we cannot but anxiously attend to the conditional means, which it points out as now in our power, of securing them for ever to ourselves in happiness? This is the question ;-shall we take as we find them, the business and pleasures of this world, and be contented with the portion? or shall we be convinced, that these very pleasures, far from being a due portion for man, constitute only his most difficult probation? The conflict is between sense, on the one hand, an advocate for the present; and reason, faith, hope, on the other, that strengthen our natural aspirations after a sphere beyond, and indefinitely higher.

This love of the world, thus inwoven in our natures, and prepossessing our souls from infancy, can prevent, as we have seen, the very perception of the great revealed truth. What are its other points of superiority? whence derived? what its ingenious pleas to loosen the hold which reason, faith, hope, may have gained over conviction ?

A call to contrary reflection is generally very impotent against confirmed habits of thinking

and acting; and even the most powerful minds that have testified against the love of this world, have nothing like a sure guard against the same, in that sustained reflection, which the necessity of conceiving the thing distinctly, that they may give it due expression, implies. But, as one mean of our right conviction and change, let us go over points of our error and infatuation; and more especially is it important to ascertain the weak points of man, in these weighty matters, that we may know where any possible corrective education can be applied, and whether any best degrees of it in human attainment may be trusted to, as of much avail in his spiritual preparation.

It is not a point of bad education, that youth is taught the importance, nay the necessity of a fair settlement in life. In respect of occupation; a necessary engagement of our time in a lawful calling, by no means unfits a man for the hour of reflection; but quite the contrary. The day of complete leisure finds a great task in what, to the active spirit in its well-ordered season, is, in its variety, only an

amusement and an agreeable means of farther self-conscious power. In respect of labour ;the physical powers of body and of mind are thereby strengthened; and disease avoided, and unruly passions, the foul inheritance of the idle. In respect of prosperity ;-the best sympathies of our nature, meekness of heart, and gratitude to God, are therein dilated, and justify a reasonable being in his pursuit after its mild joys; while melancholy is avoided, that unfits for every duty; and an ill-conditioned temper that can scarcely be a subject of the meek Jesus; and recklessness, and envy, and hate, the children of a hard and unthankful task-master.

It is only a point of bad education,—or rather a complete dereliction of wise instruction, that the natural guardians of youth impress on their minds nothing paramount, or even tantamount, to a care about this world. In the obedience of free and ready-minded youth, and its wish to yield to the very letter of authority;—in this very thing, these guardians, falsely so called, take possession of a

disposition sacred to better things,-to Hea ven itself; and in respect of the base consequences of determined worldly-mindedness, do worse than "seethe the kid in the mother's milk," for they destroy the soul by its own first good affections. Base consequences indeed! It is only whatever gives the past and future a predominance over the present, as well remarked by Dr. Johnson, that can raise us in the scale of thinking beings. But the worldling knows none of these relations. He knows them not to compare them or weigh their respective amounts. Early prepossessed with things of sense, he is busy with them still; and things of faith must wait even an estimate of their claims, till his attention be at leisure.-How long shall it be? The stars of God are shining every night, and hinting to man of worlds above this grosser earth ;how long shall it be? The rivers haste away, an emblem of human life; and every token of the green and spontaneous earth, and the dropping softness of heaven, are a reproach to the narrowselfishness of man;-how long shall

it be? The fine mystery of love, is it for nothing? and the undefined melancholy of the mind, the ideal wish? "The vision and faculty divine" of poetry and painting,

"The light that never was on land or sea,"

and sculpture, and music with its grand bursts and sweet relapses; are these in vain ?-how long shall it be? Poverty may stiffen the spirit, but it is the stark coat of mail that best wins the battle: and God hath never owned a distinction of grace in acquired portions of this world; but his communications, as the natural light of the sun, come equally to a man, whether his face be glazed by ease and plenty, or dinted with the rugged lines of poverty and toil;-how long shall it be? The claims of God are before us ever the same, and enforced by a thousand symbols of our mortality. There is an awful memorial from each old cathedral, and a host of warnings to living men. In the first occasion of its structure are implied the solemn thoughts, not of an