more light."* If these old notions, then, are found to be inconsistent with the light, let them vanish. They lived in the body once; let them now become ghosts; and, having become so, let them not visit you again. Put them amongst the things to be cast into the land of shadows. Send them away as nurses' stories-stories of the early, simple, childlike, undeveloped ages of the world.

*The last audible words of Goethe were, More light! Jean Paul Richter, who became blind eight days before his death, many times raised his darkened eyes to the window, hoping a faint ray would pierce the gloom; and once, in the most touching voice, cried out with Ajax in the Iliad

"If we must perish, we Thy will obey,

But let us perish in the light of day.”

THE NEW COVENANT GROWING OLD.

Morning, September 3rd, 1876,

"For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.

"For, finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah." -HEBREWS viii. 7, 8.

IF

you remember that the Covenant is asserted to have been made and given by God, and then you hear that God found fault with it, and because it was worn out and threadbare another had to come, the asserted divine authority of the document makes the change by which it was superseded the more memorable. Those of you who suffer your hearts to be stirred about the changes that come over all human ways, institutions, creeds, gospels, and so forth, may as well be at peace, for, according to this writer, the Covenant made by God wore out, a

garment of God went to rags, a vesture of man's soul, supplied by the Almighty, became threadbare, and God "found fault with it."

We waive the question to-day, touching the nature of revelation, or how far God could whisper His revelations into mortal ear, or lay them down in the shape in which they are found in mortal tongue; we leave all this untouched, in order to look into this principle. For I think you will see that, if things that God is said to have ordered, by-and-by become preposterous so that no good man can tolerate them, then you need not trouble yourselves about any smaller matters. If the heavenly

Covenant cannot stay, human institutions may be certainly under the same rule. For if the astronomer tells me that even the sun does, by-and-by, wear itself out, I cannot greatly wonder that my poor taper should come to an end. If this great round world shall by-and-by go, do not agitate yourselves if your little institutions show signs of the "crack of doom," too. One hears nowadays so much whimpering about the decay of old things. But if the divine Covenant has gone to rags, who needs to mourn about the little inventions of man— the catechisms, the Thirty-nine Articles, and other temporary statements? "Out of thine own

mouth shalt thou be judged." According to you, this covenant was made by God Himself, and yet He found fault with it, and gave a substitute. If, then, over the divine work change and decay comes, what little thing have you to offer as permanent? Why should you go about the world whimpering at changes, when God Himself shall draw the heavens together as a vesture, and all shall pass away?

One of our first duties is to find out that all human institutions, and all divine ones, are only for a time, enduring until the germ of the institution or constitution reaches the largest possible development; and then decay's effacing finger begins its work. No sooner does the fruit come to its full richness, no sooner has the sun put his last fingertouch upon the peach, than decay begins, and that vesture, so splendid, is found to contain a stone, and that stone is but a sepulchre which contains a seed. Yet from the seed shall come another splendour of outward vesture, which the stone of the sepulchre doth but veil for a moment. There must be resurrection. The stone must be rolled away; for the new life is better than the old. The seed must fall; for the new truth must be born.

When a king was first wanted, it did not need

that heaven should be opened, in order to tell men to make one. After the establishment of the kingship, the necessity of organization and discipline, the feeling of loyalty and obedience, all kept flowing into this institution, and so, by-and-by, the little king has his day of bloom. To-day you see him in African feathers and a little paint; by-and-by he. will blossom into "His Highness," or " His Most Sacred Majesty," and must be clothed in silk, velvet, and gold. Then fools adore and knaves are envious. At last we have to say concerning the kingly compact, "If that Covenant had been faultless, then should no place be sought for the second." Now that Protestantism is getting to be more understood, one looks at the royal robe, and sees, without a sigh, the moth getting into it; one beholds the ermine, and sees it getting out of repair. But these things are still necessary, for man must be " of age" before he can part with them. The old world is not twenty-one yet. They will have to pass away though, when they have had their day and can no longer hold the life of an instructed world.

Then, by-and-by, the people want a priest. That religion must be a fearful terror which leads people to want priests-brokers, mediators between themselves and God. Conscious of sin, full of feebleness,