There are two ways of regarding a sermon, either as a human composition, or a Divine message. If we look upon it entirely as the first, and require our clergymen to finish it with their utmost care and learning, for our better delight, whether of ear or intellect, we shall be necessarily led to expect much formality and stateliness in its delivery, and to think that all is not well, if the pulpit have not a golden fringe round it, and a goodly cushion in front of it; but we shall at the same time consider the treatise thus prepared as something to which it is our duty to listen, without restlessness, for half an hour or three quarters, but which, when that duty has been decorously performed, we may dismiss from our minds, in happy confidence of being provided with another when next it shall be necessary. But, if once we begin to regard the preacher, whatever his faults, as a man sent with a message to us, which it is a matter of life or death whether we hear or refuse; if we look upon him as set in charge over many spirits in danger of ruin, and having allowed to him but an hour or two in the seven days to speak to them; if we make some endeavor to conceive how precious these hours ought to be to him, a small vantage on the side of God, after his flock have been exposed for six days together to the full weight of the world's temptation, and he has been forced to watch the thorn and the thistle springing in their hearts, and to see what wheat had been scattered there snatched from the way-side by this wild bird and the other; and, at last, when breathless and weary with the week's labor, they give him this inter

val of imperfect and languid hearing, he has but thirty minutes to get at the separate hearts of a thousand men, to convince them of all their weaknesses, to shame them for all their sins, to warn them of all their dangers, to try, by this way and that, to stir the hard fastenings of those doors where the Master himself has stood and knocked, yet none opened, and to call at the openings of those dark streets where Wisdom herself hath stretched forth her hands, and no man regarded, thirty minutes to raise the dead in, let us but once understand and feel this, and we shall look with changed eyes upon that frippery of gay furniture about the place from which the message of judgment must be delivered, which either breathes upon the dry bones that they may live, or, if ineffectual, remains recorded in condemnation, perhaps against the utterer and listener alike, but assuredly against one of them. Ruskin.

II.

FAITH AND REASON MAN'S INTERPRETERS.

THE IDEA OF MAN'S IMMORTALITY AND OF THE DEITY DIVINELY

IMPRESSED.

ALL nations are, in a manner, agreed that there is an immortality to be expected, as well as a Deity to be worshipped; though ignorance of circumstances makes religion vary even to monstrosity, in many parts of the world. But both Religion and the belief of the Reward of it, which is a blessed state after death, being so generally acknowledged by all the Inhabitants of the earth; it is a plain argument that it is true, according to the Light of Nature. And not only because they believe so, but because they do so seriously desire it, or are so horribly afraid of it if they offend much against their consciences; which properties would not be in man so universally, if there were no objects in Nature answering to these Faculties. I therefore demand, and I desire to be answered without prejudice or any restraint laid upon our Natural Faculties: To what purpose is this indelible Image or Idea of God in us, if there be no such thing as God existent in the world? Or who sealed so deep an impression of that character upon our minds ?

58 CERTAINTY THROUGH SENSE AND UNDERSTANDING.

If we were travelling in a desolate wilderness, where we could discover neither man nor horse, and should meet with herds of cattle or flocks of sheep, upon whose bodies were branded certain letters, we should, without any hesitancy conclude, that these have all been under the hand of some man or other, that has set his name upon them. And, verily, when we see writ in our souls, in such legible characters, the name, or rather the Nature and Idea of God, why should we be so slow and backward from making the like reasonable Inference. Assuredly, He whose Character is signed upon our Souls has been here, and has thus marked us, that we and all may know to whom we belong. Henry More.

So much certainty as is requisite for such a rational nature as man is, may well have its risings and springings out of sense, though it have more refinings and purifyings from the understanding. This is the right proportioning of his certainty to his being; for as his being results out of the mysterious union of matter to immateriality, so likewise his knowledge, and the certainty of his knowledge, (I speak of natural knowledge,) first peeps out in sense, and shines more brightly in the understanding. The first dawnings of certainty are in the sense, the noonday glory of it is in the Intellectuals. There are, indeed, frequent errors in this first Edition of knowledge, set out by sense; but 't is then only when the due conditions are wanting, and the understanding corrects the old Errata of the first edition, and makes some new Errors in its own.

And I need not tell you, that 't is the same soul that moves both in the sense and in the understanding; and as it is not privileged from failings in the motions of the sense, so neither is it in all its intellectual operations, though it have an unquestionable certainty of some, in both. The certainty of sense is so great, that an Oath, that high expression of certainty, is usually, and may very safely, be built upon it. The certainty of sense is more gross and palpable, the certainty of intellectuals, 't is more clear and crystalline, more pure and spiritual. Nathaniel Culverwel.

When a man is so fugitive and unsettled, that he will not stand to the verdict of his own Faculties, one can no more fasten anything upon him, than he can write in the water, or tie knots of the wind. Henry More.

By Humility I understand an entire Submission to the will of God in all things, a deadness to all self-excellency and preeminency before others, a perfect Privation of all desire of singularity, or attracting of the eyes of men upon a man's own person, as little to relish a man's own praise or glory in the world, as if he had never been born into it; but to be wholly contented with this one thing, that his Will is a subduing to the Will of God, and that with thankfulness and reverence he doth receive whatever Divine Providence brings upon him; be it sweet or sour, with the hair or against it, it is all one to him; for, what he cannot avoid, it is the gift of God to the world, in order to a greater good. I profess, I stand amazed,