for immortality. It is quite reasonable to suppose that the interests of manhood will hereafter appear to us just as insignificant,-I ought rather to say, ten thousand times more so, than the interests of our boyish years can seem to us now. We forget,-and to all minds short of God's, the past must something fade away ere the present can fully possess them. But with Him, who is the First and the Last, it is not so, to him all things are present, and nothing is despised. Surely there is something for the youngest child to think of with comfort, when he recollects how Jesus, far from turning children away from him, " took them up in his arms, and laid his hands upon them, and blessed them." Or was it for nothing that this was recorded, or are we merely to say, coldly, that this was a beautiful instance of Christ's meekness and humility, and so dismiss it from our thoughts as a fact of history? It was a proof of his meekness and humility, but it is so still; he changes not, but is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and the value of this proof of his love is not to show us what he did to the children of Judæa eighteen hundred years ago, but what he will do now to ours, whenever we bring them to him; it is the assurance to every

child, so soon as he can think or understand who Christ is, that he may go boldly to beg for his Saviour's mercy; that Christ calls him to him, and is ready to take him into his care, and to bless him with an enduring blessing.

I believe, however, that while we admit this of young children, and while many a parent has felt the deepest pleasure in the thought of this promised love of Christ to his infants, or those only a few years removed from infancy; yet that there is an age with which we are not so apt to connect the thought of Christ's love; the age, namely, between childhood and manhood. With manhood we are, of course, in full sympathy, because it is the period to which we have ourselves arrived; and childhood, partly perhaps from the strongness of the contrast which it offers, we are apt to invest with a certain romantic and poetical interest, and are not unwilling to believe that the innocence of that yet untainted age may be thought worthy of communion with heaven. But the years subsequent to childhood lose this interest of the imagination, without yet acquiring the deeper interest of our habitual sympathy; nor can it be concealed, that life, in these intermediate years, is far from wearing its most engaging aspect ;

it may be likened to the cold and backward springs of our own climate, the most unlovely season of the year, because we expect luxuriance of growth and beauty, and find all chilled and hard and dull. Such is very often the season of boyhood; the innocence of childhood is manifestly tainted, and the fruits of manhood are not come, and many times show as yet no blossom. It is a season of fear and of anxiety on the part of older persons, the more so, because their children, at that age, seem so little to fear or to be anxious for themselves. It is a season of great spiritual danger, when the seed of eternal life is necessarily weak and tender, and the climate of outward circumstances to which it is exposed, unusually bleak and ungenial. And, therefore, because it is so, it is the very season in which Christ watches over us the most, and would receive us with the tenderest love. He came to seek and to save that which was lost; he came to open the eyes of the blind, to heal those who walked not uprightly, to call the dead that they might live. It is his own saying, "They that are whole need not a physician, but they who are sick." And, of all periods of life, there is none at which Christ will more gladly receive us than at this very time of our

greatest weakness and great temptations; at the very time of our struggling with the besetting faults of boyhood-when, with lives stained by sin, and consciences not acquitting us, and yet not hardened;-we are wandering out of our way daily, more and more, unless the great Shepherd of our souls recall us to himself.

To Him, then, who felt the same temptations which you now feel,-who was himself a boy, and knows that part of human life as well as all the rest, who feels for it as deep a sympathy, and who, because it is a time of peculiar danger, regards it, for that very reason, with peculiar care,—with Him let his surpassing love constrain you to take refuge. Remember,-(it is not a little thing to remind you of,)—remember that feelings which you might shrink from exposing to any human eye,annoyances, weaknesses, which even your dearest friends might treat lightly, or perhaps with ridicule, -the lightest distress that can vex you, the humblest temptation which can beset you, little trials, little uneasinesses, which I could not even mention here without seeming to trifle with the sacredness of the place, which, in fact, you would hardly like to make much of to your own selves, and yet

which do affect the goodness and happiness of your lives; all these are regarded as tenderly by Christ as if they were the greatest matters in the world in human estimation. Whatever affects your comfort, and so affects your conduct, is of importance in the eyes of Him with whom you have to do. Perhaps you would hardly express some things in words, even in your secret prayers; they seem so trifling to bring before God. But Christ can read your hearts, and knows what is labouring within them; he knows what it is which most troubles you, or most tempts you; and though it be not uttered in words, he regards you with his sympathy, and will deliver you, or strengthen you to your need. Or, if feeling that you neglect him, that you have often heard his call in vain, you think that you are unworthy of his regard;-if you would fain be better before you offer yourselves to him, then remember that it was the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind, whom the king in the parable called in to his marriage supper. When they came in, he furnished them with the wedding garment; but he did not expect that they should wait till they had themselves procured one. It is a true parable; Christ's spirit is given to Christ's redeemed; it is his