amidst the unthinking crowd, and leads him into serious. reflection, into elevated devotion, into progressive virtue, and finally into a nobler life. When he has long been commanded by this influence, he will be happy to Jook back to its first operations, whether they were mingled in early life almost insensibly with his feelings, or came on him with a mighty force at some particular time, and in connexion with some assignable and emorable circumstance, which was apparently the instrumental cause. He will trace all the progress of this his better life, with grateful acknowledgment to the sacred power which has advanced him to a decisiveness of religious habit, that seems to stamp eternity on his character. He feels this confirmed habit as the grasp of the hand of God, which will never let him go. From this advanced state, he looks with firmness and joy on futurity, and says, I carry the eternal mark upon me that I belong to God; I am free of the universe, and I am ready to go to any world. to which he shall please to transmit me, certain that everywhere, in height or depth, he will acknowledge me forever."*

Let it be remembered, that Christianity is a progressive work, and that the mind is to grow, expand, and become more and more like the mind of Christ,

"While life, and thought, and being last;"

that whatsoever we do, should be done to the glory of God; and that while we exist, our greatest happiness must be that of a mind subdued and quickened by the power and spirit of divine love. Let these things be

*Foster's Essays, p. 534.

known and understood by us, and we shall realize the full meaning of our Saviour's words, "The good man, out of the GOOD TREASURE of his heart, bringeth forth good things."

Before closing the remarks on our general topic, it will not be improper to consider, in a few words, the connexion between scientific knowledge and moral truth. Although the religion of Christ is so well adapted to all capacities; the small as well as the great; the ignorant as well as the wise; it is, nevertheless, the companion of science and all practical knowledge. In proof of this, it is enough to say, that the most learned and enlightened minds on earth have humbly embraced and observed Christianity.

The religion of the Gospel stands in eternal opposition to ignorance; that ignorance now brooding over the heathen and unenlightened portion of the world, and that too prevalent in some portions of civilized and Christian communities. It proclaims the reign of knowledge, and bids darkness, error, and superstition retire. It calls on men to search for wisdom as for hid treasures, and fear not that Christianity will suffer in the broadest blaze of intellectual light. The more of real knowledge the mind obtains, the more lovely and interesting will Christianity appear. Christians are called in Scripture "the light of the world." In agreement with this idea, is the exhortation of the apostle; "What communion hath light with darkness? - Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day we are not of the night nor of darkness. — The night is far spent, the day is at hand : let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light." The more we investigate

the laws of nature through the medium of the sciences, the more may we learn of God and his wonderful ways, and the more will our reasons for loving and serving him be multiplied. So that if the Christian mind goes onward in the attainment of human learning, it will, by causing all this learning to be made subservient to gospel truth, find an elevation which all the knowledge of tongues, and all the sciences communicated through them, alone, could never give.

It is not, of course, here pretended, that all learned men are strongly inclined to Christianity. Infidelity has, indeed, boasted of her profound intellects; but those were never made to understand God in his works.

In reverencing wisdom, they forgot its source. Their education was wrong, and their moral blindness was the consequence. But such minds are not to be ranked among the greatest; nor called, in the positive sense, truly great. Voltaire was certainly not a great man. His littleness in many things is contemptible. Nor was Hume great ; nor Paine; nor are any of the more modern, living infidels, notwithstanding all the puffing and blowing about them. If their whole characters were sifted, true greatness would not there be found. We must judge of this from another standard than that generally used by mankind. It has been well said, that "the greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burden cheerfully, who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menace and frowns; whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering."* Infidelity can show no such greatness as

* Channing.

this; but Christianity abounds with it; and the reason is obvious. The religion of Jesus is a religion of moral greatness; that true wisdom which sees all things in heaven above and earth below, bright with manifestations of God's greatness and glory, and uttering celestial strains in harmony with that Gospel, which is "the power of God unto salvation."

While, then, we value scientific knowledge, and seek to gain all our advantages will yield us, it is highly important that we keep it closely connected with religious truth. "Philosophy fails of its noblest object, if it does not lead us to God; and whatever may be its pretensions, that is unworthy of the name of science which professes to trace the sequences of nature, and yet fails to discover, as if marked by a sunbeam, the mighty hand which arranged them all; which fails to bow in humble adoration. before the power and wisdom, the harmony and beauty which pervade all the works of Him who is Eternal."* On the other hand, when philosophy and religion are united, they go onward in sweet and perpetual accord, leading the mind into new and ever-enlarging fields of divine knowledge and enjoyment, causing all the waste places of the human heart to be fruitful, and the whole mind and strength to be drawn out in cheerful obedience and praise to the King of kings.

* Abercrombie on Christian Culture and Discipline.

CHAPTER VI.

IMPROVEMENT OF TIME.

WHO has not been astonished, if not grieved, in view of the rapid flight of time? Who has not felt the truth of the expression of the Psalmist, "Behold thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee?" Every mortal life proves, every moment declares, the truth of this statement. Sages have thought, poets have written, the young and the old, the great and the small, the wise and the unwise; all have spoken or felt something of that influence produced on the mind by the flight of time.

When we do reflect on the flight of time, it is generally with seriousness. Why? Because human life is so short. We are hurried along so rapidly, all the while beholding others falling and disappearing from our pathway, that we involuntarily ask, what meaneth this? What is man, this creature of a few moments, that he must change and die so soon? And what is that, of which, however great his desire for it, he can obtain but little? Man is a shadow; and this object of his desire is, that mystery called time.

It is a familiar truism, that to the young, time seems long, to the aged short. We shall all know something of this difference, if we consult past experience. None who have arrived at the age of reflection will say, that time has always seemed alike to them. Do you not remember when, in your early morning of life, as you looked forward