are a lover of pleasure. And you would not voluntarily forego an hour's pleasure without some object to be gained by it, the preservation of health, or the prospect of future, compensatory enjoyments. Are you willing then to suffer; to be sick or afflicted-for so, from time to time, does the dispensation of life press upon you—are you willing to have days and months lost to comfort and joy, overshadowed with calamity and grief, without any advantage, any compensation? You are a dealer in the merchandise of this world. And you would not, without a return, barter away the most trifling article of that merchandise. Will you thus barter away the dearest treasures of your heart, the very sufferings of your heart? Will you sell the very life-blood from your failing frame and fading cheek, will you sell tears of bitterness and groans of anguish, for nothing? Can human nature, frail, feeling, sensitive, sorrowing human nature, afford to suffer for nothing?

I have touched now upon the darker colouring of human experience; but that experience, whether bright or dark, is all vivid; it is all, according to the measure of every one's power, earnest and affecting; it is all in its indications, solemn and sublime; it is all moving and monitory. In youth, in age, it is so; in mature vigour, in failing and declining strength; in health and in sickness; in joy and in sorrow; in the musings of solitu le, and amidst the throng of men; in privacy and amidst the anxieties and intrigues of public station; in the bosom of domestic quietude, and alike in the press and shock of battle; every where, human life is a great and solemn dispensation. Man, suffering, enjoying, loving, hating hoping, fearing; now soaring to heaven, and now saking to the grave; man is ever the creature of a high and stupendous destiny. In his

bosom is wrapped up, a momentous, an all-comprehending experience, whose unfolding is to be, in ages and worlds unknown. Around this great action of existence, the curtains of time are drawn, but there are openings through them, to the visions of eternity. God from on high looks down upon this scene of human probation; Jesus hath interposed for it, with his teachings and his blood; heaven above waits with expectation; hell from beneath is moved at the fearful crisis; every thing, every thing that exists around us, every movement in nature, every counsel of providence, every interposition of heavenly grace, centres upon one point -upon one point-the fidelity of man!

Will he not be faithful? Will he not be thoughtful? Will he not do the work, that is given him to do? To his lot-such a lot; to his wants, weighing upon him like mountains; to his sufferings, lacerating his bosom with agony; to his joys, offering foretastes of heaven; to all this tried and teaching life, will he not be faithful? Will not you? Shall not I, my brother? If not, what remains-what can remain, to be done for us? If we will not hear these things, neither should we believe, though one rose from the dead. No; though the ghosts of the departed and the remembered, should come at midnight through the barred doors of our dwellings; though the sheeted dead should stalk through the very aisles of our churches; they could not more powerfully teach us than the dread realities of life; nay more, and those memories of misspent years too, those ghosts of departed opportunities, that point to our consciences and point to eternity, saying, "work while the day lasts, for the night of death cometh in which no man can work !"

XI.

LIFE IS WHAT WE MAKE IT.

UNTO THE PURe are all thINGS PURE.-Epistle of Paul to Titus i. 15.

AND to expand the same sentiment a little; all things hear to us, a character corresponding with the state of our own minds. Life is what we make it; and the world is what we make it.

I can conceive that to some who hear me, this may appear to be a very singular, if not extravagant statement. You look upon this life and upon this world, and you derive from them, it may be, a very different impression. You see the earth perhaps, only as a collection of blind, obdurate, inexorable elements and powers. You look upon the mountains that stand fast for ever; you look upon the seas, that roll upon every shore their ceaseless tides; you walk through the annual round of the seasons; all things seem to be fixed, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, growth and decay; and so they are. But does not the mind, after all, spread its own hue over all these scenes? Does not the cheerful man make a cheerful world? Does not the sorrowing man make a gloomy world? Does not every mind make its own world? Does it not, as if indeed a portion of the Divinity were imparted to it; does it not almost create the scene around it? Its power, in fact, scarcely falls short of

the theory of those philosophers, who have supposed that the world had no existence at all, but in our own minds. So again with regard to human life: it seems to many, probably, unconscious as they are of the mental and moral powers which control it, as if it were made up of fixed conditions, and of immense and impassable distinctions. But upon all conditions presses down one impartial law. To all situations, to all fortunes high or low, the mind gives their character. They are in effect, not what they are in themselves, but what they are to the feeling of their possessors. The king upon his throne and amidst his court may be a mean, degraded, miserable man; a slave to ambition, to voluptuousness, to fear, to every low passion. The peasant in his cottage, may be the real monarch; the moral master of his fate; the free and lofty being, more than a prince in happiness, more than a king in honour. And shall the mere names which these men bear, blind us to the actual positions which they occupy amidst God's creation? No; beneath the all-powerful law of the heart, the master, is often a slave; and the slave-is master.

It has been maintained, I know, in opposition to the view which we take of life, that man is the creature of circumstances. But what is there in the circumstances of the slave to make him free in spirit, or of the monarch to make him timid and time-serving? This doctrine of fate—that man is but a bubble upon the sea of his fortunes, that he is borne a helpless and irresponsible being upon the tide of events,-is no new doctrine, as some of its modern advocates seem to suppose; it has always formed a leading part of the creed of Atheism. But I ask if the reverse of this doctrine is not obviously true? Do not different men bring out of the same circumstances totally differ

ent results? Does not that very difficulty, distress, poverty or misfortune, which breaks down one man, build up another and make him strong? It is the very attribute, the glory of a man; it is the very power and mastery of that will which constitutes one of his chief distinctions from the brute, that he can bend the circumstances of his condition to the intellectual and moral purposes of his nature.

But it may be said, that the mind itself, is the offspring of culture; that is to say, the creature of circumstances. This is true, indeed, of early childhood. But the moment that the faculty of moral will is developed, a new element is introduced, which changes the whole complexion of the argument. Then a new power is brought upon the scene, and it is a ruling power. It is delegated power from heaven. There never was a being sunk so low, but God has thus given him the power to rise. God commands him to rise, and therefore, it is certain, that he can rise. Every man has the power and every man should use it, to make all situation, all trials and temptations, conspire to the promotion of his virtue and happiness. In this, then, the only intelligible sense, man, so far from being the creature of circumstances, creates them, controls them, makes them, that is to say, to be all they are of evil or good to him as a moral being.

Life then is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. Even our temporary moods of mind, and much more, our permanent character, whether social or religious, may be appealed to in illustration of this truth.

I. Observe, in the first place, the effect of our most casual moods of mind.

It is the same creation upon which the eyes of the cheerful and the melancholy man are fixed; yet how