any man should want the feeling; but I can very well understand how he should want the character. For this it is precisely, that is the greatest and rarest of all human attainments. This it is, to have Christ formed within us, the hope of glory. Jesus, the blessed Master, lived that perfect life. In him each good affection of the great humanity had its fulness, its permanence, its perfection. How reverend, how holy, how dear, how soul-entrancing is that incarnate loveliness-God in him, God with us; the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person! Oh! could we be like him, all our ungoverned agitations, all our vain longings, all our distracting passions, all our needless griefs and pains, would die away from us; and we should be freed from the heavy, heavy burden of our sins! I almost fear, my friends, so to express myself; lest it should be construed into the hackneyed and whining lamentation of the pulpit, and should win no respect, no sympathy from you. No, it is with a manly grief, with an indignant sorrow and shame, that every one of us should lament, that he has not more unreservedly followed the great and glorious Master!

And let me add that this is no visionary nor impracticable undertaking. It is what we all can do, with God's help, if we will. It is what is bound upon us, by the simplest perceptions of rectitude in our own souls-bound upon us by the very feelings of conscience and obligation which God has implanted within us.

Finally, it is what we must do, if we would attain to happiness here or hereafter. The hours are stealing on, when the veil of eternity shall part its awful folds, and the great and dread hereafter shall receive us. Solemn will be that hour! Lightly do we hear of its daily coming to one and another around us now; little do we think of what it was to them; but so will not be its coming-with lightness or with little thought so will not be its coming to us. The gathering and swelling thoughts of that hour-no one can know but he who has felt it drawing nigh. Earth recedes; and earth's ambition, gain, pleasure, vanity, shrinks to nothing; and one thought spreads all around and fills the expanding horizon of eternity-am I ready?-have I lived so as to meet this hour? And believe me, in no court of human theology must that question be answered. No imaginary robe of another's righteousnessI speak not now of God's mercy in Christ; that, we may be sure, will be all that mercy consistently can be-no mystic grace claiming superiority to all deeds of mercy and truth, no narrow, technical hope of salvation garnered up in the heart, will avail us there; but the all-deciding question will be-what were we? and what have we done? What were we, in the whole breadth and length of all our good or all our bad affections? That awful question we must answer for ourselves. No one shall be there to answer for us. No answer shall be given in there, but that which comes from every day and hour of our lives. For there is not a day nor an hour of our lives, but it contributes to make us better or worse; it has borne the stamp of our culture or carelessness, of our fidelity or our neglect. And that stamp, which our life's experience sets upon our character, is-I speak not my own word, but God's word that stamp is the very seal of retribution.

Does this seem, my friends, but a sad and stern conclusion of the matter; not encouraging to our hopes, nor accordant with the mercy of the Gospel? The Gospel! Is it a system of evasions, and subterfuges,

and palliatives, to ease off the strict demand of holiness? No, let theology boast of such devices, and tell men that as they have sowed so shall they not reap; but believe me, the Gospel is the last thing to break the everlasting bond that connects happiness with goodness, with purity. And who would have it otherwise? Who would be happy, but on condition of being good, and in proportion as he is good? What true man asks, that over his corrupt and guilty heart, while such, may be poured a flood of perfect bliss? Our nature may be fallen and low; but that flood would sweep away the last vestige of all its honour and worth.God never created a thing so vile as that would be. No, it is a noble being that he has given us, though alas! it be marred and degraded; and upon the eternal laws of that being, must we build up our welfare. It is a glorious privilege so to do; to do what the noble apostle spoke of as his own law and hope, when he said—and, be assured, that must be our law and hope-"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me in that day; and not to me only, but to all who love his appearing."

THE CALL OF HUMANITY, AND

THE ANSWER TO IT.

JOB Xxiii. 3-5: "Oh! that I knew where I might find him; that I might come even to his seat! I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would know the words which he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me."

It is striking to observe, how large a part of the book of Job, and especially of Job's own meditation, is occupied with a consideration of the nature and character of the Supreme Being. The subject-matter of the book is human calamity. The point proposed for solution is the interpretation of that calamity. The immediate question-of very little interest now, perhaps, but one of urgent difficulty in a darker age-is, whether calamity is retributive; whether, in proportion as a man is afflicted, he is to be accounted a bad man. Job contends against this principle, and the controversy with his friends turns upon this point. But as I have already remarked, it is striking to observe how often his mind rises apparently quite above the controversy, to a sublime meditation on God. As if, feeling, that provided he could fix his trust there, he should be strong and triumphant, thither he continually resorts. With these loftier soarings, are mingled it is true, passionate complaint, and sad despondency, and bitter reproaches against his friends, and painful questionings about the whole order of Providence. It is indeed a touching picture of a mind in distress-with its sad fluctuations; its words of grief and haste bursting into the midst of its words of prayer; its soarings and sinkings; its passionate and familiar adjurations of heaven and earth to help it-and with the world of dark and undefined thoughts, which roll through it like waves of chaos; in short, it is a picture whose truth can be realised only by experience.

