Nay, I fear that we must say more than this-however severely the rule may press upon many of us. We must say, that the man of a truly spiritual mind and tender conscience will take this daily, serious, and solicitous account of his faults and sins. I care not to maintain, that it will be in the evening, though that season will most naturally invite his thoughts to such a contemplation. But he cannot let day after day pass, without any special attention to what he feels to be the great interest of his life, his growing purity, likeness to God, and preparation for a heavenly happiness.

But I say, that the evening will be the time most suitable for his employment. The man of a faithful conscience will then naturally ask how he commenced the day; with what thoughts and purposes; with what sincerity and earnestness of desire unto Almighty God for his aid and blessing. He will then pursue his inquiries into the labours and pleasures of the day. "Have I been industrious in business or study; temperate in the gratification of my senses and appetites; strong in the control of my passions; unwavering in my adherence to truth in my words, and to principle in my actions?" And to ask a still more serious and painful question-painful through the fears it awakens" What have been my motives, in practising the duties of diligence, moderation, and integrity?—These are duties which I owe to myself. Have I, moreover, in these and all other duties, been faithful to God? Have I venerated his authority? Have I truly desired and aimed this day to serve him? Have I often thought of him in his works and ways; and am I more and more learning to make the whole of my life an offering to his goodness, a progress in the knowledge of his perfection, and a communion with his presence? In fine, have I this day been true to my social relations-true and faithful as a parent or a child, as a husband or wife, as the member of a family, of a friendly circle, or of the community? Have I been faithful in my transactions? Can I not only lay open my account-book, but the secret thoughts of my heart, to my neighbour, and appeal to him for the honesty in which I have dealt with him? Have I also been mild, forbearing, and considerate in all cases? Has no one gone from my presence soured, chagrined, or irritated by my rude, haughty, or hasty manners and words.' "Doubtless,' an humble man will add, I have done many things wrong;" but the question he has further to ask is, "Do I regret it, and am I now resolved that I will do so no more?"

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I have only to add on this head, if you will permit me, one piece of advice which is, that these impressions and purposes should be revived in the morning, and should be brought into an earnest application to God for his grace and guidance. This practice, I am sure, could not fail eventually to change the whole tenour of our life if it be wrong -to change it from the image of the earthly, to the image of the heavenly,

III. Finally, the close of the day calls us to consider the brevity and the end of life. We shall soon lay aside the garments of mortality, never to take them up; the blessings of life will soon be enjoyed: its sins will soon exist only in painful remembrance; its cares and toils will be succeeded by the repose of the grave. The night of death cometh in which no man can work." It cometh;-you see not the sun actually move in the sky, but how soon it reaches the horizon!—

Life passes thus imperceptibly; you see not that it approaches to its limit; and yet it is approaching. The night cometh. You perceive not its advance, and you probably will not. You will be occupied with business; you will be agitated with plans for the future; you will be pursuing or enjoying; you will be on a journey, or taken up with the comforts or the cares of your home; and in an hour when you think not, the shadows of evening will descend, and chase away the vision of life for ever! Such, to most men's experience, is this present existence,-short, transient, fleeting; flying with a rapidity like that of the luminaries of heaven, and yet passing as silently in its course, as imperceptibly as they; and let it be remembered, as surely passing. The sun is not more certainly hasting through his daily revolutions, than he is, with every revolution, cutting short the term of our mortal being.

I grieve not, that it passes. Let it pass. Let it speed its flight.— Life is but the traveller's way, or the pilgrim's toil. It demands only our passing thoughts and affections, not our ultimate, fixed, firm reliance and attachment. It becomes us not to regret its passage, nor to mourn the loss of it, as if it were the extinction of all our hopes.Our only concern with the shortness of life, is, so to number our days as to apply our hearts unto wisdom. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it quickly, for there is no work, nor wisdom, nor device, in the grave whither thou goest." That is to say, beyond this life, the proper work of life cannot be done; its wisdom is there to be recompensed, not exercised; and there is no device that can save us from the inevitable consequences of our negligence, unfaithfulness, or folly.

