But let us spread out a little, in the first place, the sceptic's argument. It says, "What is there in human existence that accords with your lofty Christian theory? You may talk about the grandeur of a human life, the sublime wants and aspirations of the human soul, the solemn consciousness, amidst all life's cares and toils, of an immortal destiny; it is all a beautiful dream! Look over the world's history, and say, what intimations doth it furnish of that majestic design-the world's salvation? Look at any company of toiling and plodding men in the country around you; and what are they thinking of, but acres and crops, of labour and the instruments of labour? Go into the noisy and crowded manufactory, and what is there but machinery-animate or inanimate the mind as truly girded and harnessed to the work, as the turning-lathe or the banded wheel? Gaze upon the thronged streets, or upon holiday crowds, mixing the oaths of the profane with the draughts of the intemperate: and where is the spiritual soul that you talk of? Or look at human life in a large view of it, and of what is it made up? Trouble and weariness"-you see that it is the cynic's complaint trouble and weariness; the disappointment of inexperience or the dulness of familiarity; the frivolity of the gay or the unprofitable sadness of the melancholy; the heavy ennui of the idle or the plodding care of the busy; the suffering of disease or the wasted energy of health; frailty, its lot, and its doom, death; a world of things wasted, worn out, perishing in the use, tending to nothing, and accomplishing nothing; so complete the frivolity of life with many, that they actually think more of the fine apparel they shall wear, than of the inward spirit, which you say is to inherit the immortal ages!"

All this, alas! is too true; but it is not true to the extent, nor in the exclusive sense, alleged. That but few meditate on their lot as they ought, is perfectly true; but there are impressions and convictions that come into the mind through other channels than those of meditation. They come perhaps, like the shadowy vision of Eliphaz, in darkness and silence; vague, indistinct, mysterious, awful; or they come in the form of certain, but neglected and forgotten truths. And they come, too, from those very scenes, in which the eye of the objector can see nothing but material grossness or thoughtless levity. This is what I shall especially attempt to show. I shall not undertake, in this discourse, to go farther; but I believe that I shall not perform a useless service to the true faith of our being, if I may be able, in some measure, to unveil and bring to light those secret intimations which are often smothered indeed, but which from time to time are flashing out from the cloud of human cares and pursuits.

"Man," it is said, "is bound up in materialism, imprisoned by the senses, limited to the gross and palpable; far-reaching thoughts, soaring aspirations, are found in essays and speculations about him rather than in his own experience; they are in books rather than in brick-yards and ploughed fields and tumultuous marts.'

What stupendous revelations are cloaked and almost hidden by familiarity! This very category of scepticism-what is it, but the blind admission of the sublimest truth? A man is recognised as standing amidst this palpable cloud of care and labour-enclosed, it is said, shut in sense and matter-but still a man! A dungeon is this world, if you please so to represent it; but in this dungeon is a prisoner moaning,

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sorrowing, sighing to be free. A wilderness world it is, in the thought of many; but one is struggling through this wilderness who imparts to it a loftier grandeur than its own; his articulate voice, his breathed prayer, or his shout amidst the dim solitudes-nay, the very sound of his axe in the forest depths-is sublimer than all the solemn symphonies of autumn winds sweeping through its majestic aisles.

Grant that matter and sense are man's teachers; and consider these teachings in their very humblest form, in their very lowest grade-what they teach perforce, and in spite of man's will. What are they? Materialism itself suggests to man the thought of an immaterial principle. The senses awaken within him the consciousness of a soul. Of a soul, I say; and what is that? Oh! the very word, soul, is itself soiled by a common use, till we know not what it means. So that this universal endowment of humanity-this dread endowment, by which infinity, eternity, nay, and divinity, belong to its innate and inmost conceptions, can be at once admitted and almost overlooked, in the account of human existence.

