of living men? What is a chaos of six thousand years, or of sixty thousand? The lengthened darkness and large confusions of such a chaos, gloriously betoken the magnificence of eternity. The eversilent world bears witness for the ever-silent God. We read but of few audible divine voices even in the history of Messiah-yet was God ever with and in his beloved Son. His revelations to us men have been few, yet is he not far from any one of us; we are neither fatherless nor forsaken. In the darkness, the cry of earth has often gone up to heaven as a loud cry, and exceeding bitter- Eloi, Eloi'—but he answereth not. Yet is the ever-silent God the unslumbering and ever-working Jehovah. We speak, but there is no voice-we look, but there is no shape-we listen, but there is no footstep. Sometimes this silence heavily oppresses Christian hearts-yet is it encouraging and sublime. None but a God profoundly wise, and able magnificently to fulfil his promises and glorify his benevolence, could keep long silence, and expect of his saints long patience in a world like this; and on the Sunday the saints' feel that it is so. They speak to God, and their own heart moved by his Spirit answers them :

Oh! hidden Lord, most wise and rich,
Whom oft I love, but often fear;

Of light and dark, oft doubting which
Doth most upon thy works appear.

Why, if in thee no darkness is,

So deep a shade on human kind?

If thou be Father, tell me this,

Why the sad heart-the troubled mind?

Then said a voice-" This truth within thee store,

Then wait believing ere thou askest more:

Earth is a cloud which Time shall puff away,

Then shalt thou see the heaven and feel the day."

Upon the Sabbath all Christian hearts, the hopeful and the troubled, the weary and the rejoicing, lift their voice to heaven; and when the number of the thanksgivings and prayers that are thus at one time rising is considered, the connexion between earth and heaven seems to us more real. It is ever true of spiritual things that if we regard them only in relation to ourselves, they have not full reality and power. God is to us more God, and Christ more the Saviour, when we consider the great congregation of Christians, than when we simply think of ourselves and our necessities. On Sunday we meet in brotherhood. As the pastures are clothed with flocks, so now are broad lands clothed with Christian congregations. To the earth they are as yet but a sustaining girdle; hereafter they shall be a robe, ample, beautiful, and pure. As we rest we remember the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, and celebrate his faithfulness and love. And on the morrow we shall have proved that when earth presents an offering to heaven, heaven returns a gift to earth. It is in the calm clear nights, after the warm days, that most dew falls. Our affections have gone up heavenwards—it has been a loving day, and when the reposeful heart comes to evening slumber as with clear sky over it, dew is gathering silent, unseen, and

on the morrow we shall find a freshened and purer life for the thoughts, purposes, and affections of the earth. We lie down usually at night without thinking, and, perhaps, without knowing that the labour of the day has shortened our stature, and that if we should measure ourselves in the morning it would seem as if we had grown greatly during the darkness and silence. We are frequently from half an inch to an inch taller in the morning than we were at night. Our rest restores to us what we lose by the labours of the day, and whilst it restores much, during our time of growth it also adds some little; and this is a figure for our Sabbaths. During the week our moral stature may be insensibly lessened. Wearied, and enfeebled with the work of the world, our frame is less erect and elastic; but the Sabbath restores us. And the Christian enters on the labours of the week, not only with his moral erectness restored, but with somewhat added to his stature. But if the effect of the Sabbath is as the effect of night, our rest then is rather the rest of change than of slumber. If we sleep, we sleep unto the world, but we are alive unto God. Truths of which our thoughts during the week, if as vivid as dreams were as hurried and transitory, are now steadily contemplated realities; and much bustle of the world that has engaged and vexed us, is now as the folly of a dream, with its vain fear and pleasure when one awaketh.'

