and the addition of a few sentences, than to attempt to re-write it after an interval too great to recall what had been said. This will account for the abruptness and want of finish which pervades the composition.

"The writer takes this opportunity of disowning certain sermons which have been published in his name. They would not have been worth notice, had not the innumerable blunders of thought and expression which they contain been read and accepted by several as his. For this reason he feels it due to himself to state that they are published without his sanction, and against his request, and that he is not responsible for either the language or the ideas."

separate from such sentences. But it is not thus the Bible speaks. It tells us very little of the closing scene, but a great deal of the general tenor of a life. In truth, the closing scene is worth very little. The felon, who, up to the last fortnight, has shown his impenitence by the plea of not guilty, in the short compass of that fortnight makes a confession, as a matter of course exhibits the externals of penitence, and receives the Last Supper. But it would be credulity, indeed, to be easily persuaded that the eternal state of such an one is affected by it. A life of holiness sometimes mysteriously terminates in darkness; but it is not the bitterest cries of forsakenness-so often the result of physical exhaustion-nor even blank despair, that shall shake our deep conviction that he whose faith shone brightly through life is now safe in the everlasting arms. The dying scene is worth little-little, at least, to us-except so far as it is in harmony with the rest of life.

It is for this reason that the public estimate pronounced upon the departed is generally a fair criterion of worth. There are, of course, exceptional cases-cases in which the sphere of action has been too limited for the fair development of the character, and nothing but the light of the judgmentday can reveal it in its true aspect-cases in which party spirit has defaced a name, and years are wanted to wash away the mask of false color which has concealed the genuine features-cases in which the champion of truth expires amidst the execrations of his contemporaries, and after ages build his sepulchre. These, however, are exceptions. For the most part, when all is over, general opinion is not far from truth. Misrepresentation and envy have no provocatives left them. What the departed was is tolerably wellknown in the circle in which he moved. The epitaph may be falsified by the partiality of relations; but the broad judg ment of society reverses that, rectifies it, and pronounces with perhaps a rude, but, on the whole, fair approximation to the truth.

These remarks apply to the history of the man whose final scene is recorded in the text. The verdict of the Egyptian world was worth much. Joseph had gone to Egypt, some years before, a foreigner; had lived there in obscurity; had been exposed to calumny; by his quiet, consistent goodness, had risen, step by step, first to respect, then to trust, command, and veneration was embalmed after death in the affections, as well as with the burial rights, of the Egyptians; and his honored form reposed at last amidst the burial-place of the Pharaohs.

In this respect the text branches into a twofold division: The life of Joseph, and the death which was in accordance with that life.

1. The history of Joseph, as of every man, has two sides— its outward circumstances and its inner life.

The outward circumstances were checkered with misfortune. Severed from his home in very early years, sold into slavery, cast into prison-at first grief seemed to have marked him for her own. And this is human life. Part of its lot is misery. There are two inadequate ways of accounting for this mystery of sorrow. One, originating in a zeal for God's justice, represents it as invariably the chastisement of sin, or, at the least, as correction for fault. But, plainly, it is not always such. Joseph's griefs were the consequences, not of fault, but of rectitude. The integrity which, on some unknown occasion, made it his duty to carry his brethren's "evil report" to their father, was the occasion of his slavery. The purity of his life was the cause of his imprisonment. Fault is only a part of the history of this great matter of sorrow. Another theory, created by zeal for God's love, represents sorrow as the exception, and happiness as the rule of life. We are made for enjoyment, it is said, and on the whole there is more enjoyment than wretchedness. The common idea of love being that which identifies it with a simple wish to confer happiness, no wonder that a feeble attempt is made to vindicate God by a reduction of the apparent amount of pain. Unquestionably, however, love is very different from a desire to shield from pain. Eternal love gives to painlessness a very subordinate place. in comparison of excellence of character. It does not hesitate to secure man's spiritual dignity at the expense of the sacrifice of his well-being.

The solution will not do. Let us look the truth in the face. You can not hide it from yourself. "Man is born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward." Sorrow is not an accident, occurring now and then, it is the very woof which is woven into the warp of life. God has created the nerves to agonize, and the heart to bleed; and before a man dies, almost every nerve has thrilled with pain, and every affection has been wounded. The account of life which represents it as probation is inadequate: so is that which regards it chiefly as a system of rewards and punishments. The truest account of this mysterious existence seems to be that it is intended for the development of the soul's life, for which sorrow is indispensable. Every son of man who would attain the true end of his being must be baptized with fire. It is the law of our