their peculiar qualities are distinguished from the brute that perisheth, being fitted to rise far above the sphere of animal existence here, and destined to rise still higher hereafter. Man is an incarnate spirituality, mind and matter, the material and the spiritual, in intimate relation with each other. His body is but the casket, the tabernacle, the temporary home and convenience of the spirit, in which consists by far the largest part of his significance. When the one returns to the earth as it was, the other returns to the God who gave it.

The history of our purely intellectual nature from the commencement to the terminus of our present career, the changes to which it is subject, and the great advancement which it makes, are much more remakarble than the physical phenomena of our being. We are apt to note only the more striking developments of intelligence; and yet the mind of the commonest man, if we consider the point of its departure and the limited period of its expansion, is a wonder by the amount of its progress. Where did it begin? Where was it, and what was it, but a few years since ? The little infant that you caress with so much fondness, knows almost nothing; it can neither appreciate your feelings, nor form the remotest idea of its own destiny as an intellectual being. What it is to be ?— whence it came and whither it is going?-these are questions that come not within the field of its thoughts. Judging from what it is in the outset, without reference to what we infer by the light of experience, we should never suppose the infant to be a miniature of the future man. The two as compared, present so many broad contrasts, and seem so vastly unlike, that but for experience we should not have the faintest conjecture that we were looking upon the same being, or that such a stupendous alteration upon the face of intelligence could be made in so short a time. The truth is that even a common man, having nothing to distinguish him from the crowd, and knowing about as much as his neighbors, and no more, is a rapidly developed giant, so much in advance of what he once was, as to have lost nearly every mark of intellectual identity. It is not possible for him to retrace his own history, and recount the millions of little operations by which his present condition is connected with his former one; yet nature and time have been steadily occupied in turning the infant into a man. Considering the brevity of the process, the utter destitution of knowledge with which it began, and then the actual progress made in the space of a few years, well may we be astonished at the spontaneous growth of the human intellect-that growth which the forces of nature necessitate almost without our effort. It indicates a species of immensity, compressed, and so to speak, laid up in the structure of man's soul.

We are, however, more likely to appreciate the contrast produced by the hand of time, when contemplating minds of remarkable qualities, highly gifted by nature, eminently favored by Providence, and intensely charged with the exciting stimulus of some commanding pursuit,-the three circumstances that ordinarily unite in the formation of a great man. Washington the infant, and Washington the hero and the statesman! Is it possible that we are looking upon the same person? We are. can follow the man of so much historic grandeur down to the crude and undeveloped elements that lie slumbering in the bosom of a child, without a solitary indication of their wonderful future. All the striking contrasts

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that we observe, have arisen from "the times" that have passed over the infant Washington. Observe a Newton in his cradle; and how unlike the same being, in a few short years expanded to the dimensions of the illustrious philosopher, and dazzling the world with the restless energies of thought! Who would have supposed that the infant, judged by the then existing appearances, could have ever handled orbs and marshalled suns, dashing off into the fields of immensity, defining and demonstrating the laws of the material universe? Have we the same being in the two cases? Exactly so. We can trace the philosopher back to his cradle, too ignorant to know even his mother, and too feeble to support his own frame. What capacities are there unseen, waiting for the successive changes of time and nature to unfold their glories! How broad the intellectual space between the infant Napoleon, sleeping in his mother's arms, and the same Napoleon charged with the terrible genius of war, and grasping the fate of empires in his hand! "The times" have passed over the former, and changed him into the latter.

Thus we see that time is the great interpreter of the human intellect, showing us what it is, for what God has made it, and to what it can attain. And if such vast changes may occur in so short time; if a being of apparently so little promise, may so soon acquire such mental magnitude; if there be that in man which admits of such a work in the limited period that lies between his first and last breath; ah! if these things be so, who then can compute his intellectual prospects for a boundless immortality? The facts, as we observe them on earth, are prophetic of an eminence, a vastness, a progress and acquisition of the future thinking being, that transcend all our efforts at measurement. The times as they pass over us, not only decipher the contents within us for present purposes; but equally point forward to what we shall be, when the hindrances of flesh and blood are laid aside in the grave. They reveal the glories of our intellectual constitution, demonstrating, upon the diagram of events, gifts that are fitted for an immortal range. We see the glimmerings of the future man, as we contemplate the history of the present one. see capacities given that, in a proper development, may fulfil those precious promises with which the Bible makes eternity luminous, and heaven so attractive.

