actually and commonly employed, and in others may be, to designate the influences by which the good and great have blessed their fellow-creatures; whether by divine inspiration, or only the inspiration, which is also divine, of genius, or of benevolence. The first civilizers of mankind are fabled to have been musicians. Their instrument was the human heart; their harmonies those of human affections. By these they built up savage men into the living temple of social order. Thus was it that wild beasts grew tame at the lute of Orpheus, and the ponderous rocks became instinct with voluntary movement, till there arose the walls and towers, and streets, and palaces, of mighty cities. The Jewish prophets sung their songs to heavy hearts by the waters of Babylon; mournful was the accompaniment of those harps which hung on the willows of the Euphrates; but the dejected spirit of Israel at length revived; there was hope in the captivity; and to that Jerusalem, which they vowed never to forget, the exiles at length returned, and built again the temple of the Lord. To the sick, the maimed, the blind, the perishing, in all their heavy sadness, how like a strain of music on the ear must have come the voice of Christ, with tenderness to touch, with sympathy to win confidence, with animation to enliven. 6 Be of good cheer; thy sins are Come unto me,

forgiven thee, rise up and walk.'

that are weary and heavy laden, and I will

give you rest.' And so came the words of his Apostles to the bewildered inquirer, feeling after God if haply he may find him;' to the burdened ceremonialist, working out a righteousness by the ritual law with heartless toil; to the desponding sinner, and the slave of the dread of death. Christian joys and hopes came to them tempered by the human sympathy of those ministers of reconciliation, and adapted themselves to each particular case, showing that, while the heart knew its own bitterness, the gospel, or its Author rather, knew it too, and had provided for it that precious gift of spiritual healing. And so works the gospel now, by him who in its spirit would console, on him who in his calamity needs that consolation. commences a change of feeling by sympathy in the feeling which is to be changed; and the unison thus established holds on till the strain becomes one of resignation, peace, and hope. And if we love mankind; and if we realize the accumulated and complicated mass of misery which there is in the world; and, on the other hand, the capability of that world to generate happiness, and of man to enjoy it; our hearts must often be heavy within us at that sad contrast. But then hope singeth her songs of futurity, which philosophy has learned of experience, and prophecy shadowed forth by inspiration, and Providence will accomplish in the latter days. We listen, and our hearts are lightened. We are

It

strengthened to go on sowing the good seed, of which future times shall reap the fruit. We may be prophesying in sackcloth, but we remain faithful witnesses for God, truth, and providence, and bear our testimony.

O happy are they, the dead, that died in the Lord, and who live in heaven; to whom the ways of God are no longer mysterious; who, in the light of his presence, see the end from the beginning;' unobstructed by the intervening clouds that darken our lower path. Could their songs of unmingled delight burst upon our mortal ears, they might jar our heavy hearts. In the depressions and bewilderments, the anxieties and despondings of our earthly life, that clear strain of joy would be uncongenial and incongruous. But we hear it not till death, and then increasing knowledge of the works and ways of God will soon win for it the full accordance of our immortal sympathies. Then we too shall sing 'the song of Moses and the Lamb, saying, great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? For thou only art holy; for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.' And from all that exists, shall we hear the glad response to our own hearts' eternal song of praise and thanksgiving.

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SERMON XIV.

ELEVATION OF SENTIMENT.

COLOSSIANS iii. 1.

"If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God."

WITH a mixture, which is not uncommon in the most celebrated writers, of the literal and the figurative, the apostle here enforces on Christians that they should cultivate an habitual elevation of sentiment as a consequence of that moral resurrection from the death of trespasses and sins, which had been wrought in them by knowledge of the fact of Christ's resurrection from the grave. The allusive or figurative, and the literal expression, are equally appropriate and intelligible, and there is a harmony in this intermingling and seeming confusion, which not unaptly applies to the subject. The material and the mental, the natural and the supernatural, do admirably mingle in the plans of God, and the influences of religion, and the manifold operations