blind." Its promises are never fulfilled. Its boastings always prove empty and vain. THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD might, likewise, be pronounced unsatisfying. It evidently has no elements that fit it to meet the desires and wants of man. Manifestly it is not of a nature to reach and bound the mighty cravings of deathless minds. Evidence of this comes up before us in unnumbered convincing forms, whenever we turn to contemplate the ranks of this world's votaries. Their disappointment, dissatisfaction, and disgust are too legibly written in their features, and too plainly uttered by their conduct, to render it necessary for further proof to go behind the scene, and examine there the base apparatus of worldly pleasures. It might with equal truth be averred, furthermore, that THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD is inconstant and fluctuating. It is like a ship upon the heaving and restless expanse of the ocean. no fixed and stable foundation to rest upon. votaries most need support, it gives way beneath them. The more exclusively they cling to it, the more violently they are tossed, and the more giddy and sickened they become. Indeed, of all its humiliating characteristics, THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD might, with the least possible ground for contradiction, be declared at enmity against God. It draws the heart from God. It invites and claims a confidence which God only deserves. It opposes the tendency of his grace. It hardens the minds of men against the influence of all the various methods which heaven employs to transform and save them. It estranges them from the service of their Maker, and urges them along the way of death.

It affords
When its

Now all of these undeniable characteristics of the present evil world, are waived by the apostle here, and The only insists on the single fact, that its FASHION PASSETH AWAY. Be it, that it is not what all good men have pronounced it, worthless, illusory, unsatisfying, unstable and sinful. Let it be for once admitted, if you will, that it is not so utterly incapable of meeting the wants,

and blessing the souls of men. Yet thus much you must acknowledge, that it will not last-that it PASSETH AWAY. Whatever good it yields must be transient. Its pleasures must cease. Its honors must fade. Its splendor will be soon nothing but dust. The finery you may fancy it now wears, will in a short time be finery out of date. All its absorbing interests, its heart-stiring topics, its splendid projects, and its current literature, will shortly be among things long since forgotten. Its FASHION, that which invests it with a temporary importance, will in a little time have PASSED AWAY, and nothing will be left to adorn and dignify the relics of a wornout world. It will all be worthless then. It cannot be new modeled-refashioned, thrown into the crucible and melted into something still brilliant, and beautiful, and valuable. For it is only an appearance, a shadowy form, a gilded pageant, a pictured show; and when once passed, it cannot be summoned back-when once vanished, it cannot be conjured up into being again; when once it dissolves into its own airy nothing, beneath the eye that gazes upon it from the world of eternal realities, all its seeming substance, all its unreal splendor, will be irrecoverably and forever gone. To those who shall view it from that world, (and none shall escape that future retrospection,) it will appear like the incidents and forms that constitute the dreams of a night; and it will occasion only surprise, that it could have been regarded as a reality-much more as a reality, valuable and desirable to beings formed for the sublime verities of immortality-the unsearchable wonders of eternal blessedness!

In adding something further, in order to illustrate the expression in the text, it might seem matter rather for curious, than profitable inquiry, to what particular usages among men the apostle alludes. It may be allowable however to observe, that it has been supposed, that allusion is here had to a theatre, where the scheme, (as the word strictly means which we have translated FASH

