prison; for ever to feel himself imprisoned; for ever to press against the barriers of his present knowledge and existence; and never to go forth? Are man's embryo powers alone are his cravings and aspirations after something higher, to be accounted no revealings, no prophecies of a loftier destiny?

And again; when we lift up our thoughts to the vast infinitude, what do we find? Order, holding its sublime reign among the countless revolving suns and systems; and light, fair and beautiful, covering all as with a garment. Look up to the height of heaven in some bright and smiling summer's day; hehold the etherial softness, the meteor of beauty that hangs over us; and does it not seem as if it were an enfolding gentleness; a silent, hushed breathing of unutterable love? Was ever a mother's eye bent on her child, more sweet and gentle? Was ever a loving countenance, more full of ineffable meaning? "Oh! you sweet heavens !" hath many a poet said; and can he who made those heavens, sublime and beautiful, wish us any harm? Were you made lord of those heavens, could you hurl down unrecking sorrow and disaster upon the poor tremblers beneath you? God, who hath breathed that pitying and generous thought into your heart, will not belie it in himself. My heart is to me a revelation, and heaven is to me a revelation of God's benignity. And when the voices of human want and sorrow go upward-as one has touchingly said, "like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of heaven, are prayers"-I can no more doubt that they find gracious consideration and pity above, than if a voice of unearthly tenderness breathed from the sky, saying, "Poor frail beings! borne on the bosom of imperfection, and laid upon the lap of sorrow; be patient and hopeful; ye are not neglected nor forgotten; the

heaven above you, holds itself in majestic reserve, because ye cannot bear what it has to tell you-holds you in solemn suspense, which death only may break; be faithful unto death; be trustful for a while; and all your lofty asking shall have answer, and all your patient sorrow shall find issue, in everlasting peace."

But, once more, there is more than a voice; there is a revelation in nature, and especially in the mission of Jesus Christ, more touching than words.

I have said that there is no uttered speech, from all around us; and yet have maintained that there is expression as clear and emphatic as speech; and I now say, it is much more expressive than speech. Let me observe here, that we are liable to lay quite an undue stress upon this mode of communication, upon speech; simply because speech is the ordained and ordinary vehicle of converse between man and man. If men had communicated with one another by pantomime; if forms, and not utterances had been the grand instrument of impression; if human love had always been expressed only by a brighter glow of the countenance, and pity only by a softer shadowing upon its beauty, then had we better understood perhaps, the grand communication of nature. Then had the bright sky in the day-time, and the soft veil of evening, and all the shows of things, around the whole dome of heaven and amidst the splendour and beauty of the world-all these, I say, in the majesty of silence, had been a revelation, not only the clearest, but the most impressive that was possible. I say in the majesty of silence. For accustomed as we are to speech; how much more powerful in some things is silence! How intolerable would it have been, if every day when it came had audibly said, "God is good;" and every evening when it stole upon us, had said, "God is good;"

and every cloud when it rose, and every tree as it blossomed, and every plant as it sprung from the earth, had audibly said, “God is good!" No, the silence of nature is more impressive, would we understand it, than any speech could be; it expresses what no speech can utter. No bare word can tell what that bright sky meaneth; what the wealth of nature meaneth; what is the heart's own deep assurance, that God is good.

But yet more; in the express revelation that is given us, it is not the bare word spoken, that is most powerful; it is the character of interposing mercy that is spread all over the volume. It is the miracle-that causes nature to break the secret of an all-controlling power, in that awful pause and silence. It is the loving and living excellence of Jesus; that miracle of his life, more than all. The word is but an attestation to something done. Had it been done in silence; could all generations have seen Jesus living, Jesus suffering; and heaven opened; it had been enough. Words are but the testimony, that hath gone forth to all generations and all ages, of what hath been done. God is ever doing for us, what-be it said reverently—what he cannot speak. As a dear friend, can look the love, which he cannot utter; so do I read the face of nature; so do I read the record of God's interposing mercy. feel myself embraced with a kindness, too tender and strong for utterance. It cannot tell me how dear to the Infinite love, my welfare, my purity, is. Only by means and ministrations, by blessings and trials, by dealings and pressures of its gracious hand upon me, can it make me know. So do I read the volume of life and nature; and so do I read the volume of revelation. I see in Jesus living, in Jesus suffering; I see in the deep heart of his pain and patience, and love and pity, what no words can utter. I learn this not

from any excellency of speech, but from the excellency of his living and suffering. Even in the human breast the deepest things, are things which it can never utter. So it was in the heart of Jesus. So it is-I speak it reverently-in the nature of God, "For no ear hath ever heard, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them to us by his spirit; for the spirit, and the spirit alone, searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God."

VII.

HUMAN NATURE CONSIDERED AS A GROUND FOR THANKSGIVING

KNOW YE THAT THE LORD HE IS GOD; IT IS HE THAT HATH MADE US, AND NOT WE OURSELVES; WE ARE HIS PEOPLE AND THE SHEEP OF HIS PASTURE. ENTER INTO HIS GATES WITH THANKSGIVING, AND INTO HIS COURTS WITHI PRAISE; BE THANKFUL UNTO HIM AND BLESS HIS NAME.-Psalm c. 3-4.

THE theme of gratitude which is here presented to us, is, our existence, our nature. "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves: we are his people and the sheep of his pasture." It is not what we possess or enjoy, but what we are; or it is what we possess and enjoy in relation to what we are, that I would make the subject of grateful commemoration in our present meditations.

In truth, every call to praise, is but an echo of this. For if it be duly considered, will it not be found, that all possible blessings,—all that can be the occasions of thanksgiving,—must be referred back, when we trace them, to the blessing which is conferred upon us in a nature capable of enjoying them. The bounty and the beauty of the world, were nothing but for the seeing eye and the sensitive frame; the wisdom which all things teach were nothing, but for the perceiving mind; the blessed relations of our social existence would be all a barren waste, if we had not a heart to feel them; and all the tendencies and conditions of our life and being, all our labours and pleasures, all our joys and