confidence in the guidings and leadings of his mysterious influences and providential lessons. Indeed, we could hardly perform our common journeys without faith in God or his children. We trust ourselves to the care of others, on the sea and on the land. We accept the direction of the stranger in the crowded city, and in the sparcely settled country. We shall need this faith in God and man through all our days here below. And we shall need it in the habitation of the angels; and it will abide within us in that world. We shall retain hereafter, our faith in God, our faith in his goodness, justice, mercy, and love; we shall trust ourselves in his care; we shall confidently follow his directions; we shall believe that he will not be unjust to us or to any of our kind; that he will lead none of us into danger; we shall be forever sure that no accidents will befall us under his guardianship or control; that his guidance will be the wisest and best, infinitely better than the instruction of the noblest, kindest man.

Hope too shall abide within us in the world to come. The belief has obtained, that hope is confined to the earth, and that when the soul goes forth into the domain of spirituality, it is changed into fruition. This is not the idea of the Apostle. He explicitly assures us that hope is one of the abiding powers of the mind and heart; that when all the externals of life shall have dropped from us, as the no longer necessary scaffoldings from a new and lofty superstructure, hope shall still abide within our souls, to continue with faith the work of inward improvement and adornment, as the owners and lords of recently erected mansions re

main and make their home within their dwellings, not for a few days or weeks only, but for their life-time, and with the purpose to add to their means of convenience and comfort, to correct their defects, and to hang their walls with pictures, so that they may please a cultivated taste, and minister to the love of beauty and the attractive.

Faith and hope are united forever. That there shall come a period when hope shall give place to something higher, is one of the great errors of the theologians. That in some souls, in millions of souls, hope, hereafter, shall die, and be followed by utter, eternal despair, is one of the darkest thoughts of the human breast. It is a monstrous contradiction of what the Bible teaches with reference to the nature and office of hope. Oh, sinful man! do not give up. Wherever you live under the eye of God, believe that the portal of mercy is open.

Hope will not die. It will abide within the hearts. of those who lie in the lowest ditch of sin, and apply its power to lead them to the paths of virtue and peace. So long as the love of God is boundless, and cannot change, so long will hope hold its place within their souls. So long as goodness and salvation shall reign in heaven, so long will the door of mercy be unbarred, and hope will say, and say within the hearts of those who wander the farthest from the line of truth and love, within the most forlorn, the saddest outcasts from the abodes of holiness, you are not chained here forever; you can rise up from this condition of wretchedness. Arise and walk. Knock, and

the door of salvation shall be opened to you. Ask, and you shall receive the boon you want. Seek, and you shall find the peace you need.

And Love, also, shall abide within our hearts forever. Love, indeed, is the highest power of the soul. Faith and Hope live and shine in its consecrating light. Faith, Hope, and Charity or Love, these three dwell together forever within the soul; but the greatest of these powers, is Love. God is Love. The love within our hearts is the spirit of God informing and perfect. ing our hearts. It will forever abide within us, imparting strength to faith, and encouragement to hope, for it is from God and cannot cease to work for the transformation and perfectibility of our souls. It is the universal and all-uniting Power of the Church of Christ, both in this world, and in the world to come. It is the holy spirit of God, the divine life and energy of Christ, of the Angels, and of all on earth or in heaven, who have been born into the kingdom of the Redeemer, imparting its influence through countless avenues of thought and speech, and practical benevolence, through all the multiform paths of righteous and beneficent action, to effect the disenthralment of the world.

Faith, Hope and Love are divine and eternal, these three; but the greatest of these is love. Pervaded with the spirit of these united powers, our souls will grow in the realm of the Saviour, like the trees in the garden, or like the willows by the water-courses. The work of faith and hope shall be wrought in all parts of the souls, as the nourishing elements of nature

do their wonderful work in the extending roots, in the uprising trunks, in the outspreading branches, in the fluttering leaves, in the opening blossoms, and in the ripening fruit of the trees of the orchard. But love shall be the innermost life, the highest excellence of the soul, completing and consecrating the work of the other powers, as the light of the sun is the finest and most powerful element in the outward universe, and shines upon the growing things of the earth, to warm, and invigorate, and touch with the colors of beauty what the kindred elements of earth and air perpetually nourish and rear.

Now, all I need say, to make a practical application, is, that our religion should be a religion of the mind and the heart. The outward acts of religion, the forms of worship or devotion should not be neglected, nor despised. But there may be the acts or forms of godliness without the inward spirit or life. We need first and most of all things the religion of the soul; the love of God within our hearts working with power. This will direct and consecrate all our outward movements; this will make all things pure within.

This religion will never manifest itself in any narrow or partial manner. Here and hereafter it will consist in the great and holy works of faith, hope and love. In all hearts, and in all worlds, it will work for universal goodness, universal harmony, universal peace

7*

DISCOURSE XIV.

CONFESSION.

LUKE XV. 21-23.

AND THE SON SAID UNTO HIM, FATHER, I HAVE SINNED AGAINST HEAVEN, AND IN THY SIGHT, AND AM NO MORE WORTHY TO BE CALLED THY SON. BUT THE FATHER SAID TO HIS SERVANTS, BRING FORTH THE BEST ROBE, AND PUT IT ON HIM; AND PUT A RING ON HIS HAND, AND SHOES ON HIS FEET: AND BRING HITHER THE FATTED CALF, AND KILL IT AND LET US EAT AND BE MERRY FOR THIS MY SON WAS DEAD AND IS ALIVE AGAIN, HE WAS LOST AND IS

FOUND.

It is written of the Great Teacher, that he needed not that any one should tell him of man, for he knew what was in man. And any man who has studied his own mind, and looked into his own experience, and compared them with the Saviour's representations, will bear witness to the truth of this record. He knew what was in man; he knew his spiritual constitution; he knew" each spring and various bias" by which he was affected or moved.

How much he reveals of our inner nature, of its diverse moods, and methods, its thoughts and ways, its revolutions and accomplishments, in his account of the. Prodigal Son. How clear a view does he here present