ION,) the scheme, the image, the form, the representation, is wholly changed. Or it may be read the SCENE OF THIS WORLD PASSETH AWAY. The actors in a play sustain various characters. The scenes are perpetually shifting. Some actors are prominent as heroes of the play, while others lurk behind the scenes as obscure characters-and all of them according to the custom of the ancients, were masked. At length, the curtain drops, and the scenes are over. This truly presents a very striking picture of the world-a changing SCENE THAT PASSETH AWAY. It matters not how important or unimportant may be the parts which men act, they have their little space to fill, their little period to live, and then they vanish from the scene, and others come to bustle their little hour, and follow the long train. This leads me to observe, that the text may be read as if it were written-THE PAGEANT OF THIS WORLD PASSETH AWAY. So it has been read by some able expositors of the sacred pages. The world is only a show, a spectacle, a procession. Like a splendid parade through the streets, it is perpetually shifting its aspect to the eye of observers, and is ever hastening to disappear from their most eager and interesting gaze. The image, which naturally arises before the mind as we read the text, is that of a gorgeous procession, such as was common in the age of the apostle. A triumph, such as sometimes was decreed by the Roman senate to a victorious general. Numberless glittering objects swiftly pass the eye. The pompous show moves along with its burnished armor, blazing in the noontide ray; and with the deafening acclamations of the infatuated crowd, who join the moving myriads to celebrate the exploits of the hero, as he passes in solemn dignity along the festive streets. But how soon has it all passed by. We look again and it is gone. The burning splendor is quenched. The thundering shouts are hushed. All the gaudy visions of the day are vanished. Not a movement, not a relic, not a vestige, not a swelling note, continues to record the

magificent parade of the short-lived day. You have all witnessed a scene allied to this, in those moving spectacles which, a few years since, from one extremity of the land to the other, welcomed the Nation's Guest. You gazed at the procession that thronged our streets. Every eye and every heart was turned to the magnificent vanity. A few hours weighed down the declining day, and spread a blank pall over the whole absorbing pageant. The voice of welcome, the shouts of revelry, and the swell of martial sounds, with all the constrained dignity and glittering accompaniments of the scene, ceased and passed away with the departed day. It is now fading from the recollection, or remembered only as the mock parades of children. Thus PASSETH AWAY THE FASH

ION OF THE WORLD.

What is the deepest and strongest impression that seizes and absorbs the mind, as you travel through the history of other days? Is it not, that it is all gone by? that it is all a mere pageant? that it is all like a nightdream or a day-fancy, that passes through the mind and vanishes? Where are the wonders of the old world? There was much vain show among those who lived before the flood. The world that then was abounded with solemn pageants and splendid vanities; but they PASSED AWAY and disappeared, just like the mighty waters that overwhelmed them. What has become of all the proud schemes and enterprises, the heaven-daring exploits and earth-appalling achievements, the works and the triumphs of the ages that followed? They too have vanished in the flood of years that have been pouring their ceaseless tide into the ocean of eternity. Yes, all the long procession of earth's generations, for half a century of centuries, with their towers, and temples, and cities has gone by, a vanished pageant, with only a few relics left, as way-marks in the course of time; to remind us that the procession passed, and is no more! What an affecting illustration of the text, does such a scene present to the imagination. Who can contemplate such a pro

cession, in which some hundred thousand millions of our race join, with all their works, and purposes, and plans, and pleasures, and pains, passed and passing away, and not forcibly realize the truth, that THE PAGEANT OF THIS WORLD PASSETH AWAY?

The limited experience of every individual, that has lived a few years in the world, affords a measured opportunity of perceiving the propriety of this representation which the apostle has given of the world. He that has lived to the period of three score and ten, has seen most of the pageants of his day go by. Ask him concerning the distinguished actors of his youth--those who then were most conspicuous in the processionthose who glittered most in the train-those who filled the largest place in the ranks of his contemporaries, and he will tell you, that they have all long since PASSED AWAY. And the retrospection, to which such inquiry leads, will call forth the exclamation, alike characteristic of age and experience: "Oh, all is a passing spectacle. All is an empty pageant. All is only a shifting scene. Surely every man walketh in a vain show. Surely they are disquieted in vain. He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.

In regard to the meaning of the term WORLD, as used by the apostle, in special reference to its transitory character, it may be needless to say more, than that it is briefly, and yet fully defined by another apostle, as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. So emphatically do these constitute THE WORLD which man naturally loves and pursues, that if you annihilate them, nothing is left for him. And yet these are as evanescent as a dream. The flesh must shortly lose those appetites, in the excitement and gratification of which, carnal men centre much of their happiness. The eye cannot long take delight in gazing at accumulated heaps of glittering treasures. And the pride of life must become sick of ministering to the amusement

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