ence, the heart-beating, pulse-throbbing consciousness, that we are breathing creatures, endued with life. We see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, and are thrillingly susceptible to what affords us pleasure. We think, reason, anticipate, remember, and enjoy, and are sensible that this glowing and grateful consciousness of existence is the free gift of our heavenly Father.

And then comes the elevating, the ennobling knowledge that we are not like the beasts that perish; but that our Creator formed us in his own image, breathed into us a spirit of life, a living soul that shall never die! What a gift is the gift of immortality!

but

The pyramids shall crumble, day by day;
The everlasting hills shall fade away;

But we shall live, though they in ruins sever,
and for ever, and for ever!

For ever,

Our gratuitous enjoyments are not only good, many of them very delightful and even glorious. We pay nothing for fresh air, and the fresh water of the brook; nor for the blue vault of heaven, piled up, day by day, with snowy and golden clouds; yet these things are not only valuable, but inestimable. Ask the afflicted tenant of the sick chamber, or the wretched inmate of a gloomy jail, immured for years in his dreary

prison-house, ask him whether the fresh air is a blessing of little value: why his very heart yearns for a breath of that which we partake of so freelyand think of so lightly. Speak to the hectic patient, gasping under the dominion of fever; or the heat-oppressed traveller in the sultry desert; speak to him of the fresh water of the brook; nothing to him would be so delightful in the whole world as a draught of fresh water, to cool his parched throat and furry tongue. When the blind-they who were once blessed with sight— when they roll upwards their sightless balls, you may guess what they would give for a glance at that bright firmament above them, which you and I regard with little emotion.

Sunrise and sunset cost us nothing, all glowing and glorious as they are. Colours that are only to be seen in the heavens, and brightness beyond description, are profusely spread, and we have sight to behold them, pulses to throb, hearts to beat, and minds to contemplate with wonder, thankfulness, and joy. Rising and setting suns are common-place exhibitions to us, when, were there only one such exhibition to be witnessed in a century, multiplied millions, nay almost half the population of the globe, would behold it with rapture.

Have you looked on the silvery moon, gliding

through clouds of bewildering beauty, and gazed on the blue arch of heaven, spangled with glittering worlds, till you have adored their almighty Maker with increased admiration, love, and joy? If so, you must have felt that these things fill the mind with conceptions of immensity, power, goodness, and glory; and I need not tell you that we have them for nothing.

Regard the vegetable world! why, every individual tree, bush, shrub, and plant, is enough of itself, ay, more than enough, to impart a thrill of transport to him who feels that he has, in nature's God, a merciful Father and almighty Friend. Look, then, at the unbounded liberality of our great Creator's vegetable gifts! The spreading oak, the towering elm, the goodly ash, and the romantic fir, challenge our admiration; nor can we gaze without some increase of delight on the fair flower of the chestnut, the straight stem of the poplar, the silvery bark of the birch, or the drooping branches of the weeping willow. These things, and a thousand more such, we have for nothing.

The balmy breeze, the scent of the new-made hay, the odour of the flowering vetches, and the bean-field, are ours without payment. Who ever paid a farthing for the daffodil of the dale; the purple heath-flower of the mountain and the moor;

the warbling of happy birds; the murmuring of crystal brooks; the waving of butterflies' wings; the joyous hum, and, if I can say it without irreverence, the incessant halleluia of the insect world? Nature is liberal, nay prodigal, of her gifts; her spacious halls are flung open; her goodliest exhibitions are free, and her abundant banquets are "without money and without price."

We give money, and time, and labour, for many things of little value: but we never give either the one or the other for the cheerful sunbeam, and the grateful shower; the grey of the morning, the twilight of evening; the broad blaze of noonday; and the deep silence and darkness of the midnight hour! The poorest of the poor have these, and

they have them for nothing.

There are among the vast, the mighty, and terrible things of the earth, those that yield us a deep delight, and we have them without payment : the mountain towering to the skies, the fearful precipice, the headlong torrent, and the coming storm, are some of them. If you have stood in the war of elements, neither with apathy nor affected sensibility, but with natural and strong emotion, holy awe, high-wrought admiration, adoring reverence, and delightful dread; you know what I mean by deep delight. There is a deep delight, a dear, though fearful, solemnity in the

darkened clouds; the flash that illumines heaven, the crash that shakes the solid earth; the wild sweep of the whirlwind, and the voice of the angry ocean all these, clothed as they are with mysterious interest, cost us nothing.

The freedom of thought, which no earthly power can control, is worth more than a hundred Mexicos, and yet it costs us not the fraction of a farthing. Well may it be said,

"My mind to me a kingdom is !"

for there is no other kingdom like it under the sun; yet this, also, is a gift—the free gift of an almighty Benefactor. It costs us nothing.

The Holy Spirit, the means of grace, and the hope of glory, are freely given, and how much do they comprise! If you have ever truly enjoyed the day of rest; if it has been a sabbath to your soul; if, burdened and bowed down, you have knelt at a throne of grace, and risen from your knees with an enfranchised heart, your soul magnifying the Lord, and your spirit rejoicing in God your Saviour; if, perplexed and bewildered, you have opened, with trembling hands, the Book of truth, and the Spirit of the Eternal, like a sunbeam, has opened your eyes and enlightened your mind to see the wondrous things of God's holy law, so that the crooked has been made straight