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 int which the Spirit of God is pouring itself in a mighty tide of Revelation?

II.

PARABLE OF THE SOWER.

"The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea-side. 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 way-side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth and forthwith they sprung 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 sprung up, and choked them: But others fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some a hundred-fold, some sixty-fold, some thirty-fold. Whe hath ears to hear, let him hear."-Matt. xiii. 1–9.

BEFORE the reception of the Lord's Supper on Sunday next, I have been anxious to address you once more, my young friends, 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 Confirmation consists in its being a season of excitement 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 reaction. The heart, like the body and the mind, can not 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 noth

ing 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 precisely those 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 that sanguine anticipation. Of the seven hundred who were earnest then, it were an appalling question to ask how many will have retained their earnestness six months hence, and how much of all that which seemed so real will be recognized as pure, true gold at the last Great Day. Soon some will have lost their innocence, and some will have become frivolous and artificial, and the world will have got its cold, deadening hand on some. Who shall dare to guess in how many the best raised hopes will be utterly disappointed ?

Now the question which presents itself is, How comes so much promise to end in failure? And to this the parable of the sower returns a reply.

Three causes are conceivable: It might be the will, or, if you venture so to call it, the fault of Him who gave the truth; or it might be some inherent impotency in the truth itself; or, lastly, the fault might lie solely in the soil of the heart.

This parable assures us that the fault does not lie in God, the sower. God does not predestinate men to fail. That is strikingly told in the history of Judas-" From a ministry and apostleship Judas fell, that he might go to his own place." The ministry and apostleship were that to which God had destined him. To work out that was the destiny appointed to him, as truly as to any of the other apostles. He was called, elected to that. But when he refused to ex

66

ecute that mission, the very circumstances which, by God's decree, were leading him to blessedness, hurried him to ruin. Circumstances prepared by Eternal Love, became the destiny which conducted him to everlasting doom. He was a predestined man-crushed by his fate. But he went to his own place." He had shaped his own destiny. So the ship is wrecked by the winds and waves-hurried to its fate. But the winds and waves were in truth its best friends. Rightly guided, it would have made use of them to reach the port; wrongly steered, they became the destiny which drove it on the rocks. Failure-the wreck of life—is not to be impiously traced to the will of God. "God will have all men to be saved, and come to a knowledge of the truth." God willeth not the death of a sinner.

Nor, again, can we find the cause in any impotency of truth-an impotency, doubtless, there is somewhere. The old thinkers accounted for it by the depravity of Matter. God can do any thing, they said. Being good, God would do all good. If he do not, it is because of the materials He has to deal with. Matter thwarts Him: Spirit is pure, but Matter is essentially evil and unspiritual: the body is corrupt. Against this doctrine St. Paul argues in the text, "For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed; but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life."-2 Cor. v. 4.

The true account is this: God has created in man a will which has become a cause. "God can do any thing?" I know not that. God can not deny himself; God can not do wrong; God can not create a number less than one; God can not make a contradiction true. It is a contradiction to let man be free, and force him to do right. God has performed this marvel, of creating a being with free-will, independent, so to speak, of Himself-a real cause in His universe. To say that He has created such a one, is to say that He has given him the power to fail. Without free-will there could be no human goodness. It is wise, therefore, and good in God, to give birth to free-will. But once acknowledge free-will in man, and the origin of evil does not lie in God.

And this leads us to the remaining cause of failure which is conceivable. In our own free-will-in the grand and fearful power we have to ruin ourselves-lies the real and only religious solution of the mystery. In the soil of the heart is found all the nutriment of spiritual life, and all the nutriment of the weeds and poisons which destroy spiritual life. it is this which makes Christian character, when complete, a

And

thing so inestimably precious. There are things precious, not from the materials of which they are made, but from the risk and difficulty of bringing them to perfection. The speculum of the largest telescope foils the optician's skill in casting. Too much or too little heat-the interposition of a grain of sand, a slight alteration in the temperature of the weather, and all goes to pieces-it must be recast. Therefore, when successfully finished, it is a matter for almost the congratulation of a country. Rarer, and more difficult still than the costliest part of the most delicate of instruments, is the completion of Christian character. Only let there come the heat of persecution, or the cold of human desertion, a little of the world's dust, and the rare and costly thing is cracked, and becomes a failure.

In this parable are given to us the causes of failure, and the requirements which are necessary in order to enable impressions to become permanent.

I. The causes of failure.

1. The first of these is want of spiritual perception. Some of the seed fell by the way-side. There are persons whose religion is all outside; it never penetrates beyond the intellect. Duty is recognized in word, not felt. They are regular at church, understand the Catechism and Articles, consider the Church a most venerable institution, have a respect for religion, but it never stirs the deeps of their being. They feel nothing in it beyond a safeguard for the decencies. and respectabilities of social life; valuable, as parliaments and magistrates are valuable, but by no means the one awful question which fills the soul with fearful grandeur.

Truth of life is subject to failure in such hearts in two ways:-By being trodden down: wheat dropped by a harvestcart upon a road lies outside. There comes a passenger's foot, and crushes some of it; then wheels come by-the wheel of traffic and the wheel of pleasure-crushing it grain by grain. It is "trodden down."

The fate of religion is easily understood from the parallel fate of a single sermon. Scarcely has its last tone vibrated on the ear, when a fresh impression is given by the music which dismisses the congregation. That is succeeded by another impression, as your friend puts his arm in yours and talks of some other matter, irrelevant, obliterating any slight seriousness which the sermon produced. Another, and another, and another-and the word is trodden down. Observe, there is nothing wrong in these impressions. The farmer's cart which crushes the grain by the way-side is roll

ing by on rightful business, and the stage and the pedestrian are in their place; simply the seed is not. It is not the wrongness of the impressions which treads religion down, but only this, that outside religion yields in turn to other outside impressions which are stronger.

Again, conceptions of religious life, which are only conceptions outward, having no lodgment in the heart, disappear. Fowls of the air came and devoured the seed. Have you ever seen grain scattered on the road? The sparrow from the housetop, and the chickens from the barn rush in, and within a minute after it has been scattered not the shadow of a grain is left. This is the picture, not of thought crushed by degrees, but of thought dissipated, and no man can tell when or how it went. Swiftly do these winged thoughts come, when we pray, or read, or listen; in our inattentive, sauntering, way-side hours: and before we can be upon our guard, the very trace of holier purposes has disappeared. In our purest moods, when we kneel to pray, or gather round the altar, down into the very Holy of holies sweep these foul birds of the air, villain fancies, demon thoughts. The germ of life, the small seed of impression, is gone-where, you know not. But it is gone. Inattentiveness of spirit, produced by want of spiritual interest, is the first cause of disappointment.

2. A second cause of failure is want of depth in character, Some fell on stony ground. Stony ground means often the soil with which many loose stones are intermixed; but that is not the stony ground meant here: this stony ground is the thin layer of earth upon a bed of rock. Shallow soil is like superficial character. You meet with such persons in life. There is nothing deep about them; all they do and all they have is on the surface. The superficial servant's work is done, but lazily, partially-not thoroughly. The superficial workman's labor will not bear looking into-but it bears a showy outside. The very dress of such persons betrays the slatternly, incomplete character of their minds. When religion comes in contact with persons of this stamp, it shares the fate of every thing else. It is taken up in a superficial

way.

There is deep knowledge of human nature and exquisite fidelity to truth in the single touch by which the impression of religion on them is described. The seed sprang up quickly, and then withered away as quickly, because it had no depth of root. There is a quick, easily-moved susceptibility that rapidly exhibits the slightest breath of those emotions which play upon the surface of the soul, and then as rapidly