"I live," said the great Apostle, "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." And life indeed it is, when a man is made "wise unto salvation;" when, having been brought to a consciousness of his state as a rebel against God, he has committed his cause unto Christ, "who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification." It is not life, it deserves not the name, merely to have power of moving to and fro on this earth, beholding the light, and drinking in the air. It may be life to the brute, but not to man,-man who is deathless, man who belongs to two worlds; the citizen of immensity, the heir of Eternity. But it is life to spend the few years of earthly pilgrimage in the full hope and certain expectation of everlasting blessedness; to be able to regard sin as a forgiven thing, and death as abolished; to anticipate the future with its glories, the judgment with its terrors, and to know assuredly that He who shall sit upon the throne, and gather all nations before Him, reserves for us a place in those "many mansions" which He reared and opened through his great work of mediation. It is life to live for eternity; it is life to live for God; it is life to have fellowship with what the eye hath not seen and the ear hath not heard. And there is not one amongst us who may not thus live. There is needed only that, renouncing all wisdom of our own, we come unto God to be taught, and we shall receive the gift of the Spirit, that Spirit which is breath to

the soul, quickening it from the death of nature, and causing its torpid energies and perverted affections to rise to their due use, and fix on their due end. We cannot find this life-giving wisdom in the schools of the learned; we must not seek it through the workings of reason, nor suppose it taught by the books of philosophy. But if we will come, as little children, to the Bible, and suffer its statements to guide us to the Cross, assuredly we shall acquire what alone should be called knowledge,-knowledge, if not of the stars, yet of Him who made the stars; knowledge, if not of what is perishable, of that which is imperishable; knowledge of self; knowledge of sin, of its guilt, and its pardon; we shall know ourselves lost without Christ, but saved, with an everlasting salvation, through his precious blood and perfect righteousness.

And the excellency of this knowledge is, that, having it, you will have life. You cannot have it, except in the heart; for no man knows Christ, who knows Him only with the head. And having this knowledge in the heart, you have renewal of the heart; and with renewal of the heart, forgiveness of sin, and the earnests of immortality. Are we not now, therefore, able to vindicate in all its extent the assertion of our text? In the former part of the verse, the wise man had allowed that "wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence." Money is a defence to the man of wealth; it shields him against a hundred evils which beat upon the poor. Wisdom

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is a defence to the man of knowledge; in a vast variety of circumstances, he is on a vantage-ground as to others who possess not his attainments. But "riches profit not in the day of wrath," and "the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." Where will be the rich man's defence, when he shall be parted from the gold which has been to him as an idol? where the wise man's, when the last conflagration shall enfold every object which he has delighted to study? But they, whose treasure has been above, they, who have counted "all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ," they shall have a defence, a sure defence, when the rich man is destitute, and the wise man speechless. They have chosen that which cannot be taken away, and which indeed is then only fully possessed, when every thing else departs from human hold. "On such the second death hath no power;" they are "children of the resurrection;" "neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels." And as they soar to inherit the kingdom obtained for them by Christ, and thus lay hold on an immortality of joy, through having acquainted themselves with Him, as "the way, the truth, and the life," there may be none to say that "money is a defence, and wisdom is a defence,"-none to say it, in the face of the confounding witness of the elements melting with fervent heat, and of the shrinking away of those who had been "wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight;" but the whole com

pany of the redeemed shall be joined by the thousand times ten thousand of the celestial host, in confessing and publishing that the excellency of knowledge is, "that wisdom," Christian wisdom, "giveth life to them that have it."

And assuredly, as we hinted in commencing our discourse, the point of view under which we have thus endeavoured to place Christianity, is one most appropriate to the present occasion. The Corporation, before which I have the honour to speak, has grown great by acting upon Christian principles, and thereby becoming pre-eminently the guardian of human life. If it derive its name from that prime mystery of our faith, the full revelation of which was reserved for Christian times, it may be said to derive its object from that description of his mission, which our blessed Saviour gave, when He declared to his disciples, "The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." How many a weeping widow would there be, who is now a happy wife; how many a desolate orphan, how many a childless parent; had you not consecrated science to the noblest of purposes, had you not, with as much industry as skill, fathomed the seas which beat against our shores, hung the firmament with stars in the darkest night, and traced a path where even time leaves no furrow. I regard such a Corporation as emphatically an illustration of the truth, that Christianity is a life-giving thing. Ye cannot, indeed, labour at preserving life, without

labouring also at preserving property. But it has been, it is, life, which ye specially aim to protect: the poor sailor-boy has a dignity in your eyes, because made in God's image, and redeemed by Christ's blood; for his sake ye are ready to lavish treasure and toil; and if ye enrol yourselves under one whose arm has launched resistlessly the thunderbolt of war, it is that you may give the most affecting of proofs, that the heart to care for the mean may be found with the hand to crush the mighty.

And if it be thus your splendid office, to prove of Christianity that "it giveth life to them that have it," may we not justly exhort you to the using all diligence, that the office may be discharged with greater and greater fidelity? Ye assemble not annually in the house of that God, whom, by your very name, ye profess to honour as "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," to commemorate your achievements, and hear your praises. Ye rather assemble to be reminded of your duties, to stand, as it were, once more round the altar of the Lord, and to devote yourselves, by a fresh vow, to your magnificent calling. I could imagine the vow heard by the genius of the storm, causing him to feel as though his prey were snatched from him. The sound goes forth upon the waters,- if it cannot speak them, like the voice of Christ Himself, into stillness, it emulates that voice in bidding those who traverse them, “Be of good cheer."