another time cut down by the scythe of the mower, or trodden down by the feet of the ox. Frailty, weakness, liability to premature decay, are characteristics of the men of the earth, as well as of the grass of the earth. If there be some among us, as it were, the aristocrats of humanity, what are they? The same substance that we are, are they also. The same heart that is in the bosom of the ragged school girl, beats in the breast of the Queen of these realms. Aristocracy and royalty are, as seen in the light of Christianity, however needful and beautiful, yet pure conventionalisms. The distinction between the poorest beggar and the greatest monarch, is just the distinction between the grass that spreads over the field and instantly fades, and the flower that

rises a few inches above it, and waves with greater elegance before the breeze. But there is no real difference. The flower blooms in richer beauty and with finer tints, and captivates as it catches the eye; but it is of no stronger texture, of no sublimer origin; it is not necessarily of longer growth; nay, its very prominence and beauty, which raise it above the dead level of the grass, expose it more to danger, as it is more likely to be plucked by the hand of the traveller who passes by, or to be scathed by the lightning's flash, or to be nipped by the first frost; and when the flower falls, who knows not that the wreck of departed dignity is a more melancholy spectacle than the death of ordinary men? The latter is but the

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common grass, the former is the loftier and more beauteous flower that is mingled with it. Over the flower of the grass, royalty, and over the grass itself, commonalty, the wind equally passeth, making no distinction, and both are gone. The sirocco of the Eastern desert, and the simoom of Africa, sweep over the field; and grass and flower bow before them, and rise no more till the last day. The wind passes over it-nips each leaf, and the grass droops, and the flower dies; and so completely is man swept out of his place, that when his successor enters it, if he who had it before him were to come back from the dead, his successor would not know him; he is gone, "and the place thereof knows him no more at all."

CHAPTER XIV.

EVERLASTING MERCY AND RIGHTEOUSNESS.

"The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him."— Psalm ciii. 17.

IF all things be frail as the grass or flower of grass, and thus subject to decadence and ultimate decay, how important it is that man should have a foothold on that which endures beyond the everlasting hills, and shall outlive creation itself! for the mercy of God which reacheth to the heaven-this mercy which is the grand characteristic of Deity --which rises to the zenith and descends to the nadir, is "from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him." The shortness of our life is contrasted with the length

of his mercy. The flowers of the field are blasted by the storm; the flower of mercy that grows as in the paradise of God, blooms in amaranthine glory; and when all forsake you, and all your fountains become broken cisterns, and your friends, like swallows in winter, have taken wings and fled, when all on earth you looked to and leaned on is gone, then I would say and sing, "Bless the Lord, O my soul;" "for the mercy of the Lord," on which I have laid hold, "is from everlasting to everlasting; and his righteousness," says the Psalmist, "is unto children's children." Numbers do not exhaust it; years do not waste or weaken it; it is as true now as it was three thousand years ago, that God's mercy reacheth unto the heavens-that "God is faithful and inst to forgive us our sins "-and