But I was about to observe, that this tendency of Job's mind to the Supreme, though it may seem to carry him, at times, up quite out of sight of the question in hand, is really a natural tendency, and that it naturally sprung from the circumstances in which he was placed. The human condition is, throughout, allied to a divine Power; and the strong feeling of what this condition is, always leads us to that Power. The positive good and evil of this condition, therefore, have especially this tendency. This is implied in the proem or preface of the book of Job; which gives an account, after the dramatic manner which characterizes the whole book, of the circumstances that led to Job's trial. After a

brief prefatory statement informing the reader who Job was, and what were his possessions, the scene is represented as opening in heaven. Among the sons of God Satan presents himself-the Accuser, the Adversary. And when Job's virtue is the theme of commendation, the Accuser says, "Doth Job fear God for naught!-a grand emir of the east-cradled in luxury-loaded with the benefits of heaven-doth he fear God for naught? Put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face!" It is done; and Job is stripped of his possessions, servants, children-all. And Job falls down upon the ground and worships; and says, "The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

But again the Accuser says-thou hast not laid thine hand yet upon

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his person. Come yet nearer; 'put forth thine hand now, and touch

his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." Again it is done; and Job is smitten and overwhelmed with disease: and he sits down in ashes, and scrapes himself with a potsherd-a pitiable and loathsome object. The faith of his wife, too, gives way of her who, above all, should have supported him then; but who, from the reverence and love which she felt for her husband, is least able to bear the sight of his misery. She cannot bear it: and partaking of the prevalent feelings of the age about outward prosperity, as the very measure and test of the Divine favour, she says, "Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die!" Give up the strife; you have been a good man; you have helped and comforted many; and now you are reduced to this Give up the strife; curse God and die!" And Job answered, "Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh!" What nature! We seem to hear that fireside conversation. What nature, and what delicacy mingled with reproof! "Thou speakest not as my wife, but as one of the foolish, prating women speaketh. What! shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil! In all this did not Job sin with his lips."

Then the three friends of Job came to him; and it is a beautiful trait of delicacy for those ancient times, that these friends, according to the representation, "sat down upon the ground with him seven days and seven nights, and spake not a word unto him; for they saw that his grief was great. When we recollect that all over the East, loud wailings and lamentations were the usual modes of testifying sympathy, we are led to ask, whence came-whence, but from inspiration-this finer conception, befitting the utmost culture and delicacy of later times? "Seven days and seven nights they sat with him, and none of them spake a word to him." Of course, we are not to take this too literally. According to the Hebrew custom, they mourned with him seven days: that is, they were in his house, and they came, doubtless, and sat with him from time to time; but they entered into no large discourse with him; they saw that it was not the time for many words; they mourned

in silence.

This I have said is a beautiful conception of what belongs to the most delicate and touching sympathy. There comes a time to speak, and so the friends of Job judged; though their speech proved less delicate and judicious than their silence. There comes a time to speak; there are circumstances which may make it desirable; there are easy and unforced modes of address which may make it grateful; there are cases

where a thoughtful man may help his neighbour with his wisdom, or an affectionate man may comfort him with sympathy; "a word fitly spoken," says the sacred proverbialist, "is like apples of gold in pictures of silver."

And yet, after all, it seems to me that words can go but a little way into the depths of affliction. The thoughts that struggle there in silence; that go out into the silence of infinitude-into the silence of eternity-have no emblems. Thoughts enough, God knoweth, come there such as no tongue ever uttered. And those thoughts do not so much want human sympathy, as they want higher help. I deny not the sweetness of that balm; but I say that something higher is wanted. The sympathy of all good friends, too, we know that we have, without a word spoken. And moreover, the sympathy of all the world, though grateful, would not lighten the load one feather's weight. Something else the mind wants-something to rest upon. There is a loneliness in deep sorrow, to which God only can draw near. Its prayer is emphatically "the prayer of a lonely heart." Alone, the mind is wrestling with the great problem of calamity, and the solution it asks from the infinite providence of heaven. Did I not rightly say, then, that calamity directly leads us to God; and that the tendency, so apparent in the mind of Job, to lift itself up to that exalted theme of contemplation was natural? And it is natural, too, that the one book of affliction, given us in the holy record—the one book wholly devoted to that subject—is, throughout, and almost entirely, a meditation on God.

I wish to speak, in the present season of meditation, of this tendency of the mind, amidst the trials and distresses of life, to things superior to itself, and especially to the Supreme Being. It is not affliction of which I am to speak, but of that to which it leads. My theme is, the natural aspiration of humanity to things above and beyond it, and the revealings from above to that aspiration; it is, in other words, the call of humanity and the answer to it. "I would order my cause before him," says Job, "I would know the words he would answer me.”

There are many things in us, of which we are not distinctly conscious; and it is one office of every great ministration to human nature, whether its vehicle be the pen, the pencil, or the tongue, to waken that slumbering consciousness into life. And so do I think that it is one office of the pulpit. That inmost consciousness-were it called forth from the dim cells in the soul, where it sleeps-how instantly would it turn to a waking and spiritual reality, that life, which is now, to many, a state so dull and worldly, so uninteresting and unprofitable!

How it should be such to any, seems to me, I confess, a thing almost inconceivable. It may be, because my life is, as I may say, professionally, a meditation upon themes of the most spiritual and quickening interest. Certainly, I do not lay any claim to superior purity, for seeming to myself to see things as they are. But surely, this life, instead of being anything negative or indifferent, instead of being anything dull and trivial, seems to me, I was ready to say, as if it were bound up with mystery, and agony, and rapture. Yes, rapture as well as agony-the rapture of love, of reciprocated affection, of hope, of joy, of prayer-and the agony of pain, of loss, of bereavement and over all their strugglings, the dark cloud of mystery. If any one is unconscious of the intensity and awfulness of this life within him, I believe it