and all things that are passing in the world group themselves in preparation for that, and melt into its outline. Let us try to live with these things in view. God our friend; Christ our living Redeemer; our sympathizing Brother; our conquering Champion: →→ the triumph of Truth; the End of Wrong. We shall live upon realities then; and this world will fade away into that which we know it is, but cannot realize Appearance, and a Shadow.

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Lastly; God insures that his children shall realize all this by affliction. Job had admitted these things before, but this time he spoke from the ashes on which he was writhing. And if ever a man is sincere it is when he is in pain. If ever that superficial covering of conventionalities falls from the soul, which gathers round it as the cuticle does upon the body, and the rust upon the metal, it is when men are suffering. There are many things which nothing but sorrow can teach us. Sorrow is the great Teacher. Sorrow is the Realizer. It is a strange and touching thing to hear the young speak truths which are not yet within the limits of their experience: to listen while they say that life is sorrowful, that friends are treacherous, that there is quiet in the grave. When we are boys we adopt the phrases that we hear. In a kind of prodigal excess of happiness, we say that the world is a dream, and life a nothing that eternity lasts forever, and that all here is disappointment. But there comes a day of sharpness, when we find, to our surprise, that what we said had a meaning in it; and we are startled. That is the sentimentalism of youth passing into reality. In the lips of the young such phrases are only sentimentalities. What we mean by

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sentimentalism is that state in which a man speaks things deep and true, not because he feels them strongly, but because he perceives that they are, beau tiful, and that it is touching and fine to say them, things which he fain would feel, and fancies that he does feel. Therefore, when all is well, when friends abound, and health is strong, and the comforts of life are around us, religion becomes faint, and shadowy. Religious phraseology passes into cant—the gay, and light, and trifling, use the same words as the holiest; till the earnest man, who feels what the world is sentimentalizing about, shuts up his heart, and either coins other phrases or else keeps silence. And then it is that, if God would rescue a man from that unreal world of names and mere knowledge, He does what He did with Job,- He strips him of his flocks, and his herds, and his wealth; or else, what is the equiva lent, of the power of enjoying them the desire of his eyes falls from him at a stroke. Things become real then. Trial brings man face to face with GodGod and he touch; and the flimsy veil of bright cloud that hung between him and the sky is blown away: he feels that he is standing outside the earth, with nothing between him and the Eternal Infinite. O! there is something in the sick bed, and the aching heart, and the restlessness and the languor of shattered health, and the sorrow of affections withered, and the stream of life poisoned at its fountain, and the cold, lonely feeling of utter rawness of the heart which is felt when God strikes home in earnest, that forces a man to feel what is real and what is not.

This is the blessing of affliction to those who will lie still, and not struggle in a cowardly or a resentful way.

It is God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind, and saying In the sunshine and the warmth you cannot meet Me; but in the hurricane and the darkness, when wave after wave has swept down and across the soul, you shall see My Form, and hear My Voice, and know that your Redeemer liveth.

XI.

[Preached December 6, 1849.]

FIRST ADVENT LECTURE.

THE GRECIAN.

ROM. 1. 14-17.

«I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God upto şalvation to every one that believeth to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. ́ ́ For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith."

THE season of Advent commemorates three facts. 1. That the Lord has come. 2. That He is perpetu ally coming. 3. That He will yet come in greater glory than has yet appeared. And these are the three Advents: The first in the flesh, which is past; the second in the spirit; the third, His judgment Advent. The first occupies our attention in these lectures, We live surrounded by Christian institutions; breathe an atmosphere saturated by Christianity. It is exceed ingly difficult even to imagine another state of things. In domestic purity, to conceive the debasing effects of polygamy; in the midst of political liberty, to conceive of the blighting power of slavery; in scientific

progress, to imagine mental stagnation; in religious liberty and free goodness, to fancy the reign of superstition.

Yet, to realize the blessings of health, we must sit by the sick bed; to feel what light is, we must descend into the mine and see the emaciated forms which dwindle in darkness; to know what sunshine is, go down into the valleys where stunted vegetation and dim vapors tell of a scene on which the sun scarcely shines two hours in the day. And to know what we have from Christianity, it is well to cast the eyes sometimes over the darkness from which the Advent of Christ redeemed us.

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There are four departments of human nature spoken of in these verses, on which the Light shined. The apostle felt that the Gospel was the power of God unto salvation to the Greeks, the Romans, the Barbarians, and the Jews. In the present lecture we consider Christianity presented to the Grecian character, and superseding the Grecian religion.

Four characteristics marked Grecian life and Grecian religion, Restlessness Worldliness-The worship of the Beautiful The worship of the Human.

I. Restlessness.

Polytheism divided the contemplation over many objects; and as the outward objects were manifold, so was there a want of unity in the inward life. The Grecian mind was distracted by variety. He was to obtain wisdom from one Deity; eloquence from that Mercurius, for whom Paul was taken; purity from Diana, for whom Ephesus was zealous; protection for