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III. Not less striking or important is the stamp of time upon the history of our sensibilities. Man is neither all body, nor all intellect. What we call feeling, or sensibility, and that, too, under almost endless modifications, is as much a part of our nature as thinking. Who does not

know what it is to have a feeling--to be thrilled with emotion, or burn with the ardor of restless desire? Who is not competent to distinguish such a state from one that is purely intellectual? Every man has science enough for so simple a task. Feeling is an original element of our exist

ence.

In the outset of life, our sensibilities are almost wholly locked up; the emotions and desires, propensities and affections, dispositions and aversions, that are to be wrought into the structure of the future man, are hardly in the bud; and yet time, in the regulated order of nature, and by the appropriate objects, will bring all this subtle and sensitive mechanism into action, fashioning the man of feelings as well as of thoughts. The

susceptibility is the original gift of God; its laws come from the same source; but its development is the work of time. God made the mysterious harp, and gave to each string its peculiar note; but "the times," as they pass over us, are commissioned to awaken the music of our sentient

nature.

It is doubtless true also, that the native susceptibilities of all men are the same; so that no one ever had a feeling which, in its kind, was absolutely peculiar to himself, and could not without a miracle have occurred in any mind but his own. This must be true, or there could be no science upon the subject applicable to the race. The same desires, the same emotions, the same native affections, the same classes of sensibility, and the same general laws of development, are the common inheritance of the species. In this respect what one mind is, that all minds are. Each is a pattern of the whole race. If you say that you have been happy, then let me assure you, that your neighbors also have been happy; and from experience know what the word means as well as you do. If you have been sorrowful, then remember that others are not strangers to the idea of sorrow. If strong desires have moved you to action, others have felt the same impulse. If hope has built her bower on your path, think not that you are not the only beings who have enjoyed the pleasures of hope. If you have been enraptured with the beauties of nature, so, too, have others relished the magic of the same power. The truth is, every essential and original feeling, which it is possible for any one to have, is the property of the race. What God has given to one, that he has given to all; and hence we are able to comprehend and verify the experience of others in the facts of our own.

Yet, though not in contradiction of the above statement, how wide a diversity in development and combination, marks the history of human feeling! How far is it from an even monotone! How variously the same heart has been exercised during the space of seventy years! Sometimes it has been swollen with bitter anguish, and at others leaping with joy; sometimes buoyant with hope, and at others jaded with disappointment; sometimes glowing with love, and perhaps at others fired with rage. Man would be a curious spectacle to himself, if he could daguerreotype upon his intelligence a perfect image of his own feelings, as they lie scattered here and there along the path of life-an image that should give all the hues and shadings of the total reality, blending each item with the whole, and yet leaving each so distinct as to be seen by itself. He would be astonished at the sight; and could hardly think himself the identical person who had passed through so many phases and multitudinous combinations of feeling, indeed that so many tunes could have been played in one heart. If we were to philosophize upon the image, and connect all its parts in the order of time and the relation of cause, and then trace back the fleeting succession to infancy, he would have a perfect solution of those settled and fixed conditions of the sensibility, by which he is now marked. He would see how one thing has arisen from another; and how the countless exercises of his sensitive nature, linked in a long series of related events, have finally ended in his present style of feeling. There is a very curious history spread along the path of one's life, and lying between the susceptibility given and the modification acquired. All we want, is eyes to see it; and could we perfectly see it,

we should know much more of ourselves, and better understand the reasons why we are what we are.

It is worthy of note, that the lapse of time produces natural changes of feeling; and hence childhood, youth, manhood, and age, are characterized, each by its pcculiar tendency. No one of these periods can assume the exact type of the other. Nor should we forget that our sensibilities, lying, as they do, in the rear of the intellect, come forth in connection with the objects upon which the latter is fixed; and that they must of course vary with the character of those objects. Add the law of habit in his power to solidify feeling, to transform an occasional exercise into a permanent condition, and cut deeper and wider channels through the heart; and we have at least some clue to the philosophical geology of our sensibilities. We see how it is that men, with the same original stratum of feeling, the same elements and laws of sensibility, differ so widely in the secondary formations of the heart. Time, with its natural change, with its objects ever acting through the intellect, and its law of habit indelibly imprinted on the creature, is at the bottom of the whole process.

