on what events the next morning may dawn. Why, then, should we make the mere accidents of our condition of such vast account as we do, conjecturing about what we cannot foresee and anxious about what we cannot alter? And why do we value at so little as we do the settled precepts of righteousness and the unfailing promises of God?

nobler objects of our His power is taken His cheerfulness is veil

There were signs in the sun.' Signs and remembrancers, that there are higher and contemplation than even he is. from him by the winter's cold. ed over by the little mists that go up from the ground. He is affronted by the dark disk of the wandering moon. Look at him from the tops of the highest mountains, and he is but a rayless ball in the blank firmament, illuminating nothing but a scene of icy desolation and

the stillness of the dead.

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If we could go still nearer to him than that, do we know that it would add any thing to our admiration? 'Even the sun,' says the same writer whom I have already quoted, whose glorious outside we behold, may have dark and smoky entrails. It is in vain that we admire the lustre of any thing seen. That which is most truly glorious is invisible.' The distinguishing excellency of the human soul is, that it is capable of contemplating what does not lie within the range of any of the senses; the beauty of goodness and the radiance of truth; that it can lift its thought even to the Infinite Being, who made the sun and chose it to be a dim image of himself, the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness nor changing shadow.' We see nothing but what is transient. We touch nothing but what must

decay. We hear no sounds, not even the voices of the best beloved, that must not sink into eternal silence. And as to every thing that ministers to the lower perceptions, God shall destroy both it and them. But there is something we were made for, above and beyond them all. Within the grasp of our reason, within the scope of our faith, within the clear calls of our worthiest sentiments, there are greater things than they; doctrines that will never be weakened, and hopes that will never be lost. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.' I am persuaded that there is no one here, who

has not at some time had glimpses of this great truth. There is no one who does not feel the emptiness that there is in the possessions that cannot satisfy the intellectual and moral principle within him, and the reality that there must be in that something further, for which his mind is pining without even knowing what it needs, but never attains to it. I am persuaded that there is no one here who has not at times been conscious that he is connected with an Invisible Power, and belongs in part to another world. Be like Paul then, not disobedient to the heavenly vision.' The Christian should consider every thing of inferior consequence that can have no connexion with his immortality.

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We read in the book stood in it, keepHis office was, to

There were signs in the sun.' of Revelation of an angel who ing off its light from mankind. precede the destruction of all things and the renewal of all things ;-an event soon after described. Destruction and renewal. They are bound insepara

bly together, through the whole course of tradition and prophecy since the world began. The old heathen nations predicted, both in their philosophy and their poetry, that such a revolution was to be accomplished; and the sacred scriptures repeat the prediction. Destruction and renewal. The present state is to disappear, and new heavens are to be revealed for righteousness to dwell in. That is the steady and warning voice, that we hear from the records of Jew and Greek. That is the voice. What it means we may interpret differently. What is to become of the elements around us that are threatened with fervent heat,' and of the frame of the material world, we neither know nor need know. But of this we may be sure, that there are further states for the mind. There is a moral consummation to be wrought out among the great purposes of God.

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Wherever the spirit goes to dwell, it will be attended by the consequences of its own good or ill desert. There is nothing covered that shall not be there revealed, and nothing hid that shall not be known. The secret things that the sun has never looked on will be made manifest, when for us at least the sun is out, and the stars have wasted from heaven.

SERMON V.

BY REV. SAMUEL BARRETT, BOSTON, MASS.

OUR CHRISTIAN PRIVILEGES AND OBLIGATIONS

1 Cor. VI. 1. WE THEN AS WORKERS TOGETHER WITH HIM, BESEECH YOU ALSO THAT YE RECEIVE NOT THE GRACE OF GOD IN VAIN.

Privilege implies obligation. Ability is the measure of duty. Large gifts claim large returns. Our own improvement, and our benefactions to others, should correspond to the means God has put into our hands. So reason and religion teach; and the principle is recognized in the passage from which the text is taken. The apostle enforces an obligation by stating a privilege. He argues from a divine favor to a human duty; from what has been done for us, to what we ought to do ourselves. He speaks of the gift of christianity, and asks for befitting exertions on the part of its professors. How rich this gift! How great these exertions! Can we do better than take up Paul's method and seek for reasons and motives of christian duty in our christian privileges? Let us first inquire, what the gospel is to us, and secondly, what we ought to be to the gospel.

I. In the first place, what is the gospel to us? So much, that the attempt to answer, is embarrassing. One knows not where to begin or where to end, in speaking of the benefits it has the power to confer on us. Even in respect to the good we have actually derived from it, one is at a loss what topics to select and illustrate, so thickly do they throng and crowd on the attention. True, indeed, we are far from being all that christianity might, but for our unfaithfulness, have made us. Still, what should we have been without it? What are we, what have we, whether as individuals, or as a community, that we do not owe it?

1. Is it to the community of which we are members that our attention is first called? Follow the streams of its welfare to their source, and say whence have they flowed? Whence the intelligence that distinguishes our native population? Whence the high tone of moral feeling we witness in the general mind? Whence the spirit of enterprize which pervades the different classes of society? Whence the generous impulses we see given more and more to sound and liberal inquiries? Whence the efforts that are made in various places to strike off the chains of slavery, and impress it on rulers and people that freedom is equally the right of all? Whence the exertions of so many amongst us to allay the passion for war, and induce nations to settle their controversies by the peaceful maxims of impartial justice? Whence the labors and sacrifices to which multitudes are subjecting themselves in behalf of pagan and savage tribes? Whence is this? It is not so everywhere.

It has not al