ing. Let us, then, suppose each of these opinions universally to prevail, and to prevail with so much force as fully to influence the minds of all. Let us first suppose a world in which every man thought that his prime duty was agency upon others; and what kind of world would it be? Each individual, comparatively regardless of what he was himself, would proceed to the work of regenerating society. Teachers would abound; but there would be no learners. Great would be the company of the preachers; but there would be no hearers. In short, all would be confusion. And if an angel were to descend into this active scene, he would, like the stranger visiting the church at Corinth, pronounce that we were all mad. But, on the other hand, let us conceive a world in which all, from the least to the greatest, considered their own salvation as their main concern. In such a state, the reign of millennial blessedness would have begun. All would be the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty. Paradise would be regained: and earth would be an image of heaven.

ESSAY III.

GOD'S KNOWLEDGE OF OUR PAST AND SECRET

HISTORY.

THE devout communion of a soul with God embraces a wide extent of objects, and draws its sustenance from a vast variety of materials. Amongst the rest, there is no more endearing motive to that exercise, than the consideration that God is the only being to whom we can appeal, as intimately acquainted, not only with our present thoughts, but with the whole of our past experience. Self-preservation is styled the first law of nature. Nor does this law imply merely the wish that life and its attendant blessings should be continued it includes, in addition, an anxious desire to know that the successive portions of our existence will not perish in the using. The wish is bound up in man's inmost nature, that his past history, with all its fleeting moments and impressions, should be preserved; and that somewhere, independently of his own frail memory, a record should be kept of all he has felt, and all he was. There is, then, I say, something unspeakably

delightful in the consideration, that this memorial is faithfully registered on high; that our path through the perils of this wilderness, and through all the mazes of our past existence, is traced unerringly upon the map of God's remembrance, is noted in his book, and laid up for ever in the storehouse of his mind.

I know not how others feel it; but to me, without this consoling thought, the past would press with insufferable weight upon my heart. Carried, as we are, along the stream of time, looking on each object as we pass, and, like the mariner, bound from home, straining the eye of memory till they fade successively from our view; it would be to me, I say, distressing to the last degree, to think that when I had forgotten them, their memorial could nowhere be found. But it

is not so. Not a hair of our head has perished. No passing moment which was once our present life, no day of childhood, no sun that ever rose, nor evening that ever closed upon our viewnone of these have been thrown to the winds of oblivion. All live in the bright consciousness of that Being with whom we hold intercourse in prayer. And may we not indulge the pleasing anticipation that, in our future life, we shall be permitted, while we look upon God, to read the record of our past eventful history; to meet again

our early days, our dangers, our deliverances, our fears, our hopes, and prayers; to recognise our own portrait, in bright exhibition, and drawn at full length, in the mirror of the Infinite Mind?

If this appear too fanciful to some, they will, at least, admit the following to be a fair conjecture. They will allow that He, who, while here on earth, invited the humblest of his creatures to his familiar presence, continues the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. If so, may we not be yet permitted to hold converse with him on the subject of our former lives; to hear his observations upon things we know not now, but which we shall know hereafter; to sit at his feet, and learn from his lips how all the changes and chances of mortality were working together for our good-how, in our darkest days, his hand was in the storm, and his mercy in the raging of the waters, and how both wind and waves arose at his command, to waft us to the land of everlasting life?

But it is not merely in the general retrospect, but in special instances of fond remembrance, that it is consolatory and delightful to find that there is a witness always at hand. Without this conviction, man would be but a solitary wanderer over the ruins of the past. When the images of days long since departed rise in all their tender

ness before him, in vain does he look amongst his fellow-creatures, for one who can revisit with him the scenes which open to his soul. The companions of those times are, perhaps, now numbered with the dead; or, if still living, other thoughts may occupy their minds. Even if they should retain some interest in the objects which engage him, yet he may want their sympathy at the very moment when they are least at liberty to lend it. Besides, when we invite a fellow-creature to travel back with us to any past event or scene, all that he can remember are the outward circumstances, and the objects which then surrounded us. But to the impression which these were making upon our minds-to what is primary in the recollection—to our concern and interest in the thing -in a word, to the image which rises before our view, and to the thoughts which press upon the heart; to all these the nearest friend on earth is as insensible as the cold and lifeless statue. The impression was all our own; and, consequently, in the remembrance of that impression, we are, as it respects hnman sympathy, isolated and solitary beings.

It is, then, in this solitude of the soul, that we find it good to draw nigh unto God. When days, now lost for ever to those around us, rise in all their freshness to the mind, we feel, with inex