discourse to-night-with all its powers, intellectual, moral, and religious; with its capacities of good and evil; with its sorrows and joys; with its fears and hopes; with its memories of things past, and its foretellings and forebodings of things to come. This life in which I am linked on the one hand to the meanest creatures that creep on the earth, and to the earth itself on which they creep, and in which I am linked on the other to the highest angel before God's throne, and to God Himself. This life which is at once my school and my schoolmaster, in which and by which I am in process of training for the lowest perdition or for the highest heaven.

This life, young men and young women, yours and mine, is the subject of which I would fain give you some impression that may be useful and salutary. I need not speak to you of the varieties of modes of outward existence in which it may be lived; varieties dependent on climate shading off by degrees from arctic cold to equatorial heat; varieties dependent on civilization, shading down from the highest refinement of which Greece could boast to the lowest barbarism of African or Australian savages; varieties dependent upon earthly possessions, shading down from untold wealth to utterest want; and varieties dependent on outward occupations, more or less manual, and more or less mental. I have to do with something that comprehends all varieties, because it lies deeper than them all.

Now all that is best and all that is worst in this life which we now live in the flesh, grows out of the relation in which it is placed by faith or no faith towards that which is invisible and eternal; and with reference to the

invisible and eternal, there are severa suppositions which may be made.

The first supposition is that they have no existence-that all ends with the grave. Once dead, out of existence. The caterpillar may be transformed into the butterfly; but when the butterfly dies, it is as if it had never been. Whatever of carbon, or

oxygen, or aught else that science finds in matter, goes to constitute the body, or feet, or wings of the butterfly, passes into the general stock of the material universe, and only there finds its future. We are already in our butterfly state; there is nothing in us but various material elements, and death will separate these one from another, and discharge them into the material mass from which they were taken. And there's an end of us. The grave is a pit of destruction which neither body nor spirit survives.

Miserable theory this-shallow as it is miserable-contrary to the strongest instincts and cravings of our nature. And it is worth our while to observe in what forms and circumstances it is to be found.

First of all you find it in the form or shape (neither word is quite correct) of perfect ignorance. There are on whom the very idea of an existence after death has not dawned, who live their present life in the flesh all unconscious that it has ever entered into the heart of man to conceive of another life not lived in the flesh. When Robert Moffat told the world, not thirty years ago, that he had met with tribes in this condition of absolute ignorance, he was scarcely believed. It was thought that he had simply failed to discover beliefs which must be cherished. But Sir Samuel Baker

now tells us of tribes, north of the equator, in the same condition of ignorance with those whom Mr. Moffat found in the south, and tells us of arguments which he held with some of the chiefs of these tribes. And it is worthy of note that these chiefs had not only not dreamt of a future for the spirit which dwelt in them, but treated the idea when it was presented to them as a phantasy and a folly. They were disposed to laugh and mock at the idea of the existence of the soul after death, even as the philosophers of Athens were at the idea of a restored existence of the body.

Now look at the fact, that this entire absence of the idea of a future existence, this absolute ignorance of the very thought and notion of a future existence, is found only in the very lowest condition of physical and moral barbarism. You often find the belief in a future state surviving civilization, and carried down, sometimes in a very grotesque and absurd form, into a very low condition, showing how strong it is, and how natural to the human soul. But you never find the absence of it, except in a very low or the lowest condition. There is surely something very instructive in this fact. It cannot be the result of accident. If this absolute materialism, which is unconscious of the very thought of the spiritual and eternal, grows only in one kind of soil, there must be a natural connection between the growth and the soil. Or, putting it in another way, if this absolute materialism is never found wedded to any other form of life but the lowest, most ignorant, and most barbarous, there must be a natural congruity between the one and the other. No mean proof that such materialism is un-human and un-true.

