darker, ghastlier grave, ready for your soul, and for your soul and body when again united. You may turn from this as a diseased imagination, but imagination as it is, the day is coming when to some it will seem poor and weak indeed contrasted with the dread reality. The grave is ready both for body and for soul. I do not ask you to look into it, or listen to the wailings that come up from it, or breathe its sulphurous vapours. I only ask you to believe, and to remember that the grave and the abyss are as truly ready if you will not come, as pardon, and redemption, and sanctification, and the church, and heaven, are ready if you will come. On both sides, therefore, all things are ready. The world of bliss and the world of woe spread out their motives in your sight. If you will die, death is easy, for the grave is ready both for soul and body; it is hollowed for you both in time and in eternity. The earth, to which you must return, is open, and the narrow house already yawning to receive you, while beneath-far off in yonder shadowy world—a funeral pile begins to send up its thick smoke, and to project its lurid flames into the air. On that pile there is room enough for you, beneath it, fire enough for your destruction. Tophet is ordained of old, he hath made it deep and large, the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it. These are strong figures, but if such be the figures, what must be the reality? Whatever it be, know that it is ready for you if you will not come, and if you choose death rather than life. Are you willing to live? Life is no less attainable. Your guilt, your VOL. I.-10*

weakness, your corruption, the justice, truth, and holiness of God, are all against you where you stand. But come, and all things that you need are ready for you. Come, oh come, and expiation, pardon, renovation, the church on earth, and the church in heaven; all things are ready, all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

XII.

PROVERBS 22, 2.-The rich and poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all.

THIS is a proverb, and must be explained according to the principles and usages of proverbial language. An essential characteristic of this language is its condensation, and the pregnancy of its expressions, which often imply more than the same word would in continuous composition, where there is not the same effort to concentrate much thought in a few words. This peculiarity is common, however, to the popular or practical proverb and the scientific aphorism. The difference between them is, that while the latter affects abstract and generic terms, the former shuns them, and delights to clothe its lessons of wisdom in the dialect of common life, from which its substance is in fact derived-the genuine proverb being a summary expression of the result of long experience. The same extent and fulness of meaning, which is given to the philosophical maxim by the use of comprehensive terms, is no less certainly secured in the case of the popular maxim by a means directly opposite, viz., the exhibition of particular examples to represent whole classes. The specific terms employed in this

way are sometimes figurative, and even symbolical; but in a multitude of cases, they are to be literally understood, with due regard, however, to their representative design as specimens or samples.

Of this kind of expression, we have two instances in the case before us, both clauses of the verse being highly specific in their strict immediate import, yet both generic in the whole sense which they were intended to convey. "Rich" and "poor" are terms properly descriptive of a single and familiar difference of external condition. Yet here, as in common parlance, there can be no doubt that they are put for social inequalities in general. And this interpretation is the more admissible, because the distinction which the words immediately denote is not only one of the most universal and most palpable, but also one which, to a great extent, determines all the rest. Knowledge and ignorance, grossness and refinement, power and weakness, are, as a general fact, dependent upon wealth or poverty; i. e. upon the want or the possession of the comforts and necessities of life without the necessity of constant and engrossing labour to obtain them.

It is true that the advantage of refinement and of knowledge may be often found upon the side of poverty. It is also true, not only in the case of individual exceptions but as a general fact, that they who become suddenly possessed of wealth, or who acquire it slowly by their own exertions, may be sig nally destitute of that elevation and improvement which is often found accompanying scanty means and humble station. But these are only apparent excep

tions to a general rule, which they really illustrate and confirm. In all such cases, wealth and poverty have not had time to operate the change which they naturally tend to produce, and what appears to be concomitant of either, is in fact the fruit of an opposite condition which vicissitude has not yet succeeded in destroying. The vulgarity and ignorance of some who have recently become rich, are not the effects of their new condition, but the exuviæ of their old one; and the opposite qualities of some who are struggling for subsistence, bear witness to the previous possession of advantages now lost. And even in the case of those who have obtained an education and experienced its refining influence, without any such vicissitude of fortune, it is plain that this could only be made possible by something, whether it be personal exertion or the aid of others, which exempted them so far and so long from the usual disadvantages of poverty, as to put them in possession of advantages naturally belonging to an opposite condition. There is nothing arbitrary or capricious, therefore, in the usage both of common parlance and proverbial diction, which puts "rich" and "poor," or "poverty and wealth," for all the inequalities of social condition.

Another example of the same thing is presented in the other clause, which, in its strictest sense, appears to relate only to the fact of creation, or the character of God as the creator of all men without exception. But the analogy of the first clause, and the general usage of proverbial language, fully justify us in supposing that this one relation between God