tains of the soul, melt the obduracy of selfishness, expand to the skies the narrow circle of earthly hope, brace the enfeebled vigor of conscience, impart a consciousness of high and holy capacities, whatever, in short, can elevate our moral nature, should be welcomed as means and materials of ineffable joy. Often, it may be, the improvement of character is best promoted by the interruption of happiness; and then it is the part of love to enwrap us in the cloud. But perhaps there are no moments when the enlightened Christian is more melted by the conviction of Divine benignity, more vitally impressed with the sense of a Father's presence, more irresistibly uplifted in the sublimest spirit of prayer, than when, in the falling away of perishable comforts, he plants his foot amid the storm upon the rock of ages. The deeps of his nature are broken up, and the full flood of latent devotion streams forth upon his soul, sweeps away its impurities, till he emerges-a fairer, brighter, renovated being.

Among the afflictions of man, we may reckon it one that he is a mortal being, incapable of being satisfied with his mortality. It is the loftiest triumph of religion, that it can look with serenity into the grave, and one of the bitterest taunts that can be uttered against any form of it is the insinuation, that it is powerless in the last moment of life. Our expectations of eternity partake of the same moral features with our views of this life. We carry for. ward our convictions of the importance of character, to the new heavens and the new earth. We do not think that the recompense of futurity will consist in any accumulation of crowns and dignities and external pleasures, but in the natural fruits of virtue, in the free exercise of those very dispositions which are the appointed qualifica.

tion for admission within the heavenly gates. The sou knows no higher rapture than the deep glow which a filial devotion spreads through the powers, and the thrill of tenderness with which the beneficent heart gazes on the happiness of creation. When, then, the rational Christian is brought to the confines of this life, and almost lifts the veil, in proportion as he feels that he loves his infinite Father and his fellow-pilgrims, in proportion as he has disciplined himself by self-denial, and energetic beneficence, and inflexible integrity, and habitual reference to God, to enjoy the promised engagements and delights of futurity, in that proportion he is serene and trustful. For the occasional transgressions of frailty, the inadvertent lapses which may be thinly scattered over the past, he ventures to hope for the pardon of a parent who knows his frame. If they imply no habit, no tendency of the mind, he trusts to lay them aside with the slight coil of mortality from which he is about to receive a blessed liberation. He is going to a world whose employments are congenial to his tastes, and unalloyed by the imperfections, and undarkened by the clouds which mingled with the happiest moments of this preliminary being. He goes as to a home where his tossed and troubled spirit may rest at last.

A rational faith furnishes the motives to holiness, which man requires as a tempted being, motives to personal virtue, to the love of man, and the love of God.

We begin with maintaining the power of man to do the will of God. To us, God would seem a repulsive being, had he, the Author of our natures and the apportioner of our duty, rendered them irreconcilable enemies - had he, in the spirit of the Egyptian task-masters, at the same moment demanded obedience, and created a disqualifica.

tion. If human nature be utterly corrupt, the distinctions between guilt and virtue disappear; it is empty jargon to speak of flying from one and aspiring to the other; every motive to excellence vanishes, and the efforts to fashion the desires and affections, to conform them to a heavenly mould, must be as idle as so many strokes upon the rock. Virtue will never have a will till she has been endowed with a power.

This recognition of human capacity for obedience lies at the foundation of the importance we attach to morality. With us human duty is every thing; the main object of this life, the sole preparation for another. We not only deny that faith constitutes any separate condition of acceptance, but we think that faith is of no value, here or hereafter, except as a means of holiness; wherever holiness is found, involuntary error brings no danger; wherever it is not, faith gives no safety. We admit, indeed, that human virtue has no absolute merit, that it gives no claim to recompense, except on the Divine faithfulness; we trace to God alone all distinctions between right and wrong, all varieties in the distribution of enjoyment and suffering. But we believe there is a universal and changeless decree which connects together virtue and happiness, guilt and misery; a decree admitting of neither exception nor evasion; a decree which continues now as it ever has been, and will continue so world without end, which the sin of Adam could not modify, nor the death of Christ distort or annul. In certainty and accuracy it takes its place with the inflexible mechanism of the material universe; unerring and immutable as the laws which keep the planets in their orbits, and bind the ocean to the shore. This is the law which the great moral Governor

of the world holds ever before us through life; in which conscience reads his recorded sentence, which he will hold in his right hand, when we go before him to be judged according to our deeds. It may be concealed by the pleasures of sin for a season; doubted in the temporal woes of virtue; spurned amid the prosperity of fraud; forgotten in the delusions of selfishness; eclipsed in the blazonry of ambition. But it lurks in secret amid them all; it will survive their fragile triumph; it will flash in the lightnings of remorse hereafter, on those who have been blind to its mild light of guidance here. This eternal, this ever-active law makes no infinitely broad barrier between the accepted and the lost; it will not distribute the inhabitants of the unseen world into two well defined classes, the saved and the condemned. It will not separate by an infinite gulph the scarce perceptible shades of character which distinguish the least pure of the inhabitants of heaven from the least worthless of the prisoners of hell. It will rather proportion the measure of recompense to the amount of excellence, so that futurity will exhibit the same varieties in its happiness that are exhibited now in human character. That this is in the power of God no Christian can doubt. He who can weigh the mountains in scales, and measure the puny force that may poise an insect's wing, may at a glance discern the thousand differing hues that distinguish the assembly of the skies, and mete out to each its own variety of weal or woe. Not even repentance can interfere with the retributary principle of God's government, but is rather one of its applications. In so far as repentance produces virtue, it turns aside the penalties of sin. He that goes to his immortality a reclaimed and purified NO. 130.

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being, is spared the future agonies of guilt, is admitted to the felicities of the court of God. But have all the consequences of his sin been annihilated? No; he has endured them in part in the bitterness of remorse and the struggles of reform; the rest he undergoes above; if not in suffering, at least in privation; for who can imagine that his position in the scale of happiness will be exalted as that of his brother who needed no repentance? Will he ever recover the place which he has lost? Will he ever, throughout an eternal progress, overtake the holier companions of his way, whose better speed has left him. lingering in the heavenly race?

These views seem to possess an inherent grandeur which no misrepresentation can hide-an impressive solemnity with which none but the seared conscience dare trifle. They comprise a union of terror and encouragement, of equity and mercy, which adapts them alike to the presumptuous and the timorous. They extend their influence of fear or hope to every thing voluntary in life. Every thought, every desire, every act, brings with it its inevitable result― yields its contribution to the mysterious store of eternity. The happiness of obedience, the misery of vice, is alike infallible; every false step is an irrecoverable descent, every upward effort is a sure advance; awake, no enemy can surprise asleep, no friend can save us. Proceed or tarry as we may, there is no point where the motive to good quits us, or suffers us to rest; wherever we are, there is always something more to be lost, and an infinity to gain; stand where we may, there are awful voices thundering from the depth below, and sweet beckonings from the spirits of light above, that urge us onwards.