and lay it desolate? or abrogate that eternal law by which sin and sorrow, righteousness and peace are bound together? Will they lift up their voice and say, wickedness shall no more beget woe, nor vice engender pain, nor indulgence end in weariness, nor the brood of sin fatten upon the bowels of human happiness, and leave, wherever their snakish teeth do touch, the venom and sting of remorse? And when that last most awful hour shall come, when we stand upon the brink of two worlds, and feel the earth sliding from beneath our feet, and nothing to hold on by, that we should not fall into the unfathomed abyss; and when a film shall come over our eyes, shutting out from the soul for ever, friends, and favourites, and visible things-what are we, what have we if we have not a treasure in heaven, and an establishment there? And when the deliquum of death is passed, and we find ourselves in the other world under the eye of Him that is holy and pure, where shall we hide ourselves, if we have no protection and righteousness of Christ?

It is sure as death and destiny, that if you awake not from this infatuation of custom and pleasure at the calls of God your Saviour, the habitations of dismal cruelty, endless days and nights of sorrow, shall be your doom. Could I lift the curtain which shrouds eternity from the eye of time, and disclose the lazar-house of eternal death, what sleeper of you would not start at the chaos of commingled grief? Dives, surrounded with his eastern pomp and luxury, little dreamt that he was to awaken in torment, and crave a drop of water to cool his tongue. What business has any forgetter of God with any better fare? There is no purgatory to purge away the spiritual dross your spirits are encrusted with, and make you clean for heaven. It is not true, that after a season of endurance, the prince of the bottomless pit will hand you at length into heaven. Without holiness no man can see God: without Christ, no man can attain to holiness. Yet, conscious that you are unholy-deriving no mediation from Christ-deceiving yourselves with no respite nor alleviation of punishment-here you are, listless, lethargic, and immovable!

In this

Men and brethren! is this always to continue, or is it to have an end? If you are resolved to brave it out, then make ready, for a proof to make nature shudder and quake to her inmost recesses. Can ye stand and brave' Omnipotence to do his utmost? world, where power is muffled with mercy, there are a thousand inflictions which ye could not brave. Could ye stand all that was laid upon patient Job?-possessions, sons, daughters, health reaved away; then hope benighted, and the light of heaven removed, and fellowship of friends, and almighty displays of power and wraths? The hardy band of Roman soldiers-and who so stout-hearted as Romans?-swooned every man of them at the sight of one of God's visions. What could ye, were God's judgment-seat displayed, his justice no longer restrained, and his retribution no longer delayed;

every fleet minister of execution ready harnessed at his post, and hell opening wide its mouth, insatiable as the grave, and grimmer than the visage of death. Arraigned, self-condemned, singled out of every crime, solitary, unbefriended, one among thousands; life's pleasures at an end, the world's vision faded, God's anger revealed, sentence passed, judgment proceeding, and the pit opening its mouth on you as the earth on Korah's company, to receive you quick. Can you stand this ?—can you think to brave it? Then, verily, ye are mad, or callous as the nether millstone.

Do you disbelieve it then?-do you think God will not be so bad as his word? When did he fail? Did he fail at Eden, when the world fell? Did he fail at the deluge, when the world was cleansed of all animation, save a handful? Did he fail upon the cities of the plain, though remonstrated with by his friend, the father of the faithful? Failed he in the ten plagues of Egypt, or against the seven nations of Canaan; or, when he armed against his proper people, did ever his threatened judgments fail? Did he draw off when his own Son was suffering, and remove the cup from his innocent lips? And think ye he will fail, brethren, of that future destiny from which to retrieve us, he hath undertaken all his wondrous works unto the children of men! Why, if it were but an idle threat, would he not have spared his only-begotten Son, and not delivered him up to death? That sacred blood, as it is the security of heaven to those who trust in it, is the very seal of hell to those who despise it.

