must be placed among those, who have not the fear of God in their hearts and no regard for the work of salvation, which it commemorates. There are other holy days that have been observed with reverential from an early period in the history of the church. They commemorate the leading facts in the Saviour's life, as they are presented to us in the creed. Love for Christ and faith in his work as consisting of different parts, such as his incarnation, his death, his resurrection and his exaltation to the right hand of the majesty in heaven, naturally lead to the observance of such days. Though neglected in this country, we may predict their return, so soon as the faith of the church is again reduced to the order in which it stands in the Apostles' Creed.

Next to the church as a divine institution in the world, parents, rulers, and all placed in authority, are objects that should be reverenced. All valid human authority comes from the Lord, and is on this account binding upon men. In a certain sense it is the authority of God, or at least an adumbration of that authority. The former prepares the mind as a preparatory discip line for the adoption of the latter. At first all the fear which the child can exercise towards God, is that which it exercises towards its parents; it has as yet no idea of God and his law, and can show reverence to none but its parents. This, however, is accepted of God, as shown towards himself. As years, however, pass away, and the mind expands, reverence towards God, the Father of all is developed. It has been prepared already to fear God; the habit of its mind has been to submit and obey, and it is now ready to pass from the service of its parents to the service of God. Hence that well established fact, that early religious instruction, at home by the fire-side, is so generally employed by Providence in raising up distinguished lights of the church, and of the age. Without such a previous training it is hard indeed for individuals to submit themselves to the authority of God in after years. They have not learned the lesson of fear in youth, and the older they become, the harder the task. The discipline of the state is similar to that of the parental, and deserve similar respect or regard. The man that professes superior piety, and regard for God, or "a higher law," and yet despises the laws of the land, miserably deceives and contradicts himself. His disregard for human tribunals measures his disregard for that which is divine. His higher law emanates from no deity, that lives and manifests himself in the history of the world, but from that airy substance, styled self, that has usurped the throne of his will.

We now contend that reverence as thus described, is the beginning of all wisdom, the starting point of all piety, or religion in the soul. When this is said, we are not to understand, that religion has its origin in the feeling of reverence. If this were so, it would be merely a human production, a plant that grows spontaneously from the soil of the human heart. But this were an impossibility. Men never become religious when left to their own spontaneous development. On the contrary their course is constantly downwards. Religion is something back of all that men can say, or do, or think, or feel. It comes to us as a pure gift from Jesus Christ, as a fountain of life and immortality to a world dead in trespasses and sins. Apart from Christ there is no hope for the world, as it is invincibly bound to the law of sin and death. But when this is said, it may nevertheless be affirmed, that reverence is something fundamental to all other religious affections, and underlies the whole frame-work of the christian life; it is a foundation-stone of all true christian activity, a prop or support, without which the whole structure must collapse and fall to the ground. In the history of redemption, in its progress from the lowest to the highest development, the fear of the Lord was first awakened, and was made to precede the love of God, and then to serve as the permanent basis of this latter. It was mainly the object of the Jewish dispensation to infuse into the constitution of the world, this divine, or heavenly fear. All the revelations, therefore, that were made to the Jewish church, were calculated to excite reverence rather than love. Its miracles, for instance those performed in Egypt, dif fered essentially from those of the Saviour. The former were destructive and terrific in their character, whilst the latter, were so many expressions of the divine benignity and love, designed to heal the bodies or the souls of men. The nearest approach in the christian to the Jewish miracle, is found in the fig-tree, that was made to wither on account of its barrenness. The old dispensation passed away, but was not destroyed. That reverence which it had served to engender remained, and formed the ground-work upon which the dispensation of love was to be reared. Fear became mature, and turned to love, and these became so united as to form only different sides of the same thing. The development of the individual christian life, is similar to that of the church as a whole. First the law, then the gospel; first fear, then love. This can be made to appear.

The godhead comes to man with the gift of salvation and eternal life. The Father draws the sinner to the Son through the Holy Ghost. The gift of all gifts is placed before him, and

he is invited to accept of it without money and without price. To become his he must receive and accept of it by faith. Now the first activity which the soul puts forth in receiving Christ, is reverence, or the fear of the Lord. This becomes active before love, or faith, or hope, and prepares the way for their existence. Before men can believe in God, hope in him, or love him, they must learn to fear him. He must gain the homage of their hearts, and the adoration of their tongues. Slavish fear drives the soul farther and farther away from God; a filial fear, however, draws it towards him. It comes trembling and afraid, into the presence of God, and yet drawn by a power, which it cannot resist, it comes and bows before him. So it is with the little child. Conscious of its faults, it comes tremblingly towards its parents, and yet because its parents, are to it the most lovely of all persons, it runs to their embrace. Religion consists much more in the fact that we are in constant communication with the life of the Redeemer, than in any efforts, or exertions, which we can make ourselves. To stand within the channel of such a communication of divine life, is to be in a state of grace. Reverence enables the soul to occupy such a relation with reference to Christ. It may be considered as the tendril of the soul, that reaches out to God for support, as the tendril of the vine, seeks

the branch of some neighboring tree. It thus makes faith possible, which can be exercised only as the soul comes in contact with spiritual realities, and is itself the firm grasp which the soul is enabled to take of Christ. There are divinely appointed means, through which God imparts his blessings to men. Reverence brings the soul in contact with these; it leads the soul to the church, to the sacraments, to the house of prayer, to the word of God. Men never come to Christ, who despise the sanctuary, or regard the word of God lightly. How much does respect for the good and the pious in a community accomplish! The secret of the influence, which they exert, consists altogether in the reverence which they inspire by their life and example. We may lay it down as a rule, that as long as an individual can appreciate the value of good men, that this condition is a hopeful one, whereas there seems to be little hope for individuals or families, where the christian life ceases to be admired, or where some good man, or sound author is not revered as a sort of patron saint.

