THE present volume consists of Lectures delivered to my own congregation, on alternate Sunday Evenings, during the late winter. It is intended as a companion to one I published a few years ago, entitled Views of Life. The two volumes are part of a plan, which I hope some day to complete, by the publication of a third. CHRIST CHURCH, ASTON PARK, BIRMINGHAM ; March, 1878. WILLIAM WALTERS. LECTURE I. THE INEQUALITIES OF LIFE. "There were two men in one city; the one rich and the other poor."-2 SAM. xii. 1. "THE HE one rich and the other poor." Such is human life. The gifts of GOD are variously distributed. In whatever light we regard mankind, inequalities appear. There are physical inequalities. While the vast majority of men come between the two extremes, some are giants in stature, others are dwarfs. There are all varieties of colour, from the black Negro to the fair Caucasian. Some men are erect in figure,-graceful in all their movements; while others are personifications of awkwardness. What a difference there is between the Esquimaux, who, in his burrow amid northern ice and snow, gorges himself with whale-blubber; and the lean and hungry Numidian, who pursues the lion under a vertical sun! And how different, both from the skin-clad and oily fisher of the icebergs, and the naked hunter of the Sahara, are the luxurious inmates of eastern harems, or the energetic and intellectual dwellers in the cities of Europe! The race presents a thousand varieties, and the widest possible contrasts. B |