IV. The most important change connected with time, is the one that refers to our moral and spiritual state. If the body, the intellect, and sensibility bear testimony to the work of time, the same is impressively true in respect to moral character. As the times pass over us with whatever influences they bring, they make a deposit in every man's soul. No one has a given quantity of goodness or viciousness, which he retains permanently without any modification; he will soon have more or less of the same article. There is no absolute and unchanging status of human character, that defies the impression of all agency. Though in its kind a fixture, too much so to be radically changed in every twenty-four hours, it is nevertheless a growth, a steady and constantly accumulating acquisition, adding new elements of power, and new grades of progress. This is alike true of the good and the bad.

Providence places before your eye a man of very depraved and abandoned character. You are pained at the spectacle of his grossness and wickedness, and feel astonished that such baseness can find a home in any human heart. Could he twenty years ago have foreseen what he now is, he perhaps would have been as much astonished as you are. His present condition is not the work of a moment; he has gone down by degrees under the repeated applications of evil influence, each step preparing him to take a lower one, and all at last collecting themselves in the appalling result that now meets your eye. Thus the tender child and the disgusting monster are linked by the intermediate agencies, which convert the one into the other. By no possibility can the transition be made in a moment. Depravity in any and every form, under every type of expression and mode of indulgence, observes the law of growth; and hence it must be radically uprooted, and give place to a new species of moral life, or its ill-fated victim will be steadily travelling the downward road. Sin does not contain its own cure. He that committeth sin, is the servant of sin; and the longer he continues, the more absolutely fixed is his position. To disregard moral restraints, to set the laws of God at defiance, and sometimes the laws of men, becomes increasingly the habit of his life. No year passes over his head, and hardly any day, without adding to the

dire catalogue of causes, that are slowly but certainly working out his ruin. These causes are distributed in such small quantities, and then repeat their action so frequently, that they often prove fatal without being seen. They kill by the continued succession of little blows. No one seems to endanger life; yet each adds to the destructive power of every other, and all when put together, do the work. What multitudes of our race have lived to illustrate this gradual and progressive depravation of character, going down to deep darkness here, and sinking into endless night hereafter! He who is travelling this road, has an evil augury upon the face of his being, casting its portentous shadows upon the bosom of eternity. The process must be changed, or the times as they pass over him, will ere long place him beyond the reach of hope.

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We have the same law in respect to the growth of virtue. solid, and matured state of moral excellence is the product of time. He, for example, who spent the year just closed in the service of God, seeking to conform his life and heart to the will of Heaven, has entered upon this year very differently furnished from what he would have been, had his course been the exact opposite. He retains for future use the good effects of past virtue. Let him spend the present year in the same way; and he will have made some advancement ere it closes. Let him spend all his remaining years in obedience to the will of God; and his last hours will give noble evidence to the growth of the Christian virtues in his heart. Every act of prayer, every exercise of faith, every instance of self-denial, every deed of love, all unite to swell the current of moral power, on which a good man is borne into heaven. The times as they pass over him, are ripening him for the skies. While depravity sinks, virtue rises with the progress of her years. She goes up, little by little, steadily, patiently, happy in the duties of each day, commencing and closing each year with God, till her earthly discipline is lost in the perfections and felicities of the endless life. Not so much by that which is striking and occasional, as by that which is constant and regular, does she fit herself to put on the robes of immortality. These little successions, like the particles of dust in composing the great globe, ultimately make the aggregate in the structure of a holy character. They require time for the display of their power; yet with the lapse of time they are steadily making their indelible mark. No sublimer spectacle can be found on earth, than that of a truly good man undergoing the culture of a gracious regimen, and then retiring to reap the rewards of a well spent life. Angels look with admiration upon the scene, and God with approval. The contrast with its moral opposite, is infinite.

V. Let me say finally, that our social and relative condition is subject to the constant mutations of time. God has wisely connected us together, interlacing all parts of our personal existence with social ties. Society, and not solitude, is the natural and appropriate state of man. And yet, how ever varying are the social aspects of one's life! Look into the family, and note the changes of time. To-day it is a family you see all its members present-parents and children, brothers and sisters, living under the same roof, and fed at the same board. In a few years, it will be a family no longer; death will place half of its members, perhaps more, in the grave; the remainder, by providence, will be scattered to