I know

and sin; that in cellars beneath cellars, and in stories above stories, are crowded together poverty and wretchedness and filth and vileness. Oh! desolate and dreary abodes; where, through the long bright day, only want and toil and sorrow knock at all your gates, only blows of passion and shrieks of children, and cursings of drunkenness and oaths of the profane, measure out the heavy hours!—are there no hearts to bleed for you? Are there no energies of love to interpose for you? Shall the stream of glad and prosperous life flow so near you, and never come to cleanse out your impurities and heal your miseries? Nay, in that stream of glad and joyous life, I know that there are ingredients of evil; the very ingredients indeed that prevent a consummation so blessed. that amidst gay equipages, selfishness is borne; and that amidst luxurious entertainments pride is nursed and sensuality gorged; and that through fair and fair-seeming assemblies, envy steals, and hatred and revenge spread their wiles; and that many a bad passion casts its shade over the brightest atmosphere of social life. All this I know. I do not refuse to see the evil that is in life. But tell me not that all is evil. I still see God in the world. I see good amidst the evil. I see the hand of mercy often guiding the chariot of wealth to the abodes of poverty and sorrow. I see truth and simplicity amidst many wiles and sophistries. There is a habit of berating fashionable life, which is often founded more in ignorance than ill-will. Those who know better, know that there is good every where. I see good hearts beneath gay robes; ay, and beneath tattered robes, too. I see love clasping the hand of love, amidst all the envyings and distortions of showy competition; and I see fidelity, piety, sympathy, holding the long night-watch, by the bed-side of a suffer

ing neighbour, amidst all surrounding poverty and misery. God bless the kindly office, the pitying thought, the loving heart, wherever it is!-and it is every where !

Why, my Brethren, do I insist upon this? Why do I endeavour to spread life before you in a new light; in a light not recognised by most of our religious systems? I will endeavour, in few words, to tell you.

I am made to be affected, in many respects, by the consciousness of what is passing around me, but especially in my happiness and my improvement. I am more than an inhabitant of the world; I am a sympathizing member of the great human community. Its condition comes as a blessing, or weighs as a burthen, upon my single thought. It is a discouragement or an excitement, to all that is good and happy within me. If I dwell in this world as in a prison; if the higher faith, the religion of my being, compels me to regard it in this light; if all its employments are prison employments, mere penal tasks or drudgeries to keep its tenants out of mischief; if all its ingenious handicrafts are but prison arts and contrivances to while away the time; if all its relations are prison relations, relations of dislike or selfishness, or of compact and cunning in evil; if the world is such a place, it must be a gloomy and unholy place, a dark abode, a wilderness world: yes, though its walls were built of massive gold and its dome were spread with sapphire and studded with diamond-stars, I must look upon it with sadness; I must look upon its inhabitants with coldness, distrust and disdain. It is a picture which I have drawn; but it is mainly a picture of the world as viewed by the prevailing religion of our time. Nay, more; from this prison, it deems that thousands are daily carried to execution-plunged into a lake of fire

-there to burn forever. And if the belief of its votaries actually came up to its creed, gayety and joyousness in such a world, would be more misplaced and shocking a thousand times, than they would be in the gloomiest penitentiary that ever was builded. Is this fair and bright world-is God's world, such a place? If it is, I am sure that it was not made for any rational and reflective happiness; but mountain to mountain, and continent to continent, and age to age, should echo nothing but sighs and groans.

But if this world, instead of being a prison, is a school; if all its appointed tasks are teachings; if all its ordained employments are fit means for improvement, and all its proper amusements are the good recreations of virtuous toil and endeavour; if, however perverse and sinful men are, there is an element of good in all their lawful pursuits, and a diviner breathing in all their lawful affections; if the ground whereon they tread is holy ground; if there is a natural religion of life, answering, with however many a broken tone, to the religion of nature; if there is a beauty and glory of humanity, answering, with however many a mingled shade, to the loveliness of soft landscapes and embosoming hills and the overhanging glory of the deep, blue heavens; then all is changed. And it is changed not more for happiness than it is for virtue.

For then do men find that they may be virtuous, improving, religious, in their employments; that this is precisely what their employments were made for. Then will they find that all their social relations— friendship, love, family ties-were made to be holy. Then will they find that they may be religious, not by a kind of protest and resistance against their several vocations, but by conformity to their true spirit; that

their vocations do not exclude religion, but demand it for their own perfection; that they may be religious labourers, whether in field or factory; religious physicians and lawyers; religious sculptors, painters and musicians; that they may be religious in all the toils and amusements of life; that their life may be a religion; the broad earth, its altar; its incense, the very breath of life; and its fires kindled, ever kindled by the brightness of heaven.

26*

XX.

THE VOICES OF THE DEAD.

AND BY IT, HE BEING DEAD, YET SPEAKETH.-Hebrews xi. +

THIS is a record of virtue that existed six thousand years ago; but which yet liveth in its memory, and speaketh in its example. "Abel, it is written, offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness, that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and by it, he being dead, yet speaketh." How enduring is the memorial of goodness! It is but a sentence, which is read in a moment; it is but a leaf from the scroll of time; and yet, it is borne on the breath of ages; it takes the attributes of universality and eternity; it becomes a heritage, from family to family, among all the dwellings of the world.

But it is not Abel alone, the accepted worshipper and martyred brother, that thus speaks to us. The world is filled with the voices of the dead. They speak not from the public records of the great world only, but from the private history of our own experience. They speak to us in a thousand remembrances, in a thousand incidents, events, associations. They speak to us, not only from their silent graves, but from the throng of life. Though they are invisible, yet life is filled with their presence. They are with us, by the silent fireside and in the secluded chamber: they are with us in the paths of society, and in the crowded