is less favoured than yours,-whose cup is not so full. Give him the look, the grasp, the word, the substantial token of sympathy. Your heart will be enriched by a brother's gratitude, and grow larger with a generous love. "Is thy cruise of comfort failing? For the heart grows rich in giving, Scattered, fill with gold the plain." My friends! there is joy in the world to-day; and there is for it a more joyous future. The things that now militate against man's happiness shall be destroyed, or held in check. Moral evil shall be restrained, repressed, cast out. Ignorance shall give place to universal knowledge. Poverty, and its consequent wretchedness, shall retire before a more equal distribution of wealth. Legislation will grow more just and wise. Scientific discovery, applied to the experience and usages of daily life, will meliorate the social condition of men. And religion, spreading abroad everywhere its benign influence, shall transform the earth into the garden of the LORD. "Change, wide and deep and silently performed, E'en till the smallest habitable rock, Beaten by lonely billows, hear the songs Of humanised society; and bloom With civil arts, and send their fragrance forth, After all, the joys of life are only a faint and imperfect foreshadowing of the bliss of heaven. Our best joys here have some drawback. Some evil mixes with them. On the one hand, the imperfection of our nature militates against them; while, on the other hand, the greatness of our nature demands more than they can supply. The sweetest honey is mixed with gall. But the joys of heaven are perfect. We know little of them, beyond the fact that they will spring from the purity and nobleness of our nature,—the wondrous enlargement of our faculties, the vast and varied opportunities for their employment, the perfect adaptation of all around us to our needs, and our intimate communion with the everblessed GOD. But to know this, is to know that we are heirs of perfect joy. Earthly joys soon also come to an end. The season of childhood passes away, and with it, its mirth and laughter. Youth, too, gives place to maturer years; and its fresh excitement and pleasing anticipations yield to a soberer experience. Family circles are broken up; and loved ones are divided by distance and death. Home delights fade away in the dim and ever increasing remoteness of the past. All the pleasures of life are as the morning dew. Sadly we watch their departure. Even, Though our winged hours of bliss have been, Like angels' visits, few and far between;" yet there is something painful in the thought that they are gone never to return. But the joys of heaven are eternal. Whatever else is concealed from us, this is made known. All the elements of unhappiness are excluded from that world. Sorrow shall never rend the heart. Tears shall never wet the eye. No regrets shall mingle with our raptures. No memories of perished bliss shall sadden the soul. No fear, that the exquisite joy of the present moment is too good to last, shall fill us with forebodings as to the future. No shadow from the years to come shall darken the brightness of to-day. We shall inherit a fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore. May this blessedness be ours, when the joys of life are no more! Amen. LECTURE VIII. THE BANE OF LIFE. "He that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul." -PROV. viii. 36. "And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."JAMES i. 15. THE bane of the Pais sin. It is not simply a HE bane of life,-the parent curse and misery of our race,—is sin. What failure in goodness. It is the free choice of evil instead of good; the opposition of the human will to the Divine; and therefore on the part of every sinner, a personal offence against GOD. As sinners, we withhold from GOD the love and reverence and obedience He deserves; we rebel against His authority; we choose the creature instead of the Creator, the finite instead of the Infinite, as our chief good; we abuse GOD's generosity, and our freedom, to our own hurt. Perhaps it would be difficult to find, in few words, a more comprehensive definition of sin than that given by AUGUSTINE," Sin is something said, or done, or desired, in contradiction to the Eternal Law." Whence came sin? It has an actual existence. It is not a creature of the imagination. It is not an invention of Christianity. Its existence has been felt and acknowledged from the earliest times. It is not a necessary product of our nature; nor the effect of man's limited knowledge; nor the result merely of circumstances. As to the theory that it owes its existence to circumstances, a thoughtful writer truly says, "If the soul has no originating causality, but in every step she takes is simply disposed of and bespoken by agencies provided and set in train, without any question asked of her, she can have no duties, she can win no deserts; she can incur no guilt, merit no punishment; she is deluded in her remorse, and suffers a vain torture in esteeming herself an alien from GOD." Sin cannot be traced to GOD. It originates with ourselves. "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of GOD; for GOD cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man; but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." It is important that we should bear this truth in mind. his own destroyer. His sin lies at his own door; and all its consequences are its just penalty. Sin is universal. Go where you will, you see its hideous form and features. "We are all wicked," says SENECA, "what one of us blames in another, each will find in his own bosom." In other respects men differ; in this they are all one. The existence of sin does not depend on national or tribal differences; it is common to the race. It does not depend on climate or soil; it is found among the frost and snow of the north, and under the sunny skies of the south; alike in the frigid, temperate, and torrid zones. It does not depend on the state of society; it ruined Greece and Rome, in spite of their advanced civilization; and to-day, it may be found, alike in civilized Europe and America, and among the aborigines of Africa and Australia. It does not depend on legislation; it prevails under the wisest and best laws, as well as under the worst. The moment a spot of this earth is inhabited by man, it feels and exhibits the blight of sin. "The founders of a new colony," says an American writer, "whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil to a cemetery, and another to the site of a prison." Only One ever appeared in human form, who could say,"Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" Sin, as I have said, is the bane of life. No loss or ruin can be compared to that of a soul which has revolted from GOD. Affliction, bereavement, poverty, reproach,all of them together are not to be deplored so much as sin. Its curse falls, in the first instance, on the sinner himself. It desolates all the dearest interests of society,it spreads misery throughout the world, it brings that misery into the daily lot of millions; but all the ruin, great and terrible as it is, which the sinner inflicts upon others, is not equal to the injury that he inflicts upon himself. "He that sinneth against Me," GOD says in our text, "wrongeth his own soul." Sin does a wrong to man's reason, employs it on improper and profitless objects and pursuits, destroys its power,—makes a man a fool. Sin does a wrong to the conscience; blunts and darkens it. Every fresh act of evil, every fresh thought of it, darkens the conscience, and disqualifies it for the discharge of its high functions. Sin does a wrong to the affections, poisons them at their source, turns them into wrong channels, diverts them from proper and pure objects, to objects improper and impure; makes the heart of man the home of all unclean passions and desires. Sin depraves the whole nature. Every repeated act, every fresh thought, lessens the power of resisting temptation. The soul under the influence of sin is like a palace in ruins; and the longer its influence is felt, the greater the desolation. Men grow worse and worse, |