plays them; passion, pathos, all things are Thine, O God; Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." That comes to him who shall have his feelings accordant with conscience. Then, if he go to conscience for the score, he can let his feelings play their sweet music, until at last he can bear and delight to take to pieces the complexity of the music, and know whence came all its variety of pain and sweetness, and see the infiniteness of the parts that went to make up the one grand whole. Then, while he rejoices in the infiniteness of the parts, yet, when he listens to them, they shall rise, not as many, but as one, one only, first begotten, never repeated, knowing no posterity, because combining within itself all things.

Thus, then, all these things figure forth dimly—or, rather, the dimness of our eyes makes dull the vision-of a time when perfect man shall dwell in the perfect heavens, the New Jerusalem, the City that hath for its Maker and Builder the Everlasting God.

CHRIST AND EPICURUS.

Morning, October 24th, 1875.

“Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him."- ACTS xvii. 18.

CALL to mind for a moment how Socrates was smiled at once for saying that a man who did just things ought to be just; and it was found, as usual, that the wise man was right, and the rude smiler a fool; for that a man might do a right thing without thinking of it, but, in order to constitute it a just action, he should have meant it, known it, and persevered in the doing of it. We went on from there to examine what is that in a man's actions which constitutes them righteous or just. You and I have nothing to do with the decisions of a magistracy, or of Scriptures, or what not, as to what is right and wrong. The things that are right show their righteousness, and the things that

are sweet show their sweetness in our inner consciousness. You may shout out that a thing is right; but if my soul says it is not right, it cannot be right to me, whosoever may declare it to be so. And when sourness is in my mouth, I can taste no sweetness. Then we saw how Christianity has a fine affinity for men in all sorts and conditions of life; that it has no special gospel to meet the working-man, and is no monopoly of theirs.

We were also reminding you of some of those Stoics that met Paul at Athens; and upon the whole, we found that the Stoic was about the noblest-looking creature of old times, yet essentially different from the Christian man. For the Stoic set store upon an action in proportion as the feelings were crushed thereby. He, who, quivering with pain, should act as though he felt no pain ; he who, when his heart-strings were all torn and bleeding, should act with a cool, calm courage, was the grand man of the Stoics. On the other hand, he only is beautiful, in the Christian philosophy, whose actions spring out of his feelings. Christianity asks no man to mortify his feelings, but to bring them home to charity; then, out of the heart shall spring his actions. The Christian man has nothing to do with the affectations of Stoicism. I

am not here to crush my feelings, but to be gratified by them; only they must be filled full of charity. Then, the Stoic is an unloveable man. Oh! you may admire him; you may even build him a statue, and talk cant about him; but love him? Impossible! Had Christ been a Stoic, he would have been adorable; but as a man of feeling, he was loveable. But, though the Stoic taught many things in accordance with Christianity, he was not loveable.

Now, turn, and look at that great man, Epicurus.* His very name has come down in the world. From having been a most admirable developer of the Cyrenaic philosophy, ignorant people (who pick up fine words first, and, if they have leisure, understand them afterwards) look upon him as a mere lover of good living; and so, a man who is nice in his eating is called an "epicure." And though our text seems to speak rather lightly

* Epicurus was born 342 B.C. His ethical theory was based upon the dogma of the Cyrenaics, that pleasure constitutes the highest happiness, and must consequently be the end of all human exertions. Epicurus, however, developed and ennobled this theory, in a manner which constitutes the real merit of his philosophy, and which gained for him so many friends and admirers both in antiquity and in modern times.-Dr. Smith's " Classical Dictionary."

of those men who went about to seek for something new, their way of idling was as good, and probably as useful, as some of our modern methods. I have often admired the way in which this passage of the Acts sets forth the character of those people. It says they did nothing else but seek after something new either to hear or to talk about. But how much of the conversation of the present day consists in continually going over and over again the dreary enumeration of things you are tired of! These Athenians, having nothing to do, chose one of the most interesting ways of doing nothing.

With the history of the Epicureans I shall not trouble you, except to say that their chief flourished two or three hundred years before Christ. The poem of Lucretius, a Roman philosopher who flourished some sixty years before Christ, may be looked upon as the finest production of the Epicurean school. But care must be taken in handling that poem. It is not to be understood by small people or dull people; but, for those who can understand it, there is not much harm.

The doctrine, as far as we are concerned, is that true pleasure, and not absolute truth, is the aim of