In man, the humblest instruments reveal the loftiest energies. This is not enthusiasm, but philosophy. The modern French philosophy has the merit of having distinctly unfolded this principle, that all our mental perceptions suggest their opposites-the finite, the infinite; the seen, the unseen; time, eternity; creation, a God. The child that has tried his eye upon surrounding objects; soon learns to send his thoughts through the boundless air and to embrace the idea of infinite space. The being that is conscious of having lived a certain time, comes to entertain, as correlative to that consciousness, the conception of eternity. These are among the fundamental facts of all human experience. Such, to a man, in distinction from an animal, is the instrumentality of his very senses. As with a small telescope, a few feet in length and breadth, man learns to survey heavens beyond heavens, almost infinite, so with the aid of limited senses and faculties does he rise to the conception of what is beyond all visible heavens, beyond all conceivable time, beyond all imagined power, beauty, and glory. Such is a human life. Man stands before us, visibly confined within the narrowest compass; and yet from this humble frame, stream out on every side the rays of thought, to infinity, to eternity, to omnipotence, to boundless grandeur and goodness. Let him who will, account this existence to be nothing but vanity and dust. I must be allowed, on better grounds, to look upon it as that in whose presence all the visible majesty of worlds, and suns, and systems sink to nothing. Systems, and suns, and worlds, are all comprehended in a single thought of this being whom we do not yet know.

But let us pass from these primary convictions which are suggested by matter and sense, to those spheres of human life where many can see nothing but weary labour, or trifling pleasure, or heavy ennui.

Labour, then-what is it, and what doth it mean? Its fervid brow, its toiling hand, its weary step-what do they mean? It was in the power of God to provide for us as he has provided for the beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven, so that human hands should neither toil nor spin. He who appointed the high hills as a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conies, might as easily have caused marble cities and hamlets of enduring granite to have been productions

of nature's grand masonry. In secret forges, and by eternal fires, might every instrument of convenience and elegance have been fashioned; the winds might have woven soft fabrics upon every tree, and a table of abundance might have been spread in every wilderness and by every seashore. For the animal races it is spread. Why is it not for man? Why is it especially ordained as the lot of man, that in the sweat of his brow he shall eat his bread? Oh! sirs, it hath a meaning. The curse, so much dreaded in the primeval innocence and freedom of nature, falls not causeless on the earth. Labour is a more beneficent ministration than man's ignorance comprehends, or his complainings will admit. It is not mere blind drudgery even when its end is hidden from him. It is all a training, it is all a disciplinea development of energies, a nurse of virtues, a school of improvement. From the poor boy who gathers a few sticks for his mother's hearth, to the strong man who fells the forest oak, every human toiler, with every weary step, and every urgent task, is obeying a wisdom far above his own wisdom, and is fulfilling a design far beyond his own design-bis own supply, accumulation, or another's wealth, luxury, or splendour.

But now let us turn to an opposite scene of life. I mean pleasure and dissipation. Is this all mere frivolity-a scene that suggests no meaning beyond its superficial aspects? Nay, my friends, what significance is there in unsatisfying pleasure? What a serious thing is the reckless gaiety of a bad man! What a picture, almost to move our awe, does vice present to us! The desperate attempt to escape from the ennui of an unfurnished and unsatisfied mind; the blind and headlong impulse of the soul to quench its maddening thirst for happiness in the burning draughts of pleasure; the deep consciousness which soon arises of guilt and infamy; the sad adieu to honour and good fame; the shedding of silent and bitter tears; the flush of the heart's agony over the pale and haggard brow; the last determined and dread sacrifice of the soul and of heaven to one demoniac passion-what serious things are these! What signatures upon the soul to show its higher nature! What a fearful handwriting upon the walls that surround the deeds of darkness, duplicity, and sensual crime! The holy altar of religion hath no seriousness about it deeper, or, I had almost said, more awful, than that which settles down upon the gaming-table, or broods oftentimes over the haunts of corrupting indulgence. At that altar, indeed, is teaching; words, words are uttered here; instruction, cold instruction, alas! it may be, is delivered in consecrated walls; but if the haunts of evil could be unveiled, if the covering could be taken off from guilty hearts, if every sharp pang and every lingering regret of the vitiated mind could send forth its moanings and sighs into the great hearing of the world, the world would stand aghast at that dread teaching.

But besides the weariness of toil and the frivolity of pleasure, there is another state of life that is thought to teach nothing, and that is ennui; a state of leisure, attended with moody reveries. The hurry of pursuit is over for the time; the illusions of pleasure have vanished; and the man sits down in the solitariness of meditation; and "weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable," appear to him all the uses of this life. It seems to him, as I once heard it touchingly expressed, even by a child, "as if everything was nothing." This has been the occasional mood of many lofty minds, and has often been expressed in our literature.

