us, though there be no pestilence. Disease still breathes and blasts, though there be no epidemic. Make sure, then, where your anchor is; make sure what your hope is. Oh, spend not life in the terrible insanity of collecting pebbles, and losing immortal, precious souls. There is instant forgiveness. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, that whosoever looked upon that serpent might have bodily health; so Christ has been lifted up; and they that look to him shall that instant have joy, and happiness, and peace. Let each heart breathe to God these thoughts, and ask through Christ this blessing, and then we shall learn, not by its loss, but by its gain, how little it would have profited us, if we had gained the whole world, and lost our own souls. Amen.

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?

A QUESTION FOR THE NEW YEAR.

"For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."-JAMES iv. 14.

MEN are so engrossed with the cares, the fears and hopes of this world, that they too rarely pause to weigh what life is, in its uncertainty, its value, and its issues, or to estimate its past and its present in their eternal aspects. We are prone to conclude, however unjust the conclusion may be, that because yesterday has been, to-morrow must be also; and that the new year will be very much the repetition of the old: we do not like to contemplate the arrival of a period when our journey must end and time be ended, and all life's cares, and sorrows, and joys, be closed for ever; when there shall be to us the commencement of a life of unspeakable retribution, made up either of endless bliss or of inexhaustible misery. It is therefore most important that at some periods in the round of the years, on such a day, for instance, as the opening of a new year, when the past has descended into its grave, and the present has leaped out clad in resurrection beauty, and strong as a giant to run its race: it is very desirable, it is very profitable, to pause for a little on

its threshold, and weigh what the years have been, and think what probably they may be. Who knows what will be in 1855?-what changes of relationship, of outward circumstances, of health, of experience, of hope, of joy, and of sorrow, no living soul can tell. It will open some graves that we thought never would be opened so soon, it will blast some blossoms that we thought amaranthine; and, on the other hand, it will bring blessings that we never expected, and ripen joys we never anticipated. Who can tell what the coming months will be! The past is not ours, for it is gone; the future is not ours, for it is not yet come; the present is ours: "Remember, therefore, now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the evil days come when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.”

"What is life?" Scripture has exhausted all the similitudes of human experience in order to express its fleetness. It is compared in one place to "a shadow that continueth not;" it is compared in another to "the grass that groweth up;" and the monarchs and nobles and princes of humanity are only likened to the flowerets of the grass, that rise above the surrounding level, shine a little more beautiful, but spring from the same root; and instead of being safer, are first bitten by the frosts, or swept away by the hurricane, or made to fall before the scythe of the mower. It is likened at other times to "a tale that is told;" a beautiful story we listen to with profound interest, but when told leaves scarcely an echo in our memory behind it. Constantly Scripture speaks of the shortness of life; and it evidently describes a life that was

not so short originally. Man was made and meant to live for ever; death was not a creation of God, it is a subsequent intrusion on life, resulting from the introduction of sin: and death is most unnatural-what we all feel it to be, the most unnatural of all things; that man does not speak truly who speaks of it lightly, or who speaks of it even joyously. He can rejoice at what it leads to; he can wade through the deep and swelling flood because of the flowery and beautiful banks that are beyond it; but death itself no man can like, no man can desire. It is horrible, it is monstrous, that this exquisite mechanism, so fearfully, so beautifully made — each peg, and nerve, and muscle, and string, so exquisitely adjusted— as if God had never been employed in anything else but in constructing this beautiful house, should end in corruption; God never intended that the fairest specimens of it should, like Sarah, when she died, be buried out of sight, the dearest friend being unable to gaze upon it any longer. Depend upon it this was not God's doing: it is the result of sin. By man came sin, and death is the wages of sin; and never shall we be right again till, reconstituted in our resurrection beauty, beyond the reach of death, disease, grey hairs, infirmity, tears, decay; ever beautiful, ever young, ever holy, and ever happy. It rests with us now to decide whether we shall take our portion with those that are around the Throne, and see death no more; or with those that have sunk themselves suicides, self-lost, and suffer for ever and for ever.

In answer then to the question, "What is life?" I would ask, first of all, what life has been? What has

it been to you? Some can look back upon twenty, some thirty, some forty, some sixty, some seventy, and some upon eighty years. What has that time been to you? Some days in the past you could wish to be obliterated from the calenders of memory, some scenes and enjoyments in the past you could wish to rise again from the dead, and continue for ever and for ever; some days were so sweet that you are sorry they ever passed away, and some days so sad that you grieve that they ever occurred. Those days cannot be recalled; it is one of the most solemn thoughts that we cannot cancel an hour, we cannot recall a day, but it remains one of the most precious truths, that on the 1st of January, the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. This is comfort.

What is the length of life? James says, "What is your life?" I would unfold that by asking first, What is the length of life? An old patriarch expressed his opinion upon this when he said, "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years." That was then thought very few. "Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage." Does not this confirm the notion that threescore and ten years is not the proper limit of man's life; but that threescore and ten years was a reduced period of existence in a state of extreme suffering in the desert? For not only did Moses, the author of Psalm xc., live to 120 years, but Jacob, a patriarch, says that his life was 130 years, and he calls these few, and he says they were fewer than the days of the years of his fathers.