Further, reverence is something fundamental in the christian life, because it is a necessary support or basis to every christian grace. We have said that it preceded other gracious feelings and activities; we now say that it controls, and modifies them throughout.

Knowledge, christian knowledge leans upon reverence for support. Without such a ballast, it inflates its possesser, runs wild, and carries the soul into endless confusion and solitary wastes. The history of the church teaches us this melancholy lesson on every page of its past history. Men have approached the scripture with irreverent hands and sought to support by its authority, their own doctrines and speculations. They have tried to correct its teachings, turned its awful verities into mere fables, and professed themselves wise above that which is writ

This has resulted altogether from the profane temper of their own minds, or from the spirit of their age, that could not separate the sacred from what is profane, and hence endeavored to mingle in horrid confusion heaven and hell, good and evil, life and death. If, however, the mind be reverential, it ap proaches the scripture with the conviction, that it contains, the mystery of mysteries. Ah! he touches the scripture with sacrilegious hands, who has not already learned to sit at the Saviour's feet, and meekly to receive his heavenly instructions. Religion is not inimical to the highest flights of the intellect; it lays no embargo on its adventurous voyages; it rejoices in the riches with which it comes freighted into the harbor. Man must speculate, if he is to remain man, and religion has given him the best impulse in that direction; it seeks to direct his flights; it points out the quick-sands, and whirl-pools, that endanger its course. In our days when the human mind has been so signally emancipated, when it disdains any longer to be confined to creeks and bays, and boldly pushes its way out into the ocean in quest of new discoveries; when it sets at defiance old and venerated theories, and in the glare of its own light forgets, that men have lived, and thought and reflected in other days, there is certainly reason for fear, lest in the love of adventure, a proper regard for the everlasting land-marks of Truth itself may be sacrificed. Upon the domain of religion, are observed full as many adventurists, and fortune-seekers as elsewhere, who have never learned to bow at the shrine of Truth, and hence strive to make it subservient to temporal ends and purposes. What is necessary to save the world of religious thought, is a return to the spirit of reverence, which will prompt men to adore and praise the majesty of the divine revelations, when and whenever made, aud in our efforts to outrun degrading superstition, we must take heed lest we aim to be gods ouselves, knowing good and evil.

As reverence is a support to our intellectual development, so it is in regard to the purely moral part of our constitutions.

Without it, love or charity cannot be complete, nor indeed exist at all. Without the fear of God, the love of God, turns to improper familiarity with Him, and divine things, and men address Him very much as their equal, or companion. Such we find to be the case with all those kinds of piety, that are lacking in that element, which leads men to experience awe. Reverence must enter as an essential ingredient into all true piety, that men may be brought to occupy their proper position before the majesty of Heaven. It makes them feel their inferiority in the sight of God and gives place to humility, and all true and acceptable worship. It looks upon God, as the rightful Lord and niaster, and leads to holy obedience. Love and fear co-mingling in the soul, enable it to look upon the law of God, as something too sacred to be violated, and at the same time, a way of pleasantness, and a path of peace. It pierces the tenderest feeling of the pious heart, when men around set the divine authority at defiance; how much more must it start back with fear when it is made itself the occassion of marring and defacing all that is most lovely in the universe?

All moral progress presupposes some adaptedness of the soul, some remaining stamina of strength, as a commencing-point from which the building is to be carried forward. Such we have shown the fear of God to be. Without it man is a reprobate and not susceptible of receiving any healthful influence from above or beneath. We do not expect to raise a crop of grain from the mountain-rock, or the arid sand of the desert. So we do not look for the restoration of the lost spirits, in whom no longer a divine susceptibility is to be found. With man, however, who is yet in a transition-state, and who has not sunk so low, there is still hope, and that is to be found in his capacity of reverencing that which is above him and infinitely worthy of his regard.

From what has now been said, we are enabled to see the importance of the feeling of reverence, and at the same time the evil of a want of it. Irreverence is truly a fatal or mortal sin. Generally it is not thought so. For the most part it is regarded as a sin of small account, as compared with other sins. It seems to injure no person; it takes no person's property; it defames no person's character, and no immediate evil seems to result from it. Thus profane swearing in this country is regarded as the most venal of all transgressions, a mere peccadillo, that ought to be overlooked. But if what has been said is true, this view of things is an entirely false one. Irreverence and profanity of every kind strike at the very vitals of our moral