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 termi nate 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 upon the Mount, as if life were meant for rest; but out of that very cloud there comes a voice telling of the Cross, and bidding us descend into the common world again, to simple duties and humble life. This very principle seems to be contained in the text.

The apostle's remedy for this artificial feeling is "Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs."

Strange remedy! Occupation fit for children — toỏ simple far for men: as astonishing as the remedy prescribed by the prophet to Naaman — to wash in simple water, and be clean; yet therein lies a very important truth. In ancient medical phraseology, herbs possessed of healing natures were called simples: in God's labora tory, all things that heal are simple — all natural enjoyments, all the deepest, are simple too. At night, man fills his banquet-hall with the glare of splendor which fevers as well as fires the heart; and, at the very same hour, as if by intended contrast, the quiet stars of God steal forth, shedding, together with the deepest feeling, the profoundest sense of calm. One from whose knowl edge of the sources of natural feeling there lies almost no appeal has said that to him

"The meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

This is exceedingly remarkable in the life of Christ. No contrast is more striking than that presented by the thought that that deep and beautiful life was spent in the midst of mad Jerusalem. Remember the Son of man standing quietly in the porches of Bethesda, when the streets all around were filled with the revelry of

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!

TITUS i. 15.

X.

[Preached August 11, 1850.]

PURITY.

"Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled."

FOR the evils of this world there are two classes of remedies: one is the world's, the other is God's. The world proposes to remedy evil by adjusting the cir cumstances of this life to man's desires. The world says, Give us a perfect set of circumstances, and then we shall have a set of perfect men. This principle lies at the root of the system called Socialism. Social ism proceeds on the principle that all moral and even physical evil arises from unjust laws. If the cause be remedied, the effect will be good. But Christianity throws aside all that, as merely chimerical. proves that the fault is not in outward circumstances, but in ourselves. Like the wise physician, who, instead of busying himself with transcendental theories to improve the climate and the outward circumstances of man, endeavors to relieve and get rid of the tend encies of disease which are from within, Christianity, leaving all outward circumstances to ameliorate themselves, fastens its attention on the spirit which has t

It

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 each 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