to himself, turning away your eyes from the bewildering magic, and the crushing disappointment, and the scathing curse of a world that ruins and deceives; searching, even at this moment, with love or grief the most secret thoughts of your very hearts. Do you think that you can conceal them, if they are thoughts of sin and shame? oh no! the cloud, that has received Him out of your sight is no cloud to Him; oh pray that it may be no cloud to us, no cloud to you. Believe me then will life itself be different to you, and lit with the light of heaven.

-"Believe thou, oh my soul,

Life is a vision shadowy of truth;

And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave,
Shapes of a dream! The veiling clouds retire,
And lo! the Throne of the redeeming God,

Forth flashing unimaginable day,

Wraps in one blaze earth, heaven, and deepest hell.”

VI.

THE IMMORTALITY AND THE MEANNESS OF

MAN.

(Preached at Nottingham, during the Meeting of the British Association, August 1866.)

Ps. viii 4.-"What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"

MANY of you may have seen last year the painting of a great artist in which he represents King David sitting alone on his palaceroof during the last flush of a summer-day. The once fair and ruddy face is aged and sorrowful, the once bright locks are streaked with silver, the once smooth forehead is ploughed with the furrows of care. · His own hands have eased his brow of the glittering circlet of sovereignty, which is lying neglected beside his feet, and the arm that smote the Philistine rests wearily on the parapet of the roof. Far away, into one deep gleam of unbroken blue, some doves are winging their soft flight, and the King as he follows them with his wistful gaze,

seems to be murmuring to himself, 'O that I had wings like a dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest;'—or, meditating it may be on his own stained and sin-bewildered life, he is inspired with the yearning prophecy, "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove, that is covered with silver wings, and her feathers like gold."

On some such evening as the painter has embodied, but in a brighter and more hopeful mood, David had again been sitting at eventide upon his palace-roof, and the sun had set, and from the bulwarks and battlements of Jerusalem, and from the olives that rested in grey clouds over the hills around, the last blush of evening had faded, and overhead the moon had begun to shine, and the stars to gather and gather for the mighty march of their unnumbered hosts, until the whole heavens seemed bursting into starlit depths. How did David feel, as he gazed on that soul-annihilating spectacle? did his mortal spirit reel and stagger under the sense of infinitude? was he like the modern poet, half-crushed to gaze on those

Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes,

Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand
His nothingness into man?

Let this Psalm answer;-for, as he was musing the fire burned, and he burst into those rapt and glowing words—words which come surging upon the memory of many of us on the rolling waves of organ-music and choral song,—“O Lord, our Governour, how excellent is thy name in all the world, thou that hast set thy glory above the heavens;-when I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him?"—And then, in an instant, as with a mighty reflux of thought, the answer comes, What is he? not one to quail before the thought of immensity, but to pervade it with his mighty destinies! not one to be crushed before the dread glory of the unintelligent creation, but to be its lord and king, not one to worship the orbs of heaven, but to weigh them and measure them, and discover the constituents of which they are made. "Thou madest him a little lower than the angels;" no, not than the angels, as our English Version has it, but thou madest him a little lower than God, "thou hast crowned him with glory and honour; thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands, thou hast put all things under his feet."

F. S.

8

Very different is the response to the same question in that Psalm (the 144th) which David seems to have written, not in the quiet hour of meditation, but in the proud moment of victory and success. There too he asks 'What is man?' but there the answer comes, (more like the wail of a dying penitent than the song of a triumphant king), “man is like a thing of nought, his time passeth away like a shadow;" and then, as though longing to be delivered from the whole mean and malignant crew of enemies and blasphemers that encircles him, he cries, "Bow thy heavens, oh Lord, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke: cast forth thy lightning, and tear them, shoot out thine arrows, and consume them." It is the same when on the lips of the ruined Job the same question is repeated; and it is as though both Job and David were to cry in the spirit of the modern singer,

"Let the heavens burst and drown with deluging storms The feeble vassals of wine, and anger, and lust,

The little hearts that know not how to forgive.

Arise, my God, and strike, for we hold thee just,—
We are not worthy to live."

trasts.

All Scripture is full of the same sharp conFormed out of the dust of the ground, yet made in the image and similitude of God;