some plan for their settlement in lifehe knows that there is a Husband of the widow and a Father of the fatherlessand the only wish which could put a check on his spirit, as the plumes of its wing just feel the free air, is that he might toil a little longer for Christ, and do at least some fractions more of his work, ere ushered into the light of his presence. And if the sinking energies were suddenly recruited, so that the pulse of the expiring man beat again vigorously; it might at first seem painful to him to be snatched back from glory; but remembering, that, whilst vice is enthroned on the high places of the earth, and millions bow down to the stock and the stone, there is a mighty demand for all the strenuousness of the righteous, he would use returning strength in uttering the confession, it is good that I yet hope and wait for salvation.

Now in winding up this subject of discourse, we have only to remark that religion gives a character to hope of which otherwise it is altogether destitute. You will scarcely find the man, in all the ranges of our creation, whose bosom bounds not at the mention of hope. What is hope but the solace and stay of those whom it most cheats and deludes; whispering of health to the sick man, and of better days to the dejected; the fairy name on which young imaginations pour forth all the poetry of their souls, and whose syllables float, like aerial music, into the ear of frozen and paralyzed old age? In the long catalogue of human griefs there is scarce one of so crushing a pressure that hope loses its elasticity, becoming unable to soar, and bring down fresh and fair leaves from some far-off domain which itself creates. And yet, whilst hope is the great inciter to exertion, and the great soother of wretchedness, who knows not that it ordinarily deceives mankind, and that, though it crowd the future with glorious resting-places, and thus tempt us to bear up a while against accumulated disasters, its palaces and gardens vanish as we approach; and we are kept from despair only because the pinnacles and forests of another bright scene fringe the horizon, and the deceiver finds us willing to be yet again deceived? Hope is a beautiful meteor: but, nevertheless, this meteor, like the

rainbow, is not only lovely because of its seven rich and radiant stripes; it is the memorial of a covenant between man and his Maker, telling us that we are born for immortality; destined, unless we sepulchre our greatness, to the highest honor and noblest happiness. Hope proves man deathless. It is the struggle of the soul, breaking loose from what is perishable, and attesting her eternity. And when the eye of the mind is turned upon Christ, "delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification," Romans, 4: 25, the unsubstantial and deceitful character is taken away from hope: hope is one of the prime pieces of that armor of proof in which the believer is arrayed; for St. Paul bids us take "for an helmet the hope of salvation." 1 Thess. 5:8. It is not good that a man hope for wealth, since "riches profit not in the day of wrath;" Prov. 11:4; and it is not good that he hope for human honors, since the mean and mighty go down to the same burial: but it is good that he hope for salvation; the meteor then gathers, like a golden halo, round his head, and, as he presses forward in the battle-time, no weapon of the evil one can pierce through that helmet.

It is good, then, that he hope it is good also that he quietly wait. There is much promised in Scripture to the waiting upon God. Men wish an immediate answer to prayer, and think themselves forgotten unless the reply be instantaneous. It is a great mistake. The delay is often part, and the best part, of the answer. It exercises faith, and hope, and patience; and what better thing can be done for us than the strengthening those graces to whose growth shall be proportioned the splendors of our immortality? It is good, then, that ye wait. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." Isa. 40:31. And ye must, according to the phrase of our text, wait for God. "The Lord is a God of judg ment; blessed are all they that wait for him." Isa. 30: 18. And if the time seem long, and, worn down with affliction and wearied with toil, ye feel impatient for the moment of full emancipation-remember ye-and let the remembrance check every murmur-that God leaves

contrast with the past, and to prove, from the comparison, a great and ongoing deterioration in the character of mankind. And it is quite certain, that, if this disposition were observable in Solomon's days, as well as in our own, it must pass ordinarily as the mark of a jaundiced and ill-judging mind. If it have been true in some ages, it cannot have been in all, that the moral aspect of the times has grown gradually darker. We must be warranted, therefore, in ascribing a disposition which has subsisted through days of improvement, as well as of declension, to a peevish determination to find fault, and not to a sober sitting in judgment upon matters of fact.

But the workings of the very same disposition may be traced under other and less obvious forms. We believe, for example, that men are often inclined to compare the religious advantages of the earlier and later days of christianity, and to uphold the superiority of the past to the present. It is imagined, that to have been numbered amongst the living when Jesus sojourn ed upon earth, to have been permitted to behold the miracles which he wrought, and to hear from his own lips the truths of redemption-it is imagined, we say, that there must have been in this a privilege ampler in dimensions than any which falls to men of later generations. And from such imagining there will spring often a kind of excusing, whether of infidelity, or of lukewarmness; our not believing at all, or our believing only languidly, being accounted for on the principle, that the evidence afforded is far less than might have been vouchsafed. Thus, under a specious, but more dangerous aspect, we are met again by the question, "What is the cause that the former days were better than these?"