Let it pass, then; but let it pass in the ways of duty, in the exercise of wisdom, and the foresight of a watchful conscience. Let us mark its hasty progress. Let the descending shadows of every evening, not gloomily, but gently remind us of its speedy and certain decline. Let it pass; but let not the steps of time be swifter than the steps of our obedience; let not moments succeed more quickly than generous and kind affections shall spring up in our hearts; let us be diligent in proportion as the time is short; let our life, brief as it is in duration, frail as it is in its tenure, be strong in its hold on virtue,-be long in the series of good deeds, and long endure in the remembrance of the good and the just.

ON RELIGION,

AS THE GREAT SENTIMENT OF LIFE.

1 CORINTHIANS xv. 19: "If in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable."

THERE is a nation, in modern times, of which it is constantly said, that it has no religion, that in this life only has it hope. One is continually assured, not by foreigners alone, but in that very country-I need not say that I speak of France-that the people there have no religion, that the religious sentiment has become nearly extinct among them.

Although there is, doubtless, some exaggeration in the statement, as would be very natural in a case so very extraordinary, and the rather, as the representation of it comes from a people who are fond of appearing an extraordinary and wonderful people, and of striking the world with astonishment; yet there is still so much truth in the representation, and it is a thing so unheard of in the history of all nations, whether Heathen, Mahometan, or Christian, that one is naturally led to reflect upon the problem which the case presents for our consideration. Can a nation go on without religion? Can a people live devoid of every religious hope, without being of all people the most miserable? Can human nature bear such a state? This is the problem.

It is the more important to discuss this problem, because the very spectacle of such a nation has some tendency to unhinge the faith of the world. The thoughtless at least, the young perhaps, who are generally supposed to feel less than others the necessity of this great principle, may be led to say with themselves, "Is not religion, after all, an error, a delusion, a superstition, with which mankind will yet be able to dispense?" A part of my reply to this question I propose to draw, especially, from the experience of the young. For I think, indeed, that instead of this being an age when men, and the young especially, can afford to dispense with the aid and guidance of religion, it is an age which is witnessing an extraordinary development of sensibility, and is urging the need of piety beyond, perhaps, all former ages. The circumstances, as I conceive, which have led to this development, are, the diffusion of knowledge, and the new social relationships introduced by free principles. But my subject, at present, does not permit me to enlarge upon these points.

Can the world, then, go on without religion? I will not inquire, now, whether human governments can go on. But can the human heart go on without religion? Can all its restless energies, its swelling

passions, its overburthening affections, be borne without piety? Can it suffer changes, disappointments, bereavements, desolations-ay, or can it satisfactorily bear overwhelming joy, without religion? Can youth, and manhood, and age-can life and death be passed through without that great principle which reigns over all the periods of life, which triumphs over death, and is enthroned in the immortality of faith, of virtue, of truth, and of God?

I answer, with a confidence that the lapse of a hundred nations into atheism could not shake, that it is not possible: in the eye of reason and truth, that is to say, it is not possible for the world, for the human heart, for life, to go on without religion. Religion naturally, fairly, rightly regarded, is the great sentiment of life: and this is the point which I shall now endeavour to illustrate.

What I mean by saying that religion is the great sentiment of life, is this that all the great and leading states of mind which this life originates or occasions in every reflecting person, demand the sentiment of religion for their support and safety. Religion, I am aware, is considered by many as something standing by itself, and which a man may take as the companion of his journey, or not take, as he pleases; and many persons, I know, calmly, some, it is possible, contemptuously, leave it to stand aside and by itself, as not worthy of their invitation, or not worthy, at any rate, of being earnestly sought by them. when they thus leave it, I undertake to say, that they do not understand the great mental pilgrimage on which they are going. If all the teachings of nature were withdrawn, if revelation were blotted out, if events did not teach, yet the very experience of life, the natural development of human feeling, the history of every mind which, as a mind, has any history, would urge it to embrace religion as an indispensable resort. There is thus, therefore, not only a kind of metaphysical necessity in the very nature of the mind, and a moral call in all its situations, for religion; but there is wrapped up within the very germs of all human experience, of all human feeling, joyous or sorrowful -there is, attending the very development of all the natural affections, a want, a need inexpressible, of the power of that divine principle.

