Of his reasons for presenting this promised volume, the Author has but few words to say. As its contents were written, so are they now published, because he takes them to be true, and good to be recognised as true by the consciousness of all men: and not having been produced as taskwork, but out of an earnest heart, they may possibly find a reader here and there, to whom they speak a fitting and faithful word. Should the book avail for this, it will sufficiently justify its appearance: should it not, it will speedily disappear, and at least no harm be done. No formal connexion will be found among the several Discourses in this volume. Prepared at different times, and in different moods of meditation, they are related to each other only by their common direction towards the great ends of responsible existence. The title, indeed, expresses the spirit, more than the matter, of the book;-which 'endeavours' to produce, rather than describe, the essential temper of the Christian life.' The Author would have introduced a larger number of Discourses having direct reference, in word as well as in spirit, to the divine Ministry of Christ, did he not hope to follow up the present volume by another devoted especially to this subject, and a third on the Christianity of Paul. In the mean while, he trusts that those who, in devout reading of books and men, look for that rather which is Christian, than which talks of Christianity, will find in this little volume no faint impression of the religion by which he, no less than they, desires to live and die. Liverpool, June 20, 1843. DISCOURSES. I. THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST. ROMANS VIII. 2. THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST. 'A MAN,' says the Apostle Paul, is the image and glory of God.' And truly, it is from our own human nature, from its deep experiences, and earnest affections, that we form our conceptions of Deity, and become qualified to interpret the solemn intimations which creation and scripture afford to us respecting him. Without the stirrings of divine qualities within us, without some consciousness of that which we ascribe to the Allperfect, the names and descriptions by which he is made known to us would be empty words, as idly sent to us as treatises of sound to the deaf, or some high discourse of reason' to the fool. All B us; that we believe without us, we first feel within and it is the one sufficient proof of the grandeur and awfulness of our nature, that we have faith in God; for no merely finite being can possibly believe the infinite. The universe of which each man conceives exists primarily in his own mind; there dwell the Angel he enthrones in the height, and the Demon he covers with the deep and vainly would he talk of shunning hell, who never felt its fires in his bosom; or he converse of heaven, whose soul was never pure and green as Paradise. In virtue of this resemblance between the human and the divine mind, Christ is the representative and revealer of both. God, by the very immensity of his nature, is a stationary being, perfect and therefore unchangeable: and so far as Jesus Christ was the same yesterday, today, and for ever; so far as one uniform mind and power possessed him, as one sacred purpose was impressed upon his life; so far is he the emblem of Deity; affording us, in speech, in feeling, in will, in act, an idea of God, which nothing borrowed from the material creation or mortal life can at all approach. His unity of soul, the unalterable spirit pervading all his altering moods of thought,-in short, his identity with himself, is altogether divine. In so far, on the other hand, as he underwent vicissi |