standing between others and danger, and those others quietly content to reap the benefit of that struggle without anxiety of their own. And there is something in this singularly like the position in which all young persons are placed. The young are by God's providence exempted in a great measure from anxiety: they are as the apostles were in relation to their Master: their friends stand between them and the struggles of existence. They are not called upon to think for themselves: the burden is borne by others. They get their bread without knowing or caring how it is paid for: they smile and laugh without a suspicion of the anxious thoughts of day and night which a parent bears to enable them to smile. So to speak they are sleeping-and it is not a guilty sleep-while another watches.

My young brethren-youth is one of the precious opportunities of life-rich in blessing if you choose to make it so, but having in it the materials of undying remorse if you suffer it to pass unimproved. Your quiet Gethsemane is now. Gethsemane's struggles you can not know yet. Take care that you do not learn too well Gethsemane's sleep. Do you know how you can imitate the apostles in their fatal sleep? You can suffer your young days to pass idly and uselessly away; you can live as if you had nothing to do but to enjoy yourselves: you can let others think for you, and not try to become thoughtful yourselves: till the business and the difficulties of life come upon you unprepared, and you find yourselves like men waking from sleep, hurried, confused, scarcely able to stand, with all the faculties bewildered, not knowing right from wrong, led headlong to evil, just because you have not given yourselves in time to learn what is good. All that is sleep.

And now let us mark it. You can not repair that in afterlife. Oh! remember every period of human life has its own lesson, and you can not learn that lesson in the next period. The boy has one set of lessons to learn, and the young man another, and the grown-up man another. Let us consider one single instance. The boy has to learn docility, gentleness of temper, reverence, submission. All those feelings which are to be transferred afterwards in full cultivation to God, like plants nursed in a hotbed and then planted out, are to be cultivated first in youth. Afterwards, those habits which have been merely habits of obedience to an earthly parent, are to become religious submission to a heavenly parOur parents stand to us in the place of God. Veneration for our parents is intended to become afterwards adoration for something higher. Take that single instance; and

ent.

now suppose that that is not learnt in boyhood. Suppose that the boy sleeps to that duty of veneration, and learns only flippancy, insubordination, and the habit of deceiving his father-can that, my young brethren, be repaired afterwards? Humanly speaking, not. Life is like the transition from class to class in a school. The school-boy who has not learnt arithmetic in the earlier classes can not secure it when he comes to mechanics in the higher: each section has its own sufficient work. He may be a good philosopher or a good historian, but a bad arithmetician he remains for life; for he can not lay the foundation at the moment when he must be building the superstructure. The regiment which has not perfected itself in its manœuvres on the paradeground can not learn them before the guns of the enemy. And just in the same way, the young person who has slept his youth away, and become idle, and selfish, and hard, can not make up for that afterwards. He may do something, he may be religious-yes; but he can not be what he might have been. There is a part of his heart which will remain uncultivated to the end. The apostles could share their Master's sufferings-they could not save Him. Youth has its irreparable past.

And therefore, my young brethren, let it be impressed upon you-NOW is a time, infinite in its value for eternity, which will never return again. Sleep not; learn that there is a very solemn work of heart which must be done while the stillness of the garden of your Gethsemane gives you time. Now or never. The treasures at your command are infinite. Treasures of time, treasures of youth, treasures of opportunity that grown-up men would sacrifice every thing they have to possess. Oh for ten years of youth back again with the added experience of age! But it can not be: they must be content to sleep on now, and take their rest.

We are to pass on next to a few remarks on the other sentence in this passage, which brings before us for consideration the future which is still available for we are to observe, that our Master did not limit His apostles to a regretful recollection of their failure. Recollection of it He did demand. There were the materials of a most cutting self-reproach in the few words He said: for they contained all the desolation of that sad word, never. Who knows not what that word wraps up-never-it never can be undone. Sleep on. But yet there was no sickly lingering over the irreparable. Our Master's words are the words of One who had fully recognized the hopelessness of His position, but yet manfully and calmly had numbered His resources and scanned His duties,

and then braced up His mind to meet the exigencies of His situation with no passive endurance: the moment was come for action-"Rise, let us be going."

:

Now the broad general lesson which we gain from this is not hard to read. It is that a Christian is to be forever rousing himself to recognize the duties which lie before him now. In Christ the motto is ever this, "Let us be going." Let me speak to the conscience of some one. Perhaps yours is a very remorseful past-a foolish, frivolous, disgraceful, frittered past. Well, Christ says, My servant, be sad, but no languor; there is work to be done for me yet-rise up, be going! Oh my brethren, Christ takes your wretched remnants of life-the feeble pulses of a heart which has spent its best hours not for Him, but for self and for enjoyment, and in His strange love He condescends to accept them.