Let us trace this want, this need, in some of the different stages through which the character usually passes. Let us see whether this great necessity does not press down upon every period of life, and even upon its commencement-yes, whether upon the very heart of youth there are not already deep records of experience, that point it to this great reliance. I have in a former discourse spoken of the disappointments of youth; I now speak of its wants and dangers.

In youth, then that is to say, somewhere between the period of childhood and manhood-there is commonly a striking development of sensibility and imagination. The passions, then, if not more powerful than at any other period, are at any rate more vivid, because their objects are new; and they are then most uncontrollable, because neither reason nor experience have attained to the maturity necessary to moderate and restrain them. The young have not lived long enough to see how direful are the effects of unbridled inclination, how baseless are the fabrics of ambition, how liable to disappointment are all the hopes of this world. And, therefore, the sensibility of youth is apt to possess a character of strong excitement, and almost of intoxication,

I never look upon one, at such a period, whose quick and ardent feelings mantle in the cheek at every turn, and flash in the eye, and thrill through the veins, and falter in the hurried speech, in every conversation-yes, and have deeper tokens in the gathering paleness of the countenance, in speechless silence, and the tightening chords of almost suffocating emotion,-I never look upon such an one, all fresh and alive, and yet unused to the might and mystery of the power that is working within,-a being full of imagination, too, living a life but half of realities, and full half of airy dreams-a being whom a thousand things, afterwards to be regarded with a graver eye, now move to laughter or to tears,-I never look upon such an one-how is it possible to do so?-without feeling that one thing is needful, and that is, the serenity of religion, the sobriety and steadiness of deep-founded principle, the strong and lofty aim of sacred virtue.

But the sensibility of youth is not always joyous or enthusiastic. Long ere it loses its freshness or its fascination, it oftentimes meets with checks and difficulties; it has its early troubles and sorrows. Some disappointment in its unsuspecting friendships, some school-day jealousy or affliction, some jar upon the susceptible nerves or the unruly passions, from the treatment of kindred, or friends, or associates; or, at a later period, some galling chain of dependence, or poverty, or painful restraint; or else, the no less painful sense of mediocrity, the feeling in the young heart that the prizes of ambition are all out of its reach, that praise, and admiration, and love, all fall to the lot of others -some or other of these causes, I say, brings a cold blight over the warm and expanding affections of youth, and turns the bright elysium of life, for a season, into darkness and desolation. All this is not to be described as if it were a mere picture—just enough, perhaps, but to be considered no otherwise than as a matter of youthful feeling, soon to pass away, and to leave no results. This state of mind has results. And the most common and dangerous is a fatal recklessness. The undisciplined and too often selfish heart says, "I do not care; I do not care what others say or think of me; I do not care how they treat me. Those who are loved, and praised, and fortunate, are no better than I am; the world is unjust; the world knows me not; and I care not if it never knows me. I will wrap myself in my own garment; let them call it the garment of pride, or reserve-it matters not; I have feelings, and my own breast shall be their depository." Perhaps this recklessness goes farther, and the misguided youth says, “I will plunge into pleasure; I will find me companions, though they be bad ones; I will make my friends care for me in one way, if they will not in another," or he says, perhaps, "nobody cares for me, and therefore it is no matter what I do."

My young friends, have you ever known any of these various trials of youth? And, if you have, do you think that you can safely pass through them with no better guidance than your own hasty and headstrong passions? Oh! believe it not. Passion is never a safe impulse; but passion soured, irritated, and undisciplined, is least of all to be trusted. If in this life only you have hope, if no influence from afar take hold of your minds, if no aims stretching out to boundless and everlasting improvement, strengthen and sustain you, if no holy conscience, no heavenly principle, sets up its authority among your