Into the presence of these perfected saints are you come this day. From this view of their character and condition, learn

FIRST, That the glory of the world that now is, is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed. Duty and interest therefore both adjure us to prize more highly our heavenly citi. zenship, and to declare plainly by our lives that 'we seek a country.' The degree of satisfaction, with which we look upwards to those who, having passed over Jordan, are now safe in the land of promise, will always be in proportion as we love the road they travelled. The pageant of the world-every day declares it-passeth away. 'What then have we any more to do with its idols?' What communion hath our light with its darkness, our Christ with its Belial, Moloch or Mammon? Oh my brethren! take care not to live as if you thought it a fine thing to be on equally good terms with both worlds, but 'be ye followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.'

SECONDLY, Our subject teaches us to rejoice that the soul is not tied to an immortal body like that which now holds it prisoner. Oh! what if we were! Blessed be God, this rough husk shall not forever hold the gem. We would not encourage the morbid disgusts with which some persons brood over the evils of the present condition, and the morbid attraction which draws them only to the darker mysteries of life. This world is the theatre upon which the mighty work of Redemption is acted, and by that work life is glorified. We dare not complain at the hidden secrets of providence, knowing that sin explains the problem of sorrow, for with such an interpretation of its mysteries, coupled with an assurance of a future reckoning and restoration, we may well bear our lot with patient humility. While we have duties to perform, and while earthly mercies mingle with earthly ills, far from us be the proud and rebelious disgusts of those who abuse their Maker, by abusing the life in which he has been pleased to place us for a season.

Yet, with all these qualifications-reduce the evils endured till they are only half in number, and quadruple the blessings of the happiest earthly lot-a submissive but decided preference for the nobler and better life of heaven will predominate in a mind thoroughly Christian. Make the best of it, our present dwelling is but a tent, rent in many places, through which the wind, rain and cold will find their way. We have given the reason. This is a sinful life. Hence its troubles:

"Hence all thy groans and travail pains,

Hence, till thy God return,

In wisdom's ear thy blythest strains,
Oh nature, seem to mourn!"

To shake off the last fetter of sin-to become instead of a child, a man-to see and know, as he is seen and known-our only wonder is that the believer's desires are not more thoroughly fired with the 'far better' prospect of being 'with Christ,' and that his language is not oftener, 'I would not live alway! Thanks be to God, that the immortality promised to us, is not a perpetuation of the present condition.

THIRDLY, I exhort you to take large views of the communion of saints. It is good not only to look around us to our fellow-believers, but upwards to those who, having fought the good fight,' are now triumphing in the presence of Christ. They too are one with us, for they belong to the Head. Yea-(I love the charming words)

"All the children of our Lord

In heaven and earth are one.
One family, we dwell in him,

One church, above, beneath,
Tho' now divided by the stream,
The narrow stream of death.
One army of the living God

At his command we bow,

Part of the host has crossed the flood,
And part is crossing now."

Oh blessed host! which no man can number.

FINALLY, I turn to you my world-loving, impenitent hearers, and bid you learn the conditions upon which alone you can join that general assembly of enrolled citizens of heaven. You must be "just men, in the gospel sense of that pregnant word. You must be believers, subjects and followers of Christ. You must find that one road which led them safe to heaven; and every step of which is sprinkled with the blood of expiation.

There is a religion which you must begin by renouncing. It is the religion which alone can be called, the Catholic or Universal, for it alone has all the signs which have been falsely claimed for Popery. It alone has been at all times, in all places, and embraced by all! It has been found under a Pagan, a Mohammedan, and Christian dress. We have all of us known it from experience, and I fear that some of you, even now, know no other. Do you ask what I mean? I mean the religion of self-righteousness, self-wisdom and self-strength. Whether it hold up its head in the scornful indifference of rationalism, or creep upon the ground in superstitious fear, counting its prayers and scourging its flesh, it has equally in view self-salvation. Under all its disguises, with all the elastic principles by which it can so easily fit itself to all the forms of human corruption, it must be abandoned, for it is the enemy of God, and the rejecter of the grace that is in Christ Jesus.' The gates of the heavenly city are barred against it, just men made perfect abhor it, and you, my hearer, must find your way to the foot of the cross, and with penitent shame renounce it.

Which may God grant-and to the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost shall be all the glory. Amen.

SERMON XXII.

BY REV. WILLIAM T. HAMILTON, D.D.,

PASTOR OF THE GOVERNMENT STREET CHURCH, MOBILE, ALA.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LITTLE THINGS.
"Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth."-JAMES iii. 5.

THE theme of this discourse is the importance of little things. It is an observation neither the less true nor the less striking, because of its standing upon the sacred records of religion "behold! how great a matter a little fire kindleth !" Why, my hearers, it was but an echo of his thought was presented in that beautiful passage of a German writer who compares nature to a great poet, who produces his noblest efforts with the fewest means: a great thought and a few household words to clothe it in. If so, then how magnificently poetic must have been the mind of the old Hebrew lawgiver, Moses, who gave to the world that sentence unparalleled for sublime simplicity, "God said, let there be light; and light was!"

