living property, and carries the machinery by which the life is forced through every part, and to the very extremities of the body. That never stopping machine, the heart, exposes the blood to the vital air four thousand times every hour, renewing its life, and then sends through the frame the living flood. We are astonished and taught by that divine care which provides the stores for the birds, and gives them skill and power to use those stores for their nourishment, but how much greater the mystery and the lesson which our Lord connects with it, of our own inward life, and of all life! the life of ourselves amidst countless myriads, breathing and living in this wide and inexhaustible sea of vital air! "Is not the life more than meat?"

The question is still more impressive, the marvel of our life, is still more marvellous, in view of its preservation amidst hazards innumerable, and constantly destructive. While we live upon the inexhaustible supply, renewing every second our perishing life, we are exposed every day and hour and moment to its extinction; and maintain it in constant sight of the dying and the dead, lately as full of life as ourselves. What is our life but a vapor? How slight the accidents by which it may be soon or suddenly destroyed! How easy a thing it is to die; to be left a lifeless lump of clay! Too rapid or sudden motion, the lifting of the arm, the tripping of the foot, a stroke upon the temple, the stumbling or starting of a horse, a sudden

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blast of wind, a crevice in a plank, the miasmata of the life-giving atmosphere, a flash of lightning, and ten thousand nameless accidents, in new and unexpected forms, are ever ready to destroy the life, and give still deeper interest to the question, "Is not the life more than meat?"

SERMON II.

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.

MATTHEW 6: 28, 29.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

Ir is worthy of remark, that flowers, to a single specimen of which our Savior calls our attention, are universally attractive and agreeable. They light up the infant's eye, and cover its face with a smile. Children delight in them, stop amidst their sports and along their path to gaze at them; and gather them as the prettiest tokens of affection for their parents, teachers and friends; and fill their houses and schools with their beauty and fragrance. And amidst the cares and toils and glooms and cheerings of busy life, the gloomy as well as the cheerful are pleased with them; and the more in proportion as men give free scope to their natural love of flowers, and still more as they cherish a propensity designed to be made the instrument of faith and hope. The first bloom of spring is welcomed with a smiling face and a cheered heart, by rejoicing

crowds; and successive flowers spread cheerfulness through all the months of summer. We add to

the smiles of nature around us by the culture of the garden, and accept the privilege which a gracious Providence has given us of adding thus to the cheerfulness of home; and even amidst the dreariness of winter, try, with our house-plants and green-houses, to produce and preserve the cheering lesson of the summer months. Even half-blind old age, too lame to go forth and dimly see the new beauties of an eightieth summer, welcomes the beautiful nosegay, which a child's love of flowers has wrought for a worn-out and withering grandmother. Nay; I have seen a cluster of flowers come in, fragrant and beautiful messengers of peace, to greet and cheer the sick, and a new and heavenly smile light up the face of the dying, as, for the last time, their beautiful robe was beheld by their fading eyes. "Do you know," said the lovely and excellent Wilberforce, as he was sinking under the infirmities of old age, "do you know," said he, (opening upon some flowers shut up in the Psalms,) "that I am very fond of flowers? The corn and things of that nature I look upon as the bounties of Providence ; flowers I look upon as his smile.”

They are the delight of all nations. Their line is gone out into all the earth. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. God has provided blossoms in the wilderness to attract the eye of the savage, and they speak of mercy among all heathen nations. In India, particularly, the seat of the

most extensive idolatry on earth, I have witnessed the remarkable attachment of the people to flowers. They are an article of extensive traffic, and, in a profusion to which we are unaccustomed, form a part of every entertainment, are thrown at the feet and hung around the necks of those whom they wish to honor, till the whole air is filled with their fragrance. They are scattered in the temples, cover the shrines, and are hung around the necks of their gods. They blossom, too, in the fables of their mythology; and, we may gain from one of their most remarkable perversions of the truth, a striking illustration of the religious lesson of the flowers as our Savior interprets it. Is it not remarkable, that, in the leading superstition of the earth, the God of salvation should be the God of the lily? that from Vishnoo the Preserver should spring the water-lily, the sacred lotus, from which Brahma should arise the Creator of a world, of which Vishnoo should be again and again the incarnate deliverer and Savior?

"The lilies of the field" were mentioned, no doubt, because they were before the eyes of our Lord, at the time when he spoke, and because they furnish a conspicuous and beautiful specimen of that innumerable variety of flowers, which adorn and instruct all the months of summer. It is not, I believe, quite certain, what the flower was, which is here termed the lily: nor is it very important to know, since any of the different species of the lily, or of the rose even, or any other flower, would offer in substance the same lesson