ON HUMAN LIFE.

VIII.

THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE.

NOW A THING WAS SECRETLY BROUGHT TO ME, AND MINE EAR RECEIVED a LITTLE THEREOF. IN THOUGHTS FROM THE VISIONS OF THE NIGHT, WHEN DEEP SLEEP FALLETH ON MEN; FEAR CAME UPON ME, AND TREMBLING WHICH MADE ALL MY BONES TO SHAKE. THEN A SPIRIT PASSED BEFORE MY FACE, AND THE HAIR OF MY FLESH STOOD UP. IT STOOD STILL; BUT I COULD NOT DISCERN THE FORM THEREOF; AN IMAGE WAS BEFORE MINE EYES; THERE WAS SILENCE; AND I HEARD A VOICE.-Job iv. 12-16.

HUMAN life to many, is like the vision of Eliphaz. Dim and shadowy vails hang round its awful revelations. Teachings there are to man, in solemn and silent hours, in thoughts from the visions of the night, in vague impressions and unshaped reveries; but, on this very account, they fail to be interpreted and understood. There is much teaching; but there is also much unbelief.

There is a scepticism, indeed, about the entire moral significance of life, which I propose, in this discourse, to examine. It is a scepticism, sometimes taking the form of philosophy, sometimes of misanthrophy and scorn, and sometimes of heavy and hardbound worldliness, which denies that life has any lofty, spiritual import: which resolves all into a series of toils and trifles and vanities, or of gross and palpable pursuits and acquisitions. It is a scepticism, not

back—lies far deeper; it is a scepticism about the very meaning and intent of our whole existence.

This scepticism I propose to meet; and for this purpose, I propose to see what argument can be extracted out of the very grounds on which it founds itself.

The pertinency of my text to my purpose, as I have already intimated, lies in this; there is much of deep import in this life, like that which Eliphaz saw in the visions of the night-not clear, not palpable, or at least not usually recognised and made familiar; but it cometh, as it were in the night, when deep sleep falleth on men; it cometh in the still and solitary hours; it cometh in the time of meditation or of sorrow, or of some awful and overshadowing crisis of life. It is secretly brought to the soul, and the ear receiveth a little thereof. It is as a spirit that passeth before us, and vanisheth into the night shadow; or it standeth still, but we cannot discern the form thereof; there is an undefined image of truth; there is silence; and at length there is a voice.

It is of these unrecognised revelations of our present being, that I would endeavour to give the interpretation; I would attempt to give them a voice.

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 does 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 turninglathe of 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 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

arther; but I believe that I shall not perform a useess service to the true faith of our being, if I may be ble, in some measure, to unveil and bring to light, hose secret intimations which are often smothered, deed, but which from time to time, are flashing out om the cloud of human cares and pursuits.

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

What stupendous revelations are cloaked and almost idden by familiarity! This very category of sceptiism; what is it, but the blind admission of the submest truth? A man is recognized as standing amidst is palpable cloud of care and labour; enclosed, it is aid, shut up in sense and matter; but still a man! dungeon is this world, if you please so to represent ; but in this dungeon, is a prisoner-moaning, sorOwing, sighing to be free. A wilderness world it is, the thought of many; but one is struggling through his wilderness, who imparts to it a loftier grandeur han its own; his articulate voice, his breathed prayer, r his shout amidst the dim solitudes-nay, the very ound of his axe in the forest depths-is sublimer than Il the solemn symphonies of autumn winds sweeping rough its majestic aisles.

Grant that matter and sense are man's teachers; nd consider these teachings in their very humblest orm, in their very lowest grade-what they teach perorce, 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. Modern philosophy has distinctly unfolded this principle; that all our mental conceptions 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 thought 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 van