MR. GREGG'S SERMON TO YOUNG MEN. 181

something else, before overlooked. This is in its turn advanced to the front, and made to eclipse the other until some one protests against the exaggeration, and preaches up something else; or, it may be, seeks to restore the equilibrium of the two opposites, showing them in a more reflected light, and a truer bearing. Principles act and counteract and interact the wide world over, maintaining a wholesome activity, and preserving the golden mean of things."

‘April 26th.—I begrudge every hour, every moment that shuts out from me the presence of God; every labour whose acquired result savours of earth. I do not mean that this great thought can always shine into the soul -the thought of God's presence-we are too gross for that. But I do mean that our time and attention are wasted if given to matters from which, from their materiality, we can extract nothing appertaining to the invisible and spiritual. 'Meditate, centre your thoughts on things above,' is the spiritual command. I am getting happily to feel that the result of obedience to this precept is just this, that so far from being discontented with things below, one gets to see more in them. The amount of gross impervious matter is lessened, so that the eye, becoming more spiritual and clear, can discern the electric fire that darts forth from beneath the soil, and seems the sacred fire of heaven. What know we of God, of life, if the stretch and bound of our horizon is a dead level? It was the noble saying of a heathen poet, 'Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.' 'I am a man; and nought that is human is foreign to myself.' Advance one step further, and say,

I am a son of God. I hold this universe, rolling amid space with all its worlds, to be of Him. I humbly think the little globe of water, too, that trickles from the brook is not so disregarded of its Maker as to escape His eye or be beyond His law-therefore it interests me.

"April 20th.-I cannot think with some that the primary evidence of a God is from the material world; because it seems impossible, without having the idea of God, to make any comparison between Him and His works; and if any one will carefully examine and test the process in their own minds, when contemplating with hallowed enjoyment the beautiful face of nature, instinct with the Divine presence, they will give preeminence and priority to that glorious idea which alone can interpret nature, and lend to it a meaning which otherwise it never would have. To tell me that a watch speaks of a watchmaker before I have any idea of the latter, is to take the whole thing for granted, and assert what can never be proved, because mankind could have no notion of a watch until they had not only the notion, but the actual knowledge and presence of a man. This is a matter of fact, it is the natural history of this process; to reverse it is to go upon a mere hypothesis that can never be put to the test. I think, then, that the existence, beauty, harmony, and grandeur of nature, is corroborative proof, not primary evidence, that there is a God."

"May 1st.—I cannot get rid of my responsibility. It is an awful fact that stares me in the face every moment. Not a thing I do, nor the way I do it, or when I do it,

but affects the whole issue.

I am oppressed, overwhelmed with this weight which attaches to me.

I go

to God, not to be relieved from my responsibility—that would be to deny Himself and His holy law-but to help me under the burden. I go to Him to take the matter out of my hands by giving me Himself. If God be for us, who can be against us?'"

"June 6th.-The sacred of the earth, the holy amongst men, seem ever to possess a spirit tuned to sympathypowerful sympathy-with their dying fellows, rushing headlong to destruction and woe. This feeling is an induction from the Bible, as well as drawn from an observation of the life and character of men. If it be true that our humanity is debased and crushedand most true it is-it were a thought, a spectacle, enough to draw tears of blood from every soul that so believes. The highest angel might stoop to shed his sacred tear on such an awful world. But have we never paused to reflect that if we as men can so feel for our fellow-man, and be willing to exhaust all the means in our power to avert his ruin, what must be the feeling, the compassion of a holy God, whose nature is love, and who has the power to do that which the highest will of man could never effect! Oh, brother, have faith in God! What avails the anguish of thy soul? 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?' And what in thy solemn moments thou feelest to be wrong, charge not to Him, but to thy limited vision -and keep thy faith intact."

"There are some minds-an order of mind-who shrink from all earthly beauty from a reserved or con

strained fear that beneath there lies concealed a serpent or a thorn. They dare not surrender themselves to the joyousness of the hour, when that hour invites, and when their own nature is welling up from within, by reason of a latent dread of gliding out of their propriety into some glaring inconsistency. They carry about with them, as one has expressed it, 'some corpse of a memory' that throws its cold shadow upon the scene of the hour that would lull them to a Lethe of care."

“Thy spirit can penetrate my soul, and my soul can illumine the world."

"That which thou art in the sight of God, that thou art, and nothing more! Watch against hypocrisy. Let not thine eyes be blinded by things seen to things unseen. All will vanish but thine interest in Jesus."

Here we close his journal. Enough has been unveiled of his hidden life to show what holy feelings and what precious gems of thought lay concealed beneath a demeanour so quiet and retiring. Truly, his 'life was hid with Christ in God.'

CHAPTER V.

Remark of Homer-Whitmore Winslow's return from Dublin-Visit to town-Closing Sabbath service and communion-Catholic spirit -Visit to Dover-Letter to his friend-Last service on earth -Affecting coincidence-Death-Interment-Poetry-Concluding remarks.

It was the pathetic remark of Homer, concerning a noble youth stretched upon the battle-field, that "he never lived to repay the care of those who had brought him up." In the case of a godly youth suddenly and, to human view, prematurely severed from life, Christianity modifies this sentiment, and tempers this lament of the poet. In such a case there is a reward. Brief though the career of such a one may be, yet it is no life-blank, unwritten and untraced. To have witnessed the early consecration to Christ-to have marked the matured wisdomthe deepening grace the brightening holiness— the glowing sunset-who will say that he lived not to repay the care, and to realize the treasured hopes and prayers of those who trained his first years, watched with parental fondness his manhood's progress, and then saw the early grave close over