to look on, as spectator, in that world of the glorified, where the law of God makes full illustration of its import in the high experiences it nourishes and the benign society it organizes, you will, by that time get, I am sure, an impression of the bliss, and greatness, and glory of obligation to God, such as will profoundly instruct you. What seems to you now to be a most unwelcome constraint, or even an annoyance to your peace, you will thus find reason, after all, to believe is only the best and dearest privilege vouchsafed you.

Arresting my argument here, to what, in conclusion, shall I more fitly draw you than to that which is, in truth, the point established, viz., the fact that it is only religion, the great bond of love and duty to God, that makes our existence valuable or even tolerable. Without this, to live were only to graze. We could not guess why we exist, or care to exist longer. If responsibility to God is felt as a constraint, if it makes you uneasy and restive, better this than to find no real import in any thing. If you chafe, it is still against the throne of order, and there is some sense of meaning in that. If God's will is heavy on you, the protection it extends is not. If the circle of your motion is restricted, it is only that the goodness of Jehovah is drawing itself more closely round you. If you tremble, it is not because of the cold. If still you sigh over the emptiness of your experience, it might be even more empty; for you do, at least, know that every thing in life is now become great and momentous. You can not make it seem either futile or insignificant. If you are only a transgressor, still the liveliest thoughts and the most thrilling truths that ever visit your mind are such as come from

the throne of duty. Religion! religion!—it is the light of the world, the sun of its warmth, the zest of all its works. Without this, the beauties of the world are but splendid gewgaws, the stars of heaven glittering orbs of ice, and, what is yet far worse and colder, the trials of existence profitless and unadulterated miseries.

How convincing, how appalling a proof then is it, of some dire disorder and depravation in mankind, that when obligation to God is the spring of all that is dearest, noblest in thought, and most exalted in experience, we are yet compelled to urge it on them, by so many entreaties, and even to force it on their fears, by God's threatened penalties. What does it mean, this strange, suicidal aversion to God's statutes; that which ought to be our song, endurable only as we are held to it by terrors and penalties of fire? Nay, worse, if possible, you shall even hear, not seldom, the men that say they love God's statutes, and who therefore ought to be singing on their way, complaining of their dearth and dryness, and the necessary vanity of their experience. Let these latter see that the vanity they complain of is the cheat of their own self-devotion, and the littleness of their own empty heart. Let them pray God to enlarge their heart, and then they will run the way of God's commandments with true lightness and freedom. All this moping ends, when the fire of duty kindles. As to the other and larger class, who are living, confessedly, in no terms of obligation to God, let them see, first of all, what they gain by it; how the load of life's burden chafes them; how they are crushed, crippled, wearied, confounded, when they try to get their songs out of this world and the dust itself of their pilgrimage; then go to God, and set their life on the footing of religion, or duty to God,

which if they do, it shall be all gladness and peace; for the rhythm of all God's works and worlds chimes with his eternal law of duty.

Nothing is more certain or clear, than that human souls. are made for law, and so for the abode of God. Without law therefore, without God, they must even freeze and die. Hence, even Christ himself, must needs establish and sanctify the law; for the deliverance and liberty he comes to bring are still to be sought only in obedience. Henceforth duty is the brother of liberty, and both rejoice in the common motherhood of law. And just here, my friends, is the secret of a great part of your misery and of the darkness that envelops your life. Without obligation you have no light, save what little may prick through your eyelids. Only he that keeps God's commandments walks in the light. The moment you can make a very simple discovery, viz., that obligation to God is your privilege and is not imposed as a burden, your experience will teach you many things,-that duty is liberty, that repentance is a release from sorrow, that sacrifice is gain, that humility is dignity, that the truth from which you hide is a healing element that bathes your disordered life, and that even the penalties and terrors of God are the artillery only of protection to his realm.

Such and no other is the glad ministry of religion. Say not, when we come to you tendering its gifts, as we do today, that you are not ready, that you are not sufficiently racked by remorse and guilty conviction, that you have spent, as yet, no sorrowing days or sleepless nights,—what can these do for you? God wants none of these; he only wants you to accept him as your privilege. When he calls you to repentance and new obedience, this is what he

means; that you quit your madness, cease to gore yourself by your sins, come to your right mind, and accept, as a privilege, his good, eternal law. Giving thus your life to duty, let it, from this time forth, suffuse alike your trials and enjoyments with its own pure gladness, and let the self-approving dignity and greatness of a right mind be gilded-visibly and consciously gilded-by the smile of God. And, as the good and great society of the blessed is to be settled in this glorious harmony of law, and the statutes of the Lord are to be the song of their consolidated joy and rest, sing them also here; and, in all life's changes, in the dark days and the bright, in sorrow and patience and wrong, in successes and hopes and consummated labors,-everywhere adhere to this, and have it as the strength of your days, that your obligations to God are the best and highest privilege he gives you.

XII.

HAPPINESS AND JOY.

JOHN XV. 11.-"These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”

CHRIST enters the world, bringing joy;-Good tidings of great joy, cry the angels, which shall be to all people. So now he leaves it, bestowing his gospel as a gift of joy,These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full. This testament of his joy he also renews in his parting prayer. And now come I to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. "Man of sorrows" though we call him, still he counts himself the man of joy.

Would that I could bring you into his meaning, when he thus speaks, and assist you to realize the unspeakable import which it has to him. It is an impression deeply rooted in the minds of men that the christian life is a life of constraint, hardship, loss, penance, and comparative suffering; Christ, you perceive, has no such conception of it, and no such conception is true. Contrary, to this, I shall undertake to show that it is a life of true joy, the profoundest and only real joy attainable,—not a merely future joy, to be received hereafter, as the reward of a painful and sad life here, but a present, living, and completely full joy, unfolded in the soul of every man whose fidelity and constancy permit him

to receive it.