thine encouragement, what is written. "These things saith the first and the last, who was dead and is alive; I know thy works and tribulation and poverty, (but thou art rich ;) fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer; be faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."

XV.

ON THE VALUE OF LIFE.

(Preached on New-Year's day.)

AND JOB SPAKE AND SAID, LET THE DAY PERISH, WHEREIN I WAS BORN.Job iii. 2-3.

THERE is a worldly habit of viewing this life, and especially of depreciating its value, against which, in this discourse, I wish to contend. It is the view of life which many of the heathens entertained, and which better became them, than those who hold the faith of Christians. "When we reflect," says one of the Grecian sages, 66 on the destiny that awaits man on earth, we ought to bedew his cradle with our tears.” Job's contempt of life, so energetically expressed in the chapter from which my text is taken, was of the same character. We may observe, however, that Job's contempt of life, consisted not with the views entertained by the children of the ancient dispensation, and was emphatically rebuked, in common with all his impious complaints, in the sequel of that affecting story. The birth of a child among the Hebrews was hailed with joy, and its birth-day was made a festival.

But there are times and seasons, events and influences in life, which awaken in many, sentiments similar to those of Job, and which require to be considered.

The sensibility of youth sometimes takes this direction. It is true, indeed, that, to the youthful mind,

life for a while is filled with brightness and hope. It is the promised season of activity and enjoyment, of manly independence, of successful business, or of glorious ambition; the season of noble enterprises and lofty attainments. There is a time, when the youthful fancy is kindling with the anticipations of an ideal world; when it is thinking of friendship and honour of another sort than those which are commonly found in the world; when its promised mansion is the abode of perfect happiness, and its paths as they stretch into life, seem to it as the paths that shine brighter and brighter forever.

But over all these glowing expectations, there usually comes, sooner or later, a dark eclipse; and it is in the first shock of disappointed hope, before the season of youth is yet fully past, that we are probably exposed to take the most opposite and disconsolate views of life. It is here that we find real, in opposition to factitious sentimentalism. Before this great shock to early hope comes, the sentimental character is apt to be affectation, and afterwards it is liable to be misanthropy. But now it is a genuine and ingenuous sorrow, at finding life so different from what it expected. There is a painful and unwelcome effort to give up many cherished habits of thinking about it. The mind encounters the chilling selfishness of the world, and it feels the miserable insufficiency of the world to satisfy its longings after happiness; and life loses many of the bright hues, that had gilded its morning season. Indeed, when we take into account the unwonted and multiplied cares of this period, the want of that familiarity and habit which renders the ways and manners of life easy, the difficulties and embarrassments that beset the youthful adventurer, the anxiety about establishing a character and taking a place in the world,

and above all, perhaps, the want of self-discipline; when we take all this into the account, to say nothing of the freshness of disappointment, we may well doubt whether the period of entrance into life, is the happiest, though it is commonly looked upon as such. It is not perhaps, till men proceed farther in the way, that they are prepared, either rightly to estimate or fully to enjoy it. And it is worthy of notice in this connection, that those diseases which spring from mental anxiety, are accounted, by physicians, to be the most prevalent between the ages of twenty and forty.

Manhood arrives at a conclusion unfavourable to life, by a different process. It is not the limited view occasioned by disappointment, that brings it to think poorly of life; but it assumes to hold the larger view taken by experience and reflection. It professes to have proved this life, and found it little worth. It has deliberately made up its mind, that life is far more miserable than happy. Its employments, it finds, are tedious, and its schemes are baffled. Its friendships are broken, or its friends are dead. Its pleasures pall and its honours fade. Its paths are beaten and familiar and dull. It has grasped the good of life; and every thing grasped loses half of its charm; in the hand of possession everything is shrivelled and shrunk to insignificance.

Is this manhood, then, sad or sentimental? No; farthest possible from it. Sentiment, it holds to be ridiculous; sadness, absurd. It smiles, in recklessness. It is merry, in despite. It sports away a life, not worth a nobler thought, or else it wears away a life, not worth a nobler aim, than to get tolerably through it. This is a worldly manhood; and no wonder that its estimate of the value of existence is low and earthly.

Poetry has often ministered to a state of mind, loftier indeed, but of alike complexion. "Life," says the Grecian Pindar, "is the dream of a shadow." "What," says the melancholy Kirk White

"What is this passing life?

A peevish April day :

A little sun, a little rain,

And then night sweeps along the plain,
And all things fade away.”.

The melancholy of Byron is of a darker complexion; one might anticipate, indeed, that his misanthropy, as well as gloom, would repel every reader; and yet a critic has observed that this is the very quality which has caught and held the ear of the sympathizing world. If the world does sympathize with it, it is time that the Christian preacher should raise his voice against it. One may justly feel, indeed, for the sufferings as well as perversions of that extraordinary mind; but its skepticism and scorn must not be suffered to fling their shadows across the world, without rebuke or remonstrance. Its sufferings, indeed, are a striking proof, which the Christian teacher might well adduce, of the tendency of earthly passion and unbelief to darken all the way of human life.

The pulpit, also, I must allow, has fallen, under the charge of leaning to the dark side of things. It may be said, perhaps, that if its instructions are to have any bias, it is expedient that it should lean to the dark side. But error or mistake is not to be vindicated by its expediency, or its power to affect the mind. And its expediency, in fact, if not its power, in this case, is to be doubted. Men of reflection and discernment are, and ought to be, dissatisfied with disproportionate and extravagant statements, made with a view to support the claims of an ascetic piety, or a cynical morality.