want, will not satisfy us. They may load us with their presents, but, unless we have their hearts, themselves, we are restless with anxiety. Thus man has a hunger for God. God may shower on him His choicest providential favours, and the gnawing still continue. The soul crieth out for the living God. Every soul wants God. This is the great want. It wants the assurance of His love and friendship. Secondly: It consummates the bliss of human nature.-There is in truth no bliss without it; this is the blessedness of man. This is heaven. To feel that we have God's love, God's heart, is to feel that we have all things. If we have his heart, He is for us, and if He is for us, the universe is for

us.

OF

II. MAN'S ASSURANCE THE HIGHEST GOOD. "Saith my soul." Man is a duality. In his nature there is the auditor and speaker. How does the soul give this assurance? First: By its reasoning.-Its logic conducts to the conclusion. Its irference is drawn from two facts. (1) That God gives Himself to souls of a certain character. (2) That it is in possession of that identical character. With these facts the conclusion is inevitable, it has God. Secondly By its consciousness. -Wherever there is genuine godliness there is, I believe, an impression apart from all

reasoning of God's love and friendship. The soul with this sentiment upon it, as a kind of supernatural element, is enabled to say-My God, my Redeemer, my Father, &c. What a blessed assurance is this! He who in a "The pauper's hovel can say, Lord is my portion," is infinitely richer than he who can call kingdoms his own.

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III. MAN'S CONFIDENCE IN THE HIGHEST GOOD. "Therefore will I hope in Him." When David was enabled to say, "Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none on earth that I desire but thee;' he could also say, "My flesh, and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever." То trust in Him is to trust (1) In infinite love. (2) In infallible wisdom, (3) In Almighty power. (4) In unchanging all-sufficiency.

THE CHRISTIAN ERA.

"But now once, in the end of the world, hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself."-Hebrews ix. 26.

WE learn from this passage:

I. THE CHRISTIAN ERA IS GOD'S LAST DISPENSATION WITH MEN ON

EARTH. "Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared." The end of the world here means, "in the conclusion of the ages." The Jews were accustomed to speak of the age before the

law, the age under the law, and the age after the law. The age under the Messiah is the last age, and is often termed the latter times. The patriarchal age was succeeded by the Mosaic, the Mosaic by the Christian; the Christian, the ast; after this the judgment.

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II. THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST IS THE GREAT FACT OF THIS ERA. In this end of the world he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. His sacrifice was: First: Selfimmolation. He sacrificed Himself No one took his life away. Secondly: It was selfimmolation for all ages. Its virtues run back through all the past, and on through all the future. It was the spirit, the energy of redemptive truth. Thirdly: It was a self-immolation never to be repeated. "Once." The priests under the law repeated their sacrifices. Christ's sacrifice is one, and only one for ever.

III. THE GREAT END OF CHRIST'S SACRIFICE WAS THE PUTTING AWAY OF SIN. This fact serves four purposes :First To correct theological errors. In some theologies it is taught that Christ died to prove the truth of the doctrine, in others Christ died to appease the wrath of God, in others that He died to purchase the souls of the elect. The text tells us that He died "To put away sin." It serves, secondly, To determine the value of our religion.

What

has Christianity done for us? Increased our knowledge, refined our sentiments, improved our condition, but, if it has not done more than this, it has not answered its end. Has it put away our sin, our carnality, our selfishness, our worldliness, &c.!

It serves, thirdly, To show the true aim of philanthropy. What should be the aim of every true lover of man? That which Christ came to accomplish. To "put away sin." To put it away from human institutions, from human books, from human hearts. It serves, fourthly, To foreshadow the happy state of the world when Christianity shall have accomplished its work.

THE REGENERATING WORK OF CHRISTIANITY.

"That which is born of the Spirit is spirit."-John iii. 6. THE mission of Christianity is to regenerate mankind. The Bible represents this work by different emblems. Sometimes as a passage from darkness to light. "He hath called ye out of darkness into his marvellous light." Sometimes as an exchange of hearts, "I will take away your stony heart, and will give you a heart of flesh." Sometimes as a translation from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of Christ; sometimes as awakening out of sleep, and sometimes as a resurrection

an

from the dead. All these emblems are very suggestive, and agree in conveying an idea of the thoroughness of the change. The figure of the text is a new birth, and two thoughts it suggests concerning the regenerating work of Christianity.