Now we believe the question to be grounded altogether on mistake. If there be advantage on one side as contrasted with the other, we are persuaded that it lies with the present generation, and not with the past. It is true that the exhibition of miraculous energies, which was made in the cities of Judea, gave what ought to have been overwhelming attestation to the divinity of the mission of Jesus. If we possessed not the records of

history to assure us of the contrary, we might be disposed to conclude, with much appearance of fairness, that they who beheld diseases scattered, and death mastered, by a word, must have instantly followed Him who wrought out the marvels. Yet we may easily certify ourselves, that the Jew was occupied by prejudices which must have more than counterbalanced his peculiar advantages. He had before him, so to speak, a sketch of his Messiah, whose accuracy he never thought of questioning; and if a claimant of the Messiahship presented not the features which were foremost in this sketch, then, almost as a matter of course, his pretensions were rejected with scorn. It is nothing to say that ancient prophecy, more thoroughly investigated, might have taught the Jew the error of expecting, on the first advent of Messiah, a temporal prince and deliverer. The error was so ingrained into his spirit, that it was easier for him to refer miracles to the power of the evil one, than to suspect that he harbored a false expectation. So that, when we compare our own circumstances with those of the Jew, it behoves us to remember, that, if we have not his advantages in supernatural manifestations, neither have we his disadvantages in national prepossessions. We are not to argue the effect produced upon him, from that which might now be produced upon us, by the working of miracles. In his case every feeling which results from early association, or from the business of education, was enlisted against christianity; whereas it may almost be affirmed, that, in our case, every such feeling is on the side of christianity. If, therefore, we allow that the testimony, which we possess to the truth of our religion, wears not outwardly the same mightiness as that afforded in the days of the Savior, we should still contend that the predisposing circumstances in our own case far more than compensate the sensible witness in that of the Jew.

We may yet further observe, that not only are our disadvantages less, but, on a stricter examination, our advantages will appear greater. We may think there would have been a vast advantage in seeing Jesus work miracles; but, after all, we could only have be

And if we can once certify ourselves of this fact, we occupy, in the strictest sense, the same position as though we had been spectators of the wonder. It would be altogether childish to maintain, that I may not be just as certain of a thing which I have not seen, as of another which I have seen. Who is in any degree less confident, that there was once such a king as Henry the Eighth on the throne of these realms, than that there is now such a king as William the Fourth? Or is there one of us who thinks that he would have felt more sure of there having been such a king as Henry the Eighth, had he lived in the times of that monarch in place of the present? We hold then the supposition to be indefensible, that the spectator of a miracle has necessarily an advantage over those who only hear of that miracle. Let there be clear and unequivocal testimony to the fact of the miracle having been wrought, and the spectator and the hearer stand well nigh on a par. That there should be belief in the fact, is the highest result which can, in either case, be produced. But assuredly this result may as well be effected by the power of authenticated witness, as by the machinery of our senses. And, without question, the testimony to the truth of christianity is of so growing a character, and each age, as it rolls away, pays in so large a contribution to the evidences of faith, that it were easy to prove, that the men of the present generation gain, rather than lose, by distance from the first erection of the cross. It is saying but little, to affirm that we have as good grounds of persuasion that Jesus came from God, as we should have had, if permitted to behold the mighty workings of his power. We are bold to say that we have even better grounds. The testimony of our senses, however convincing for the moment, is of so fleeting and unsubstantial a character, that, a year or two after we had seen a miracle, we might be brought to question whether there had not been jugglery in the worker, or credulity in ourselves. If we found a nation up in arms, maintaining that there might have been magic or trickery, but that there had not been supernatural power; we might,

outcry, if the remembered witness of our eye-sight were all to which appeal could be made. It is not difficult to begin to suspect ourselves in the wrong, when we find no one willing to allow us in the right. And we therefore maintain, that, living as we do in a day when generation after generation has sat in assize on christianity, and registered a verdict that it has God for its author, we possess the very largest advantages over those who saw with their own eyes what Jesus did, and heard with their own ears what Jesus said.

Now you may not all readily perceive the connection of these remarks with the passage of Scripture on which we purpose to meditate. Yet the connection is of the strictest. The apostle addresses himself to converts, who, like ourselves, had not been privileged to behold the Savior of mankind. Christ Jesus had not walked the streets of Ephesus: and if it be supposable that certain of the inhabitants of that idolatrous city had visited Judea during the period of his sojourning on earth, it is incredible that the Ephesian church, as a body, had enjoyed with Him personal communion. Does then St. Paul address the Ephesians as though disadvantaged by this circumstance? Does he represent them as less favored than their brethren of Jerusalem who had lived within the circles of Christ's ministrations? On the contrary, you would judge, from the style of his address, that he wrote this Epistle to Jewish, and not to heathen converts. He speaks to the Ephesians of their having heard Christ, and of their having been taught by Christ. "If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him." And what shall we gather from this, but a rigid confirmation of our foregoing remarks; a strengthening of the opinion, that those who have not seen may stand in precisely the same position as those who have; and that, consequently, the absence of what may be called sensible proof furnishes no groundwork of complaint, that "the former days were better than these?"

We must, indeed, allow that the Ephesians were brought, more nearly than ourselves, into personal contact with Christ, because instructed by