But there is another form in which you will find the notion that death is the end of our being-not as among savages, where the very idea of a spiritual future is unknown and unheard of-but where being known it is rejected and disbelieved. Every age has produced individuals, few in number, but very pretentious, deeming themselves wiser than their fellows, who have argued themselves out of the common belief that death only separates two parts of our being, sending one part down to the grave and corruption, and setting the other part free to exercise its powers in another state and form of existence. A strange use, one may venture to say, of the reason God has given them, to labour so mightily to bring themselves into spiritual communion with the lowest conditions of savage life. But the mighty labour expended on the accomplishment of this feat is expended in vain. "Old Adam," to use Luther's words in a sense which Luther did not think of, "is too strong for young Melancthon." By which we mean at present not that the corruption of our nature is too deep and strong to be battled away by the forces which youthful zeal and energy can array against it, but that the original instincts and cravings of our nature are too strong to be set aside by the sophisms of a boastful philosophy. In our old Adam, in our essential nature, there is a something which effectually repels all argumentation against the future and unseen. Man may sink below man's proper estate, and be, like certain African tribes, more of a beast than a man. Or he may, through subtle speculation, argue the surface of his nature, at least, into a disbelief of the future. But the idea of a

future spiritual world is irrepressible, and will assert itself with authority and power, notwithstanding all efforts to the contrary.

But what have we to do with these things? We can by no possibility put ourselves in the positon of those on whom the idea of a future state has not dawned. We possess this idea now, and we can never be as if we had it not. And it is scarcely possible that having the idea we should reason ourselves into a disbelief of it. But it is possible for us practically to live as if the idea were nothing but an idea, and did not represent a reality. Now shall we choose to live this life we live in the flesh, as if there were no future? Shall we choose to turn away our eyes and thoughts and hearts from the future, and concentrate them on the present? Shall we choose to shut ourselves up within our prison walls, and exclude from our minds the glories and beauties that are outside these walls in the gay sunshine? We may if we like. We may become human moles, and burrow in the earth, and boast ourselves of the great molehills by which we mark the course of our burrowings. We may become human ants, and lay up for ourselves stores which will defy the waste of many winters. We may become human butterflies, and flutter gaily and thoughtlessly in the sun all our brief day. Or we may become human swine, and wallow filthily in the mire of the lowest brute life. But shall we choose that it be so? Shall we write over the life we now live in the flesh such mottoes as "No God," "No Judgment," "No Heaven,' "No Hell?" We, made in God's image, shall we renounce all kindred with the skies, and be only of the earth

a

earthy? We may if we like. But shall we so like ? Shall we SO choose? It would be only doing what many a merchant in the city of London does; what many shopkeeper, and clerk, and artisan, and labourer in these eastern parts does. But shall we do it? We, before whose eyes the better things of the heavenly state have been revealed with convincing light; we, whose souls have ofttimes been moved by the powers of the world to come- -shall we put out of our reckoning all thoughts of a future eternity, and live the life we now live in the flesh, as if the grave were its utmost limit? God forbid. Let every soul awake and cry, "God forbid."

Now, if we reject this first supposition that there is no hereafter, and feel that we caunot accept it as the basis and principle of our present life, there is a second supposition which we can contemplate for a moment as a possibility, namely, than a hereafter has been revealed to us, but without hope. What, in this case, must be the misery of the life we now live in the flesh! We are sinners, under righteous condemnation, and at death the sentence will be irremediably and hopelessly executed. Let this be the matter of our faith, and what then? With the grave before us, not as the end of our being, but as in every instance without possible exception, the entrance on a state of helpless, hopeless misery! What must be the life we shall then live in the flesh? Shall we buy and sell and get gain? Shall we eat and drink? Shall we marry and give in marriage? If by any of these means we can for a moment forget our misery, it will be

wise and rational so to do. Despair may possibly nerve us into an agony of effort so to occupy the present as to forget the future. But more probably will it unnerve and unman us, and prostrate us in utter weakness and woe before our time. And what a life would this be to live in the flesh!

But, happily, while we may contemplate this as a possible state of things, we know that it is not the actual state of things. There is hope for us in the future. The God against whom we have sinned does not cast over us the shadow of despair, but sheds the light of hope on the life which we now live in the flesh.