I. THAT IT CONSISTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN

SPIRIT. He who is the subject of it "is spirit." We find the human spirit here existing in three different stages

First: Without any control over the flesh. The body is the sovereign; the tyrant; and the the soul is down, "carnally carnally sold under sin." We find it

Secondly: With a wrong control over the flesh. Education has brought the spirit up, cultured its intellect, disciplined its faculties; but the body's control is merely for the purposes of pleasure, avarice, ambition, &c. We find it

Thirdly: With a right control over the flesh. It is on the throne, and it rules as the vicegerent of God. Whatsoever it makes the body do, whether it eats or drinks, it does all to the glory of God. This is the state into which Christianity brings man. "He is spirit"-spirit in the sense of vivacity. He is not sluggish and dull, but agile and blithe; all his faculties are quickened by the new life --the life of conscience, the true life of man. The eye of intellect is brightened, thought is active, imagination is on the wing. "He is spirit" in the

sense of social recognition. Once he was known after the flesh; known as a man of the world seeking fleshly distinctions, fleshly wealth, fleshly pleasures. But now he is known as a man of spiritual convictions and spiritual aims. "He is spirit-in the sense of divinity. He is born of the spirit; he has a kindredship with, and resemblance to, the Everlasting Father; he is a partaker of the divine nature.

II. THAT IT IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT BY

THE DIVINE. "He is born of the Spirit." The language implies

First Origination. Who brings the spirit up from its fleshly grave? Who puts it on the throne, and enables it to rule by the will of God? The Divine Spirit. No other agency could do it. Education, law, science, philosophy tried for ages, but failed. God alone could call up the spirit of a man from the imprisoning depths of carnality. The language implies

Secondly: Resemblance. Man is like his parent; the soul becomes like the parent who begot it. Like in love, purity, freedom. The language implies

Thirdly Affinities. In the heart of the one there will be the parental feeling; the heart of the other the filial and loyal.

CONCLUSION. This subject enables us to estimate

First: The worth of Chris

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tianity. Christianity questions, liberates, purifies, and ennobles man's spiritual nature. It wages an eternal war against animalism, mental sluggishness, and moral indifference. enables us to estimateSecondly: The extent of Christianity. You can scarcely say that Christianity has gone anywhere where it has not affected this regeneration. Its fame rings through Christendom; its influence circulates through the race in some form or other; but its real power is only where its regenerating energy is experienced.

THE POWER OF YOUTHFUL
PIETY.*

"Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king's word, and yielded their bodies, that

they might not serve nor worship any God except their own God." Dan. iii. 28.

THE history of these three young men teach us the following lessons. First: The children of respectable parents may be reduced to humble circumstances. The

causes.

Secondly: Children deprived of the protection of parents sometimes rise in the world and prosper. Thirdly Religion is the best preservative of youth when separated from their parents

*From the MS. of the late Rev. Caleb Morris.

and friends. Fourthly: The effects of early religious education is generally good. These young men's piety was very vigorous.

Consider the power of the piety of these young men in its principles, its manifestations, its impressions. I. ITS PRINCIPLE. It was attachment to the true God. First: Their attachment to God was natural, and therefore strong. Man was made for God. What is unnatural is weak. Unnatural conformation of body is attended by weakness and pain. The body deprived of the natural means of support soon becomes feeble. Unnatural exercise of social affections wastes them. It is so with the moral powers. Idolatry is not natural to man. It is weakness. It cannot reason; it cannot distinguish between matter and mind. It holds no communion with

spiritual worlds; it sinks the spirit; it robs God of His right, and man of happiness. Godliness is natural to man. It is natural to man as a think

ing, feeling, social being to look out for a God. God is to man all that his nature wants.

Secondly: Their attachment was individual. His excellency was the supreme object of admiration. His will was the sole rule of right. His favour their chief good.

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Thirdly Their attachment was uniform.

II. ITS MANIFESTATIONS. Is wonderful, if we consider.

First: Their destitution of religious means. Without public worship, parental protection exposed to the bigotry, example, society of idolaters.

Secondly: The strength of their temptation. The nature of the command-once. They were not called to renounce their religion. It was the King that commanded. Fear, grateful feelings tempted them. The dreadfulness of the punishment - "furnace heated," "bound."

Thirdly, The tenderness of their age. They were little more than twenty.

Fourthly; Their number was small. There were only three. But were one in life, death.

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First: By the proper exercise of the capacities of our own being. For not only are we endowed with that God-like power, conscience; a faculty by which all guilt is detected, arrested, and condemned; but with memory, which makes a record of the deed, in letters never to be effaced. Secondly By the true use of the Bible. For what is the word of the living God but a mirror in which men see their own lives in all their terrible nakedness and reality; a sharp and two-edged sword, 'piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow," and proving itself a "discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; a judgment-seat, where, as each man stands, the hidden is flashed upon him, and the secrets of his own breast are all revealed? Thirdly: By the spontaneous thought of God. For "God is love," and what does such a thought so much as fall like the shining of a bright light upon all the dark spots of our life? And God is holy, and who can think o Him who is of purer eye than to behold iniquity, an not see the guilt of his lif before him. Fourthly: By the cross of Christ.

II. IT IS ESSENTIAL TO THE CORRECTION OF SIN. Why is this vision for the penitent?

First: Not as a Nemesis. For such there could not be stronger consolation. And,. Secondly: Not to leave them