fulness in the man. I have never seen early sloth and sensuality but it has imprisoned the finest intellect, and bound it in chains and fetters not to be burst asunder.

You, then, who are yet little and young; set out on your Christian course with a fixed resolution, that none shall have just cause to despise you hereafter, nor you to despise yourself. And to this end, do not despise little things, little duties, little sins, little faults, little negligences. Be punctual to all things that you ought to do; and never let the duties of to-day be owing, and call upon to-morrow to pay them. Life is a battle from first to last-a battle against sin and Satan for God and your own soul. Begin it then at once.

"Your place in the ranks awaits you-each man has a part to play;

The past and the future are nothing in the face of the stern to-day."

And never mind early hardships. They will fit and prepare you for greater trials in later life. I am thankful to have had them. It is St. Paul's precept to every one; "Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." "He would make a bad soldier who, at his enlistment, should make it a condition that he should be permitted to sleep on a bed of down, and always be well clothed and fed, and never exposed to peril, or compelled to pursue a wearisome march.” Sully, the greatest statesman that France ever had, tells us that, being one day in a mountainous country full of rocks and precipices, he

saw a party of boys at play, running and leaping here and there fearless of danger, bareheaded and barefooted, and dressed in coarse clothing like peasants' sons. One of them particularly attracted his notice, as being the most active, the most daring, and with something so noble about him. Having met with a severe fall, he was up again in a moment, bleeding and laughing. Presently they opened each his little bag, and taking out some coarse brown bread and cheese, sat down to dinner. Having finished their hearty and joyous meal, "It is time for me to be off; I must away to my lessons," said the one with that beautiful countenance and those bright sparkling "Who is that gallant boy?" asked Sully. "That is Henry, Prince of Navarre," was the reply. A few years afterwards that boy was Henry the Fourth, King of France, and Sully was his Prime Minister. Boys, you do not want me to interpret the moral of this to you.

eyes.

And now I come to the few concluding lines of my discourse, without which all the former part would be but as the body without life, or the arch without the keystone. You must strive to be all that the man or the woman ought to be in the affairs of this life— active, useful, self-denying, laborious. But you must be all this in reference to another life, a higher life, an endless life. And this other, higher, endless life you can of yourself no more attain to, than you can at this moment step up from earth to heaven. You must do your part, as the condition; and then God will do the whole work, as the cause. Christ has purchased this promise and this power for you. When on earth,

He gave you the example of self-denial; He bade you do as He has done; and now that He is in heaven, He is pleading for you, and sending you the help of His Holy Spirit. Walk steadily in the path of duty, religious and moral. If you have the will, He will show you the way. In all times of temptation and trial you shall be left in no doubt as to what is right and what is wrong, what you ought to do, and what you ought not to do. Conscience, or something else within you, will say, "Do this," or "Do not do this," as plainly as any voice could do so. You will hear this voice all your life through, unless sin and a worldly spirit shall have deafened your ears and deadened your heart. They will find you out in your private chamber, in the school-room, in the play-ground, in the streets, in the fields, in the market, in the counting-house, in every scene of pleasure or of business. They will come to you, at first, as the soft whisperings of a summer wind, or like the still small voice which Elijah heard when he stood on the mount before the Lord. Do their biddings, and they will lead you to "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report." Wait not, I beseech you, until those whisperings and that gentle voice be changed into the great strong wind, rending the mountains and breaking the rocks in pieces, and the fire and the earthquake make you to tremble. Do their biddings, and then, whatever trouble may try your faith and your holy trust, you

shall go forth to the combat "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, and in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." But if you follow your own self-will instead, a day of retribution will soon be upon you; when under the infirmities of age, or the slow wasting of some fatal disease in earlier life, the goading thoughts will rise up in your minds, "Oh, what I might have done! What I might have been! a faithful steward of the talents I had received; useful in my generation, a guide and a light to others; a cause of rejoicing to parents and friends; a servant of the living God, and now going to be for ever happy in His presence! But I have lived away from Him; when He spake to me, I did not regard Him; and now I call, but He answers me not, and the cloud of His just anger seems to be settling upon my soul." Then will memory turn to those gentle whisperings -those loving calls which once you used to hear; but they will be to you now only like the dying echoes of some sweet music which mock the listening ear: or like some loved form which once you knew, long long time ago-now seen no more save in dreams of the imagination or in visions of the night; and then always eluding your embrace, and receding in the far distance, and vanishing away.

CURIOUS EYES AND ITCHING EARS.

Preached 4th Sunday after Trinity, 1863.

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Much people of the Jews therefore knew that He was there and they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom He had raised from the dead." -John xii. 9.

A MOST striking and remarkable instance, recorded by the Holy Spirit, of curious eyes and itching ears: so characteristic of human nature at all periods of the world, whether in Jewish, or Heathen, or Christian countries!

A brief reference to the preceding verses of this chapter will explain more fully the occasion and the circumstances to which the text alludes.

"Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom He raised from the dead. There they made Him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with Him. took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the

Then