virtuous toil, and holy trust, there is an intimate connection. The desponding are generally the indolent and useless; not the tried and struggling, but speculators at a distance from the scene of things, and far from destitute of comforts themselves. Barren of the most blessed of human sympathies, strangers to the light that best gladdens the heart of man, they are without the materials of a bright and hopeful faith. But he who consecrates himself sees at once how God may sanctify the world; he whose mind is rich in the memory of moral victories, will not easily believe the world a scene of moral defeats; nor was it ever known that one who, like Paul, laboured for the good of man, despaired of the benevolence of God.

Whoever then would have the peace of Christ, let him seek first the spirit of Christ. Let him not fret against the conditions which God assigns to his being, but reverently conform himself to them, and do and enjoy the good which they allow. Let him cast himself freely on the career to which the secret persuasion of duty points, without reservation of happiness or self; and in the exercise which its difficulties give to his understanding, its conflicts to his will, its humanities to his affections, he shall find that united action of his whole and best nature, that inward harmony, that moral order, which emancipates from the anxieties of

self, and unconsciously yields the divinest repose. The shadows of darkest affliction cannot blot out the inner radiance of such a mind; the most tedious years move lightly and with briefest step across its history; for it is conscious of its immortality, and hastening to its heaven. And there shall its peace be consummated at length; its griefs transmuted into delicious retrospects; its affections fresh and ready for a new and nobler career; and its praise confessing that this final 'peace of God' doth indeed surpass its understanding.'

VII.

RELIGION ON FALSE PRETENCES.

JOHN XV. 16.

YE HAVE NOT CHOSEN ME, BUT I HAVE CHOSEN YOU.

ONE of the greatest difficulties which Christ encountered in his ministry, was to shake off the adherents who came to him on false pretences; and to reduce the motives of his disciples to the simple feeling of faith or fealty, which was the only tie he could endure to recognise. Some followed him because they did eat of the loaves and were filled.' The Sadducee enjoyed his invective against the Pharisee, and the Pharisee was willing to use his refutation of the Sadducee. The kindhearted rich approved of the good he was doing among the poor; the severe delighted in his rebukes of the popular corruption; the patriotic looked to him as the ornament of his country, and

the marvel of his age: and only the fewest clung to him, because they were 'of his sheep,' and knew and loved his voice. His many-sided wisdom turned some phase of excellence or wonder towards every spectator: and each in succession was worthy, not of less, but of far more, admiration than it received. Yet he declined the attachment of those who did not penetrate to the central lines of all his truth and sanctity; refused to be judged by the outward appearance, rather than the inward principle, of his life; never suffered himself to be regarded as an object of others' choice, but himself selected for his own such as were taken captive in soul by the power of so divine a spirit. Those who would not vow allegiance to him for his own sake, and take up for him the cross which he would bear for them, might go their way, and sorrowing feel that they were none of his.

This difficulty, of bringing the heart to a pure simplicity of faith, was no accident peculiar to the personal ministry of our Lord. Proceeding from causes which human nature reproduces in every age, it still interrupts the genuine influence of his religion which multitudes hold and profess on false and insufficient grounds, adducing every variety of excuse for sanctioning its authority; but which few receive, as too great to be patronised, and too true to be proved. The ingenuity and