Then there is a third supposition which we may contemplate for a moment, namely, that there is hope concerning the future, but that we do not know how the hope is to be realized, or by what means a blessed future may be actually attained. There is a heaven, but how to reach it we do not know. There is a gate of heaven, but where to find it we do not know. The gate of heaven may be opened, but what key will unlock it we do not know. The God against whom we have sinned has mercy in store, but how He may be propitiated we do not know. Suppose these are the conditions under which we have to live our life in the flesh, what manner of life shall it be? Eating and drinking? Working and earning? Weeping and laughing? Storing and spending? A merely present life? A life, in its joys and sorrows, in its toils and cares, having reference only to the present? Impossible! Such a life in such circumstances would be the most fatuous and irrational that can be conceived. Tell me there is hope, there is a

way to God and heaven, but I must find it out for myself, and if I am not the utterest fool, I will not give sleep to mine eyes or slumber to mine eyelids until I have found out the secret, and have assured myself of eternal life. What are pleasures? what are riches? what are honours? so long as the way to heaven is undiscovered and unknown. Nero fiddling when Rome was on fire, maniacs dancing on the deck of a sinking ship; these are nothing to my folly, if I let amusement, or business, or aught else, occupy my time and thoughts till I have found the gate of heaven, and the key wherewith to unlock it.

The only rational life in view of such a state of things, is a life of intense earnestness and of restless effort to effect the great discovery. "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" Anything, anything but indifference, or unconcern, or pleasure. In comparison with these anything is rational. The scourge by which the monk lacerates himself almost to death; the roots and locusts by which the hermit of the desert barely keeps himself alive; the costly pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or Mecca, or Benares, even though the road be travelled on spikes; anything that shows a man is in earnest, is rational as compared with the conduct of those who believe there is a way to heaven, aye, and a way to hell, but make no effort to find the one, and flee the other.

Happily the way of peace and hope has been revealed. We are not left to discover it for ourselves. But being revealed, we need earnestness to enter upon it, and walk in it as certainly as if we had first to find it out. And this leads us to the true relation in which the life we now live stands to the future and the spiritual, and to that which alone can make our present life all that it ought to be and all that it is capable of being.

Let us take it in the form in which the Apostle Paul presents it, and in which he himself realised it: "The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." What a world of love and of power there is in these words! The life I now live in this world, I livenot, as unconscious of any other life and any other world to live in; not, as knowing that there is another world, but placed under an irrevocable sentence of eternal death; not, as knowing that there is another world, but left to find out for myself how I may attain to eternal life. In far happier circumstances, and under far happier influences, do I live this life : it is by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and Himself for me. gave

I live by faith in the Incarnate One. The Son of God was God IncarnateGod in my nature. I do not stay to prove this to you now. I accept it on authority which cannot err and cannot lie. True, it is a great mystery. What of that? God Himself, in the simplest form in which you can conceive of His being and character, is a great mystery. But "no God" is a greater mystery still. Even so- -a Divine Incarnation is a great mystery; but

these Gospels as they are, without an acknowledged Incarnation, would be a greater mystery still. When I follow the steps of Jesus of Nazareth, and witness His works and listen to His words, I can understand Him if He be God Himself in my nature, but I cannot if this belief be disallowed me. When I hear Him say, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," I can understand Him if He be true God as well as man. When I hear Him say, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not," I can understand Him if He be true God as well as true man. But deny His Godhead, and these and other sayings of His pass from the region of a bright and loving mystery into a region of presumption and folly.

To this I cling, then, not as an intellectual refinement or abstraction, but as very fact and truth, that Jesus was the Son of God, that He was God in my nature. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of this fact-the faith that God dwelt on earth in my nature, and still retains my nature in union with His own. And if I really have this faith, it cannot fail to exercise a singular and salutary influence over me. What this influence would be but for the added truth that He loved me and gave Himself for me, it is difficult to say. But we may lawfully separate for a moment, in thought at least, the Incarnation from its great end-the giving of Himself for us-and ask, How should we feel who know that the Eternal God has indissolubly united Himself to our humanity?