Disbelieve, you cannot-brave it out, you dare not: then must you hope, at some more convenient season, to reform. So hoped the five virgins, who slumbered and slept without oil in their lamps; and you know how they fared. Neither have you forgotten how the merchant, and the farmer, and the sons of pleasure, who refused the invitation to the marriage-feast of the king's son, were consumed with fire from heaven. What is your life, that you should trust in it? is it not even a vapour that speedily passeth away? What security have you that Heaven will warn you beforehand, or that Heaven will help you to repentance whenever you please? Will the resolution of your mind gather strength as your other faculties of body and mind decay?—will sin grow weaker by being awhile longer indulged in?—or God grow more friendly by being awhile longer spurned?-or the gospel more persuasive by being awhile longer set at nought? I rede you, beware of the thief of time, Procrastination! This day is as convenient as to-morrow; this day is yours, to-morrow is not; this day is a day of mercy, to-morrow may be a day of doom.

We must remember that this was addressed to the numberless magnates who crowded to hear him. Their rank, their wealth, their beauty, their splendour, were

of no avail, when the plague-spot of sin was on them. He pleaded with them as with low-born, unlettered men; he reasoned with them as with poverty-stricken, ignorant mortals: he denounced their iniquities, their vanities, their fashionalities, with boldness and courage; he was a Nathan among the aristocracy; he forced home the truth; he pierced through heaped honours and accumulated distinctions to the soul; he exclaimed, in the burning utterances of his sacred oratory, “Thou art the man!" He was "one who 'strove,' says Carlyle, 'to be a Christian priest in an age most alien to the character-one who reminded the subtle Coleridge of Luther and Paul-one who stormed on the solitary whirlwind of his eloquence into the very heart of London popularity, and hovered there, unequalled and unapproached, till his own wild breath turned the current-one whose errors were all of the blood, and none of the spirit-the herculean, misguided, but magnificent man-Edward Irving."

W. L. BOWLES.

"No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection; when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved are softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness-who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song; there is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! the grave!-it buries every error, covers every defect, extinguishes every resentment. From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollection!" WASHINGTON IRVING.

A PENSIVE youth has just entered Trinity; the college-book bears his signature and the date 17-. He seems to think of home and home's blessedness; there is strangeness here; fine associations truly crowd around, but still he feels lonely. No wonder: we all feel solitary when first leaving that nest of sweetnesses.

In a strange city, the city of the beautiful-once see Oxford, and you love it for ever!-our poet strolls out to look on cloister, and chapel, and ivied wall: novelty may for a time dispel his thoughts of home; Magdalen's tower there rising beside the bridge and limpid. stream-some centuries back, and from its top came

the low, solemn voice of prayer, as the fresh May dawned. He rambles in the Merton gardens, and ever and anon catches a glimpse of the ancient pile; how his eye kindles whilst gazing on the magnificence of Christ Church, the grandeur of All-Soul's oratory, and the enchanting opening from the Botanic gate!—and St. John's, and Alban's, and Oriel, and Wadham would claim his praise; and what rich-toned memories of Bernard Gilpin, and Hooker, and Chillingworth, and Evelyn, and Sir Walter Raleigh, and a whole phalanx of bright spirits!

He wanders, one sweet April day, along the banks of Isis; the leaves, with their sunny green, are just sprinkling the tree-tops with beauty; the air is calm and gentle, and there is a dainty loneliness on his spirit; he sends forward his thoughts to that hallowed hour when, in the full outpouring of his love, he will stand at God's altar; and then come dreams of the secluded village and its white cottages adorned with vine and scarlet fuchsia-dreams of its old ancestral hall, and its hoary avenue of elms, and its dark plantation, stretching over many a hill-dreams of its low but beautiful parsonage, with its rose-clustered walls, and its inward peace, and quietude, and blessedness-dreams of its simple church, rearing its ancient tower against the summer twilight.

And thus strolling onwards, he pleased himself, and oftentimes did he feel these blessed scenes in harmony with the fair sweetness of the surrounding existence. Dreaming, he passed by the pink-lipped daisy, and forgot the cowslip; there was the scent of fresh, green grass, and the meadows looked gay with the golden