may well say, with a slight change in the words of the proverb: Take care of the things of the other world: the things of this world will take care of themselves.' Religion is chiefly concerned with the future and the unseen. But the present is the present, the visible is the visible. The present and the visible will insist that attention shall be paid to them. Our physical and temporal wants cannot be disregarded. A thousand voices, from without and from within, exhort us to worldly activity and worldly prudence. What is wanted is to call up other thoughts, thoughts calm and solemn, unworldly, yet encompassing the world, like a girdle of hills, that rises in the blue distance, beyond the smoke and the din of some tumultuous city. Now, as always, unbelief and disbelief, doubt and indifference, are rife in our towns and villages, and in all ranks of the community. Multitudes, like Gallio, care for none of the things appertaining to Christian godliness. For the common purposes and in the social meetings of life, a man or woman must have some acquaintance with many languages, many sciences, many accomplishments. Discourse turns upon them: an utter want of familiarity with them is discovered and unmasked. But religious topics-I am stating the fact, and not asking now whether the practice is right or wrong-religious topics are very sparingly and rarely introduced in society; save indeed when some foolish yet bitter controversy invades the precincts and disturbs the peace of families, or neighbourhoods. Otherwise, men very seldom speak of Christian doctrines or Christian duties in their ordinary intercourse: and the existence or the absence of religious instruction may for years pass unobserved: so that, notwithstanding the stir which is sometimes and for some purposes made about religion,

the matter, which is most important, is just that on which it is least a shame for a man to be ignorant.

For is it not, beyond all measure, the most important matter? How poor and shallow is all science, if the highest and most elevating inferences are never to be drawn from our contemplation of man and nature? How frivolous and distracting is all literature, if it is never to be dignified and hallowed by thoughts which stretch into a being beyond the grave? How trivial, and hollow, and vapid, are all the turmoils and ambitions of life-and life itself at once how short and tedious if it is not to be exalted and consecrated by the better life of faith? All that is grand or beautiful, graceful or venerable, comprehensive or profound; all that is august and righteous in our theories, all that is useful and beneficial in our practice; all that is grave and earnest in youth and manhood, all that is cheering and consolatory in old age, must be associated with God in Christ, and the considerations of eternity. You know too, brethren, that the importance of other things, even if they could ever be important, diminishes, decays, fades, with every month, with every hour that goes over us: the importance of these things,' with every month, with every hour, increases and grows, becomes more immense, becomes more instant. All else death must terminate; and the tomb, that now yawns, must swallow up. Soon, very soon, the pomps and anxieties, the successes and the sorrows, of this present world will be no more to us than the falling of a pebble in the water, than the direction which a straw or feather takes in the air. But in death, and in the immortality after death, 'these things' will be all in all. Other knowledge will vanish away; that is, will vanish away, as being absorbed in truer and

fuller knowledge; but the knowledge of God, and the universe of God, will be, unless we neglect it now and here, our occupation and our happiness for ever. If we neglect it, terrible must be our state, when it is too late to learn; too late for instruction, for improvement, for salvation. Therefore, brethren, the admonition is pressing upon us: These things teach and exhort.' Therefore, brethren, to you likewise it is written, 'Exhort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin,' (Heb. iii. 13). 'Consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: exhorting one another; and so much the more as ye see the day approaching,' (Heb. x. 24, 25).

O Almighty and Everlasting God, who didst give to thine Apostle Bartholomew grace truly to believe and to preach thy word; grant, we beseech thee, unto thy Church, to love that word which he believed, and both to preach and receive the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

SERMON II.

ON THE PROPERTIES OF THE CREATOR.

PSALM XCIV. 9.

He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?

formed the eye, shall he not see?

He that

LL religion must have its beginning with that which

is in strictness called theology. At least, if the feeling of religion can take its rise in the wants, capacities, and tendencies of man, the science of religion must commence with our conceptions as to the existence, character, and operations of God. Until we believe that God is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, there is positively no basis for religion. And we may go a step further. Upon our theology depends in a great measure what we term our anthropology. Our views of God must affect and help to determine our views of the origin, functions, and destinies of humanity; as without doubt, on the other hand, our study of ourselves should lead us up to the contemplation of the Divine Being. In how peculiar a manner, the distinctive idea which we derive from the sacred volume with respect to the essence, personality, and counsels of the Godhead, gives shape and colour to all our other religious convictions; and how wonderfully, in the scheme of the Gospel, the divine and human elements are intermingled, or Christian theology and

Christian anthropology are bound up together, it must be needless for me to say."

But again, as theology is the foundation of religion, so the primary axioms of theology lie imbedded in the text. And much more than the primary axioms. This interrogation, so simple in its form, contains the pith and marrow of the profoundest dissertations. In all times, among all classes of minds, among the ancient philosophers, the schoolmen of the middle ages, the metaphysicians and divines of the most recent date, the argument relating to the being and attributes of God has been worked, until, not indeed in its illustrations which are numberless, but in its principles which are really few, it is almost exhausted; until we can hardly entertain a reasonable expectation that future writers will impart any absolute novelty, or make any substantial addition to it. Another stage of existence will, we may well conceive, open to us instantaneous proofs, or manifestations rather than proofs, clearer than the sunlight, more direct and overpowering than the evidence of the senses themselves, in reference to that stupendous subject, on which we now make, with comparative vagueness and dimness, our laborious investigations. But, while we are on earth, and while our faculties are confined to their present limits, our thoughts and inquiries seem to have been carried in this direction almost as far as they can go. And the result of these thoughts and inquiries may be almost summed up in the pregnant question, 'He that planted the ear, shall he not hear; or He that made the eye, shall he not see?'

For the text points to design, as indicated by the formation of the eye and the ear. And, without doubt, if there were no other evidences of plan, or purpose, in