But bound up with this poor, frail life, is the mighty thought that spurns the narrow span of all visible existence. Out of this nothing, springs a something-a significant intimation, a dread revelation of the awful powers that lie wrapped up in human existence. Nothing more reveals the majestic import of life than this ennui, this heart-sinking sense of the vanity of all present acquisitions and attainments. "Man's misery," it has been well said, "comes of his greatness." The sphere of life appears small, the ordinary circle of its avocations narrow and confined, the common routine of its cares insipid and unsatisfactorywhy? Because he who walks therein demands a boundless range of objects. Why does the body seem to imprison the soul? Because the soul asks for freedom; because it looks forth from the narrow and grated windows of sense upon the wide and immeasurable creation; because it knows that around and beyond it, lie outstretched the infinite and the everlasting paths.

I have now considered some of those views of life which are brought forward as objections against our Christian theory of its greatness. My purpose in this discourse is not to penetrate into the wisdom of its deeper relations, but to confine myself to its humblest aspects, and to things that are known and acknowledged to be matters of fact.

With this view, I proceed to observe, in the last place, that everything in this life bears traits that may well stir our minds to admiration and wonder.

How mysterious is the connexion of mind with matter; of the act of my will with the motion of my hand; this wonderful telegraphic communication between the brain and every part of the body! We talk of nerves; but how knoweth the nerve in my finger of the will that moves it? We talk of the will; but what is it, and how does its commanding act originate? It is all mystery. Within this folding veil of flesh, within these dark channels, every instant's action is a history of miracles. Every familiar step is more than a story in a land of enchantment. Were the marble statue before us suddenly endowed with that self-moving power, it would not be intrinsically more wonderful than is the action of every being around us.

The human face is itself a wonder. I do not mean in its beauty, nor in its power of expression, but in its variety and its individuality. What is the problem that is here solved? Suppose it were stated thus: given,

a space nine inches long and six inches broad, the form essentially the same, the features the same, the colours the same; required, unnumbered hundreds of millions of countenances so entirely different, as, with some rare exceptions, to be completely and easily distinguishable. Would not the whole mechanical ingenuity of the world be thrown into utter despair of approaching any way towards such a result? And yet it is completely achieved in the human countenance. Yes, the familiar faces that are around us bear mysteries and marvels in every look.

Again, the house thou dwellest in-that familiar abode-what holds it together, and secures it on its firm foundation? Joint to joint, beam to beam, every post to its socket, is swathed and fastened by the mighty bands that hold ten thousand worlds in their orbits. This is no phantasm of the imagination; it is the philosophical fact. All actual motion, and all seeming rest, are determined by unnumbered, most nicely balanced, and at the same time, immeasurable influences and attractions. Universal harmony springs from infinite complication. And therefore, every step thou takest in thy dwelling-still I only repeat what philosophers have proved the momentum of every step, I say, contributes its part to the order of the universe.

What then is a life, conscious of these stupendous relations, and what are its humblest dwellings? If you lived in a palace that covered an hundred miles of territory, and if the stamping of your foot could convey an order to its farthest limits, you would feel that that, indeed, was power and grandeur. But you live in a system of things, you dwell in a palace, whose dome is spread out in the boundless skies, whose lights are hung in the wide arches of heaven, whose foundations are longer far than the earth, and broader far than the sea, and you are connected by ties of thought, and even of matter, with its whole boundless extent. If your earthly dwelling, your house of life, lifted up and borne visibly among the stars, guarded with power and clothed with light, you would feel that that was a sublime fortune for any being to enjoy. To ride in a royal chariot would be a small thing compared with that. But you are borne onward among the celestial spheres; rolling worlds are around you; bright starry abodes fill all the coasts and skies of heaven; you are borne and kept by powers-silent and unperceived indeed-but real and boundless as the immeasurable universe.

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The infinite, we allow, is mysterious; but not less so, in truth, is the finite and the small. It is said that man cannot comprehend infinity. It is true, and yet it is falsely said in one respect. The declaration that we cannot understand infinity, usually conveys the implication that we can comprehend that which is the opposite of infinity, that is, the little scene around us. But the humblest object beneath our eye as completely defies our scrutiny, as the economy of the most distant world. Every spire of grass, of which the scythe mows down millions in an hour, holds within it secrets, which no human penetration ever fathomed. Examine it with the microscope, and you shall find a beautiful organization; channels for the vital juices to flow in; some to nourish the stalk; others to provide for the flower and prepare the seed; other instruments still, to secrete the nutriment that flows up from the soil, and to deposit and incorporate it with the plant; and altogether, a mechanism more curious than any, perhaps, ever formed by the