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DISCOURSE I.

ON THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE.

JOB IV. 12-16.

Now A THING WAS SECRETLY BROUGHT TO ME, AND MINE EAR RECEIVED A LITTLE THEREOF. IN THOUGHTS FROM THE VISIONS OF THE NIGHT, WHEN DEEP SLEEP FALLETH ON MEN; FEAR CAME UPON ME, AND TREMBLING WHICH MADE ALL MY BONES TO SHAKE. THEN A SPIRIT PASSED BEFORE MY FACE, AND THE HAIR OF MY FLESH STOOD UP. IT STOOD STILL; BUT I COULD NOT DISCERN THE FORM THEREOF; AN IMAGE WAS BEFORE MINE EYES; THERE WAS SILENCE; AND I HEARD A VOICE.

HUMAN life to many, is like the vision of Eliphaz. Dim and shadowy vails hang round its awful revelations. Teachings there are to man, in solemn and silent hours, in thoughts from the visions of the night, in vague impressions and unshaped reveries; but, on this very account, they fail to be interpreted and understood. There is

much teaching; but there is also much unbelief.

There is a skepticism, indeed, about the entire moral significance of life, which I propose, in this discourse, to examine. It is a skepticism-sometimes taking the form of philosophy, sometimes of misanthropy and scorn, and

sometimes of heavy and hard-bound worldliness-which denies that life has any lofty, spiritual import; which resolves all into a series of toils and trifles and vanities, or of gross and palpable pursuits and acquisitions. It is a skepticism, not about creeds, not about Christianityit lies farther back-lies far deeper; it is a skepticism about the very meaning and intent of our whole existence. This skepticism I propose to meet; and for this purpose, I propose to see what argument can be extracted out of the very grounds on which it founds itself.

The pertinency of my text to my purpose, as I have already intimated, lies in this: there is much of deep import in this life, like that which Eliphaz saw in the visions of the night—not clear, not palpable, or at least not usually recognised and made familiar; but it cometh, as it were in the night, when deep sleep falleth on men; it cometh in the still and solitary hours; it cometh in the time of meditation or of sorrow, or of some awful and overshadowing crisis of life. It is secretly brought to the soul, and the ear receiveth a little thereof. It is as a spirit that passeth before us, and vanisheth into the nightshadow; or it standeth stlil, but we cannot discern the form thereof; there is an undefined image of truth; there is silence; and at length there is a voice.

It is of these unrecognised revelations of our present being that I would endeavour to give the interpretation; I would attempt to give them a voice.

But let us spread out a little in the first place, the sceptic's argument. It says, "what is there in human existence that accords with your lofty, Christian theory? You may talk about the grandeur of a human life, the sublime wants and aspirations of the human soul, the

solemn consciousness, amidst all life's cares and toils, of an immortal destiny-it is all a beautiful dream! Look over the world's history, and say, what intimations does it furnish of that majestic design-the world's salvation? Look at any company of toiling and plodding men in the country around you; and what are they thinking of, but acres and crops, of labor and the instruments of labor? Go into the noisy and crowded manufactory, and what is there, but machinery-animate or inanimate-the mind as truly girded and harnessed to the work, as the turning. lathe or the banded wheel? Gaze upon the thronged streets, or upon holiday crowds, mixing the oaths of the profane with the draughts of the intemperate; and where is the spiritual soul that you talk of? Or look at human life in a large view of it, and of what is it made up? Trouble and weariness"-you see that it is the cynic's complaint" trouble and weariness; the disappointment of inexperience or the dulness of familiarity; the frivolity of the gay or the unprofitable sadness of the melancholy; the heavy ennui of the idle or the plodding care of the busy; the suffering of disease or the wasted energy of health; frailty, its lot, and its doom, death; a world of things wasted, worn out, perishing in the use, tending to nothing, and accomplishing nothing; so complete the frivolity of life with many, that they actually think more of the fine apparel they shall wear, than of the inward spirit, which you say is to inherit the immortal ages!"

All this, alas! is too true; but it is not true to the extent nor in the exclusive sense, alledged. That but few meditate on their lot as they ought, is perfectly true; but there are impressions and convictions that come into the mind through other channels than those of meditation.

They come perhaps, like the shadowy vision of Eliphaz, in darkness and silence; vague, indistinct, mysterious awful; or they come in the form of certain, but neglected and forgotten truths. And they come, too, from those very scenes, in which the eye of the objector can see nothing but material grossness or thoughtless levity. This is what I shall especially attempt to show. I shall not undertake, in this discourse, to go farther; but I believe that I shall not perform a useless service to the true faith of our being, if I may be able, in some measure to unveil and bring to light, those secret intimations which are often smothered, indeed, but which from time to time, are flashing out from the cloud of human cares and pursuits.

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Man," it is said, "is bound up in materialism, imprisoned by the senses, limited to the gross and palpable; far-reaching thougths, soaring aspirations, are found in essays and speculations about him rather than in his own experience; they are in books rather than in brick-yards and ploughed fields and tumultuous marts."

What stupendous revelations are cloaked and almost hidden by familiarity! This very category of skepticism —what is it, but the blind admission of the sublimest truth? A man is recognized as standing amidst this palpable cloud of care and labor-enclosed, it is said, shut up in sense and matter-but still a man! A dungeon is this world, if you please so to represent it; but in this dungeon, is a prisoner-moaning, sorrowing, sighing to be free. A wilderness world it is, in the thought of many; but one is struggling through this wilderness, who imparts to it a loftier grandeur than its own; his articulate voice, his breathed prayer, or his shout amidst the dim solitudes-nay

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