Ordinarily, when men undertake some great enterprise, they resort to means great and complicated, in proportion to the magnitude of the work contemplated. When, therefore, any result is accomplished through the agency of means apparently trivial and inadequate, it always exalts our ideas of the skill of the contriver ! But simplicity of means in the production of great results, is characteristic of the great system of nature; or, to speak more intelligibly and more correctly, is characteristic of the operations of God. The great Author of Nature ever operates by little causes. The entire universe teems with illustrations of this truth. Everywhere, mighty effects spring from small and seemingly inadequate causes. Of this truth, each one of the great laws of nature is demonstrative. Witness

1st. The single principle of gravitation-that mysterious influence which pervades every part of the known universe; which fixes the sun in his orbit, retains the stars in their places; which gives stability to the earth and motion to the sea; which renders the huge mountains stationary, and causes the rain to drop on the fields, makes the brooks and rivulets to course through the valleys, and hasten to mingle in the waters of the deep. It is this influence, everywhere diffused, that like a direct exertion of divine power,

keeps the planets each in its due position and regular order, so that their motions are performed without clashing or confusion. 'Tis this that gives stability to our buildings, and safety to our footsteps; 'tis this that causes the ship to float buoyant upon the surface of the ocean, and this that carries the anchor swiftly down to the bottom. 'Tis this that poises the eagle on steady wing high in the air, and this brings the arrow, however vigorously propelled heavenward, back to the ground. Search where you will, in heaven or on ear, on lofty mountain or the wide plain, in the deep pit or in the mighty ocean, and every where you find this one simple principle operating, and producing results the most surprising, and at times, . even seemingly contradictory.

But 2d. Other laws of nature, as they are termed, are nothing but the operation of causes equally simple and equally powerful, as the expansibility of vapors, gases, and all aeriform fluids.

To this simple property of expansibility it is owing that, like as when water is heated over fire, it passes off rapidly in the form of steam, rising in the atmosphere, and unless collected in appropriate vessels, is soon lost to our perceptions-so, also, from the vast extent of surface presented to the sun's rays, in the ocean, and the countless bays, lakes, gulfs, and rivers everywhere traversing the land, vapor is perpetually rising in the atmosphere, floating lightly far away to distant regions, settling around the summits of mountains, and feeding the springs of innumerable brooks that roll down the mountain's side, and gradually swell into large rivers, or, it hovers over the earth and descends in fertilizing showers to bless the labors of the husbandman, and supply food to every living thing.

To the operations of the same apparently trivial cause, we can trace some of the most remarkable phenomena of nature. Hence originate tempests, that blacken the heavens and deluge the earth with showers; and fierce winds that rouse the placid sea to wild commotion, and prostrate the tall trees of the forest, purifying the atmosphere and contributing to the health and happiness of mankind, whose proudest works they seem so often to menace with destruction. To the same cause, also, we trace the desolating earthquakes, and the terrific volcanic eruptions. In those vast laboratories that God has built deep within the bowels of the earth, where fierce fires glow, and exhaustless materials are laid up to supply them, vapors and gases of various kinds, and in immense quantities, are generated, and are perpetually accumulating now in one place and now in another. When this accumulation reaches a certain point, the expansive force overpowers the resistance offered by the superincumbent mass of earth and rock, and mountain and sea, that opposes its escape; the surface of the earth heaves and trembles; the sea itself rushes suddenly on the before dry land, or retires back towards the great deep, and islands appear and mountains rise or they sink, and give place to wide, yawning chasms. The pent-up vapors escape; the fiery fluid whence it had originated, is disgorged in streams of burning lava; and then gradually the tremblings of the earth abate; its heavings cease-and tranquility again rests on the scene of desolation, where lie the ruins of cities

and palaces, of gardens and vineyards, the work of busy man, wrought in years of toilsome labor by thousands combined; but destroyed in a moment by the operation of one little cause, under the direction of the great Architect of the universe, who seeth not as man seeth, and whose ways are above our ways, as the heavens are higher than the earth!

But 3d. In other instances, this peculiarity in the divine procedure is apparent.

The mariner who navigates the immense Pacific, and some parts of the Indian Ocean, finds great changes perpetually taking place. Where once lay the bright waters of a smooth sea, the white foam now tosses and breakers roar, for reefs and rocks have there risen up; and where, but lately, ran along ledges of sunken rocks, betrayed only by the dashing of the breakers, fair islets now stand covered with verdure, shaded by the tall palm-tree, and in some instances, affording secure habitation to birds and beasts, and even to man. Careful research has ascertained that these NEW CREATIONS, as they may be designated, are the work of countless myriads of little insects with which these seas abound, and which labor continually with incessant activity, raising up from the fathomless deep, or at least from the summits of deeply submerged mountain ranges, pile after pile of coral rock, a substance often as hard as marble, and a secretion from their own countless little bodies. Their work they carry forward with ceaseless accumulation till it reaches the SURFACE of the sea, when it stops. But, on this naked surface of rock, a coating of light soil speedily appears, vegetation commences, and soil still further accumulates, until where once rolled the ocean wave unbroken and smooth, islands separately or in groups, spread their rich beauties to the sun, and became the resting-place and the home of man. And all these amazing results, to accomplish the least of which, would baffle the ingenuity and defy the power of the whole human race combined, are brought about by the noiseless and secret, but untiring action of countless millions of little animalculæ, totally unconscious of the nature and the extent of their operations, and hardly holding a place in the scale of animated beings. So obvious is it that in the works of nature, God operates by little causes, accomplishing great results by apparently inadequate means.

But 4th. In the movements of Providence toward men, a similar method of operation is apparent.

How often is it found that an event seemingly fortuitous and trivial, leads to consequences of a momentous character. The first interview of Paris, the son of Priam, with the Grecian queen Helen, might have been merely accidental, but it awakened in his bosom a train of emotion, and it inspired him with purposes which led to the Trojan war, the theme of Homer's muse, and it elicited events which by their influence on that generation, and by the power which the poet's description of them has exerted upon the minds of thousands in every succeeding generation, from Alexander of Macedon to the present day, have contributed, to an incalculable extent, to mould the characters of the great leaders in human affairs, to determine the revolutions of empires, the progress or delay of civilization,