F

Let me speak to another kind of experience. Perhaps we feel that we have faculties which never have and now never will find their right field; perhaps we are ignorant of many things which can not be learnt now; perhaps the seed-time of life has gone by, and certain powers of heart and mind will not grow now; perhaps you feel that the best days of life are gone, and it is too late to begin things which were in your power once: still, my repentant brother, there is encouragement from your Master yet. Wake to the opportunities that yet remain. Ten years of life-five years-one yearsay you have only that will you sleep that away because you have already slept too long? Eternity is crying out to you louder and louder as you near its brink, Rise, be going: count your resources: learn what you are not fit for, and give up wishing for it: learn what you can do, and do it with the energy of a man. That is the great lesson of this passage. But now consider it a little more closely.

Christ impressed two things on His apostles' minds: 1. The duty of Christian earnestness-" Rise;" 2. The duty of Christian energy-"Let us be going."

Christ roused them to earnestness when He said, "Rise."? A short, sharp, rousing call. They were to start up and wake to the realities of their position. The guards were on them: their Master was about to be led away to doom. That was an awakening which would make men spring to their feet in earnest. Brethren, goodness and earnestness are nearly the same thing. In the language in which this Bible was written there was one word which expressed them both: what we translate a good man, in Greek is literally nest." The Greeks felt that to be earnest was nearly identical with being good. But, however, there is a day in life

ear

when a man must be earnest, but it does not follow that he will be good. "Behold the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him." That is a sound that will thunder through the most fast-locked slumber, and rouse men whom sermons can not rouse. But that will not make them holy. Earnestness of life, brethren, that is goodness. Wake in death you must, for it is an earnest thing to die. Shall it be this, I pray you?-Shall it be the voice of death which first says, Arise," at the very moment when it says, "Sleep on forever?"-Shall it be the bridal train sweeping by, and the shutting of the doors, and the discovery that the lamp is gone out?-Shall that be the first time you know that it is an earnest thing to live? Let us feel that we have been doing: learn what time is-sliding from you, and not stopping " is: when you stop learn what sin is: learn what " never "Awake, thou that sleepest.'

Lastly, Christian energy-"Let us be going." There were two ways open to Christ in which to submit to His doom. He might have waited for it: instead of which He went to. meet the soldiers. He took up the cross, the cup of anguish was not forced between His lips, He took it with His own hands, and drained it quickly to the last drop. In afteryears the disciples understood the lesson, and acted on it. They did not wait till persecution overtook them; they braved the Sanhedrim: they fronted the world: they proclaimed aloud the unpopular and unpalatable doctrines of the resurrection and the cross. Now in this there lies a principle. Under no conceivable set of circumstances are we justified in sitting

"By the poison'd springs of life,

Waiting for the morrow which shall free us from the strife." Under no circumstances, whether of pain, or grief, or disappointment, or irreparable mistake, can it be true that there is not something to be done, as well as something to be suffered. And thus it is that the spirit of Christianity draws over our life, not a leaden cloud of remorse and despondency, but a sky—not perhaps of radiant, but yet of most serene and chastened and manly hope. There is a past which is gone forever. But there is a future which is still our own.

SERMONS.

Third Series.

I.

THE TONGUE.

Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.-St. James iii. 5, 6.

In the development of Christian truth a peculiar office was assigned to the Apostle James.

It was given to St. Paul to proclaim Christianity as the spiritual law of liberty, and to exhibit faith as the most active principle within the breast of man. It was St. John's to say that the deepest quality in the bosom of Deity is love; and to assert that the life of God in man is love. It was the office of St. James to assert the necessity of moral rectitude; his very name marked him out peculiarly for this office: he was emphatically called, "the Just:" integrity was his peculiar characteristic. A man singularly honest, earnest, real. Accordingly, if you read through his whole epistle, you will find it is, from first to last, one continued vindication of the first principles of morality against the semblances of religion. He protested against the censoriousness which was found connected with peculiar claims of religious feelings. "If any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain." He protested against that spirit which had crept into the Christian brotherhood, truckling to the rich and despising the poor. "If ye have respect of persons ye commit. sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors. He protested against that sentimental fatalism which induced men to throw the blame of their own passions upon God.