the body and the world. He told them that the one living and true God was a Father to them, loving them and doing them good. He told them of the divine character, of the purity and righteousness and love, and all the sublime and beautiful excellencies that unite in that character. And he told them of their innate power to imitate and approach these divine perfections, and that thus they might live and be blest forever with God and like him. He told them that goodness and purity of heart and life, would beget in them a new and divine life and everlasting joy, and it was to make them believe, and feel, and act upon this truth, that he taught and exhorted, warned and encouraged them. That the sins and darkness, and all the obstacles, that kept them back from true life and bliss, might be removed, was the labor of his life, the burden of his instructions, the purpose of his death, his charge to his apostles, his prayer to his Father. It is thus that Jesus is the giver of life, not by giving an immortality which men had not before, but by quickening and strengthening those principles and affections, the possession and exercise of which make immortality blissful and desirable. And in so far as he has done this, by the truths he taught and confirmed, by example or preceptor persuasion, by his sufferings and death, or the institutions he has left behind him, so far he is the giver of eternal life, the Saviour, the sanctifier of the world. If there be any thing that we dare to call excellent in our characters, if we have any love of God and truth and goodness, any pleasures and hopes that are spiritual and depend not on the senses or the world, then in

so far as these things are the fruit of our religion, or of any of its influences direct or indirect, near or remote, so far Jesus is to us the bread of life,' and we 'live through him' and are blessed in him. Whoso hath the spirit of Christ—is like him in his feelings, thoughts, desires, liveth in him already, he hath life already, and has entered upon eternal life; for he has means of happiness and objects of hope, which the world gave not and could not give, which worldly changes cannot affect and the dissolution of all outward things cannot destroy. The faithful christian does live, and will live on in a sense in which none other can. Positive goodness of heart, a character formed on the mode and quickened by the spirit of Jesus is itself a life, a new state of being, a moral, spiritual, divine being. It is the life of God in the soul of man,' differing from every other, in its thoughts feelings, and purposes, in its tastes, enjoyments, hopes. And this state of being is the beginning of eternal life, the beginning of a spiritual happiness, a happiness that may begin on earth, that survives the grave, advances forever and fills eternity.

It is an old truth and familiar to us all, that christianity calls on us all to be good, and assures us that we shall thereby attain to life and happiness. But I apprehend we do not feel with sufficient clearness and constancy the essential, and unchangeable connexion between goodness and its reward. We are apt to consider the reward as something separate from and independent of the character, something that will hereafter be measured out to us like wages, or like an arbitrary lar

gess. But it is not so. Our own excellence itself, and that only, is to us eternal life.' Virtue is life. The consequence of it is bliss. In whatever degree we possess it, in that same degree we have advanced towards the perfection and infinite blessedness of God. Eternal life is then something to be cultivated and formed by ourselves, and within ourselves, for our characters are of our own forming, and these are our life or our death. We may have and we do have, help and guidance from God and Christ, from providence, from man, and from nature. Our christian faith may direct us by its light, and show us the way to eternal life, and the glory thereof. Its solemn truths may press upon us their motives and sanctions, which it is madness to slight. It may show us more than a father's goodness and love in the dealings of our Maker, and so fill us with a holy thankfulness. It may warm us with the fervor and strengthen us with the strength of our Saviour. All that is winning in his love, and moving in his death, and glorious in his promises, may conspire to lead us in his steps and bring us to his kingdom. But all these are influences and means only. They are not agents. They do not do the work. They do not carry us along and keep us from falling with a resistless hand. They do not save us from danger. They do not deliver us from temptation. They do not govern for us our wayward passions. They do not remove from us the charms and allurements of the world, or shut up the avenues through which they seduce us. Here is the field for our own efforts. And nothing can supercede the need of mighty and unfail

ing effort. Means and influences are not enough. It is ours to combine and direct them, to take them to our hearts and make them effectual. If we would have true life, and divine blessedness forever, it must be our own acquisition, our own eyes must long for it, our own hearts must love it, our feet must pursue it, our hands must be stretched out to lay hold of it, and our own wills, an unwavering and unconquerable determination must make it our possession and secure it. G. P.

ERRORS RELATING TO PUBLIC WORSHIP.

There is much to be admired in the ideas and habits of the ancient people of Israel, in relation to the stated worship of God. To them nothing was more delightful than to go up to their temple, so beautiful and so sacred, and pay their adorations to the One Living and True. They hailed with joy the returning Sabbath, as a day in which they might repeat their solemn vows, and hear, from the lips of their teachers, the law of the Lord. The light of that day was to them a holy light, sent down to illuminate the path of the just. The air of that day was to them a holy air, invigorating to the drooping soul, refreshing to the fainting spirit. The moments of that day were to them holy moments, on which the cares of life might not intrude; too precious to be occupied in any earthly labors; too sacred to be employed otherwise than in the

worship of God. They loved the temple of Zion, because there they believed the Lord had commanded a blessing, even life forever more. When they were bewailing their captivity, the cup of their sorrow overflowed, as they remembered the place where they used to worship. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.'

It is the zealous attachment of this people to the public offices of their religion, and the singleness of heart with which they appeared to engage in them, which we love to contemplate, and which we would hold up for the imitation of Christians. Notwithstanding there was so much of outward splendor in the ceremonies of their religion as sometimes to keep down their thoughts from the great object of them all, yet, we believe, there was frequently treasured up beneath what was external and visible, a religious reverence which God might appreciate; a religious sincerity which God might reward.

Those splendid ceremonies are all done away; and the simpler forms of christian worship have taken their places. This is well. Because those were costly ceremonies; and because the fullness of the time had come, when the spiritual should be farther separated from the material; when the inward and invisible nature should learn to commune with its Author, unaided by sensible and changing objects.

Better, however, had it been for the world, that the Jewish faith, with its rites, had continued to this day, than that, attachment to the worship of God, reverence, and sincerity, should be lost. Better that we were now thronging the gate of the Hebrew temple, and