mean occupations, its degrading necessities, its low and little state of being, to be compatible with the means of grace and the hope of glory. If it grieves you, that "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed," engages, of necessity, the greater part of the time of the greater part of the world, be thankful that such necessity is not laid upon you, and strive to lighten their burden on whom it is laid. If, on the other hand, you are irritated by those, who from choice, and from inability to appreciate better things, involve themselves in petty cares and petty pleasures, do not forget the duty of Christian charity, and still be thankful, that both mentally and morally, God has shewn you "a more excellent way." But the strongest proof that the present constitution of life is peculiarly adapted for the growth of the Christian character, is to be found in the pages of inspiration. The records of the Jewish, and of the early Christian church, abound with miracles, with strange interpositions of providence, with stupendous

revelations of Deity; yet, however highly we see man honoured, however endowed with super-human powers, however closely connected with God himself, the habitual tenor of his existence remains unaltered. He is not disrobed of the flesh, nor of the wants and weaknesses to which flesh is heir; in his habits and character he continues man. If in one place we find Abraham pleading with God for the guilty cities, as a man pleadeth with his friend, we find him elsewhere fetching a kid from the flock, and hasting to dress it for his guests; we find him leading out his servants to war, or arranging his household in peace. Daniel, the "man greatly beloved," and highly honoured of God, yet despatches "the king's business" and to descend lower in the style of worldly occupation, St. Paul, after having been caught up into the third heaven, returns to earth, not only to work signs and wonders, not only to hazard his life for the gospel of Christ, but to minister with his own hands to his necessities. Yes, with those very

hands which when laid upon the Ephesian converts, "the Holy Ghost came upon them, and they spake with tongues and prophesied," he wrought at Corinth as a tentmaker! Christ, as I have said elsewhere, did not claim exemption from the common condition of human nature; nay, a double 'portion of its painful and repulsive circumstances were assigned him; and if it was thus during his wondrous ministry, how passed his life during the thirty years preceding, when all except a favoured few believed him to be the carpenter's son, whose father and mother they knew? We find too, that it was when his servants were labouring in their appointed callings that God generally appeared to them, or communicated his designs. Moses was keeping his flock when the voice of the Lord came to him out of the burning bush; so were the shepherds when they heard those "glad tidings of great joy," that a Saviour was born in Bethlehem; and Gideon "threshed wheat by the wine-press, when the angel appeared

and said unto him, "the Lord is with thee."* For one prophet who was a lonely dweller in the wild, we read of many who lived in the world, maintaining fellowship with their brother men ; and if the Spirit of God directed John the Baptist to sojourn in the wilderness, the same Spirit enquired of Elijah when hiding in Mount Horeb, "What doest thou here?" You will not surely say that the individuals I have enumerated possessed no spirituality of mind; that their desires of heaven were few, their conception of its glories faint; yet should you object to the Old Testament saints, as confessedly living under an inferior dispensation, you cannot gainsay the example of St. Paul, and of the Saviour. The one esteemed it his "meat and drink to do the will of his Father," and the

* "I doubt not but your hands are full of the employments of your particular calling, and it ought to be so in obedience to the will of God appointing you to it, and that the tempter may find you busy; but it is a good question you should be often putting to yourselves, Where is the mind now? They only are too busy who lose God in their business."-LETTER OF PHILLIP HENRY TO TWO SERVANTS.

other was "in a strait, having a desire to depart and be with Christ:" yet they mingled in

"The common life our nature breeds."

After all, it is the soul that magnifies the Christian life; the soul that sheds its own. truth and beauty over worldly avocations, the necessities of nature, and the require-, ments of society; that in its desires and aspirations can reach the tranquil and the boundless heaven, though the multitude of its thoughts may concern and be connected. with the earth. Cannot the Christian do that by faith, which the poet effects by imagination? What dungeon ever chilled his inspiration? What chains ever fettered his genius? What close and continual contact with labour, and pain, and poverty, and privation, ever pinioned the eagle of Parnassus? None. Did the burning sun of toil, or trial, ever dry up the fountain. of song existent in the gushing depths of a poet's soul? Never. And shall the spirit of grace and glory, breathed into the Christian's heart by God himself, be less indepen