Oh, my friend, you have, as I remarked in the commencement, some ideal higher than that which you act upon; you are lifted up to something that is above the common plane of your life. What is the significance of material things? It is in the impression they leave upon the mind-the elements they transfer to our consciousness. Therefore, if on standing on a mountain I get an idea of something lofty and glorious, the impression is maintained. Suppose, now, that I am lifted up on the mount of prayer or meditation, and I get an idea of something elevated and glorious, am I not just as much on the mountain, to all intents and purposes, as on the Mount of Olives or Sinai? Oh, man, there are some duties hovering before you which you know you have not fulfilledsome great claim you have not completely answered. It may be you have recognized the ideal in Christ Jesus, and feel that that is what you should aspire after with earnest effort. I repeat, then, what is the thing that stands higher to you than the present plane of your life? Aspire to it. There is no more earnest voice than that which comes to you to-day, speaking of that which is higher than that which you now do— nobler than that which you have cherished, and saying to you, "Go forth; make all things after the pattern shown to thee in the mount."

6*

FAITH AND ITS ASPIRATIONS.

From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.-Psalm lxi, 2.

THIS is the language of an earnest spirit, conscious

THIS

of need, and by a strong figure of speech expressing its conviction of the existence of a help outside, and greater than itself. How wonderfully fresh and applicable the Book of Psalms is! What a reservoir of human experience! what a perpetual spring-tide of human sympathies! It has some form of speech for every devout need of the soul. It is a great organ of religious utterance, pealing forth in that grand old Hebrew age, from every valve and stop of emotion that the human spirit has felt, or will feel, until time shall be no more. The cry of anguish, the burst of praise, the wail of penitence, the prayer of need, the expression of trust, the sacred admiration that sweeps the starry heavens, the contrite introspection concentrated upon the sin-sick soul-all these find language there. The strings of David's harp are the chords of the universal heart. Doubtless, my friends, besides, have seen the

you and I, as well as thousands

time when the words of the text were just the words we wanted to use; when, conscious of weakness, of need, of the pressure of temptation, of sorrow, of adverse forces, in darkness, in some great storm of calamity beating upon us, or some heat of this world's glare too strong for us, we could have cried from the bottom of the heart, "Lead me to the rock that is higher than I."

But I wish especially to say of the language of the text just now, that it is peculiarly the expression of religion. It springs out of religious emotions, and justifies religious conceptions. It gives us the idea that there is such a thing as religion apart from anything like enlightened intelligence, or mere moral punctiliousness or correctness of conduct. There is such an element as religion, and the language of the text is peculiarly the language of that element. In other words, I take the text as the basis of a few remarks designed to show the specialty and necessity of religion, apart from anything else that, in our minds, we may associate with it.

To illustrate what I mean more distinctly, I remark, in the first place, that this is the expression of faith, as distinguished from science, and it justifies that faith. The present age is not, I think, to be characterized above all others as an age of intellect, as some might suppose. At least it is not peculiarly the age of great intellects. If anything, I should say it was otherwise. In all ages of the world there have been men equal, if

not superior in caliber to any of the present time-equal, if not superior in depth, real power, and substance of intellect. It is rather an age of diffused knowledge; an age in which there are more cultivated intellects than ever before; and this march of intellect of which we hear so much spoken, consists, I suppose, in bringing the rear ranks of humanity into the front, rather than in displaying any great generalship of intellect. Nor is it an age of fresh, vigorous, original intellect peculiarly; because in our time, with all this diffused knowledge, there also is a diffused imitation; there is a conformity of thought very prevalent among men. Men think very much alike-in platoons, in sects, in parties. It is not a time when there is great, fresh, original thinking, such as there was in the days of the Reformation, and such as there has been in other times when great religious or political questions have pressed upon every heart. In such times, even men with small intellectual capacity have been kindled and fired with zeal, and become powerful; for it is a characteristic of human nature, that sometimes a man of much less substance of intellect than another is more powerful, because he is more in earnest. There have been times of more earnest thought than at the present, and I repeat that I should not characterize our times as an age of intellect, but rather as an age of science. It is an age of vast knowledge, so far as the material world is concerned. It is an age of wonderful control over the forces and facts of nature.