The Lord's day is a day on which we are occupied, restfully occupied, but in what does our occupation consist? In the exercise of right spiritual feelings, in the cultivation of right spiritual dispositions, in securing a blessing-measure and purity for all the operations of life. We give ourselves to the word of God and to prayer-to wisdom and worship-and as beyond all contradiction the less is blessed of the greater,' earthly prudence and industry now receive a blessing of heavenly wisdom, and worship gives its benediction to all the desires and aspirations of the ennobled natural man. Now may our hearts be as fields in quietest summer brightness, and our busy thoughts as bees which, with happy murmur of activity, wing their way through the fragrant air in search of those sweets which they who seek shall find.' And so we are awhile in a little heaven below,' for heaven is the place of full rest and full industry; itself quiet as summer fields, its inhabitants active as summer bees. And by all our exercises of the Sunday, we are fitting ourselves for the duties of the week, even when we are not thinking of them. In discharging these duties, we put forth strength, and by the exertion increase it; but no kind of strength is acquired wholly, though it may be acquired partly, at the time when its use is needed. We may trade in an afternoon upon the morning's gains; but days will come when, if we have not stored the gains of many past days, we encounter peril, let slip opportunity, and cannot obtain full reward for labour. single day's religious exercises-its thought and prayer, may suffice for safety and some small good deed; but we may need the inwrought effect of many Sabbaths, many happiest, holiest seasons, to enable us to stand fast in some day of shaking wind or seducing smiles, and to prepare us to take, when it comes to flood, that tide in affairs which

A

leads on to heavenly success. It is of the highest importance that we cultivate right general tempers of mind, that truth be strengthened and settled in our inward parts; for there is a certain connectedness in our whole nature, and a certain central spirit of life. If a man be constitutionally sick, we may fitly speak of his total unhealthiness. Apart from particular structural disorder, there is general weakness or derangement of function. Now, if the Sabbath makes a man better in heart' it makes him better in his members.' He is a stronger man in all his functions for the saving health' that he has received. A light is kindled which leaves no part dark.'

Consider a man in the full flow of weekly business; he is surrounded with things that cry— Act,' decide.' He must be prompt, rapid. He has little time for reflection and moral analysis. If he does right, he does so from the healthy state of his moral instincts. He wants presence of conscience as well as presence of mind. Now if on the Lord's-day his heart has throbbed healthily with Christian love, and his conscience has been vivified with thoughts of Christian obligation, he will in his business stand forth as a man of Christian integrity and kindliness. There cannot be much divine study during the hours of business, but there may be divine service-not frequent direct thoughts of God, yet a real and a wise obedience; and he who would transact business divinely, must seek the necessary strength and disposition in the worship and thought of other times. Whilst, however, direct spiritual exercises are essential to enable a man to do common work in a spiritual temper, the doing of common work in such a temper greatly promotes spirituality; and unless it be so done, spiritual exercises will soon become to the man a form and a weariness, or at best a reproach and pain; and to his God an offence and a mockery.

Suppose that after hard prolonged toil we retire to the country for awhile, we are in our freedom as if unclothed and bathing; we imbibe strength and refreshment at every pore; soils and stains pass from us, we float gently on pure delicious waters, and vigour comes upon us like exhilarating air. Then let us but return to work, and work we can and will, powerfully and joyfully; our strength and zeal not perishing, but proving themselves born to live and to thrive. But let us not return. Then, soon the waters change into a dead sea, dark and heavy; we sink into feebleness and lethargy; our limbs are stiffened, our frame all over encrusted as with bitter salt of Sodom, and there is danger that we be engulphed in some cavern of the abyss. It is repose that makes labour vigorous; it is labour that gives sweetness to repose. Worldly toil makes spiritual rest recreative and delighting, but the office of such rest is, in refitting, to prepare. Let Sabbath leisure be a repose from labours, and a preparation for their renewal, then will its free spiritual work give 'joy and gladness,' and every such Sabbath be a Pentecost; but if not a Pentecost, then will Sunday become a leaden winged' day-no longer a day of the Lord, but a day of truth changed into a lie.'

We have affirmed that the Sabbath has high value to us because the great thing needful for the discharge of duties is a good general

state of heart, a soundness of spiritual constitution; and that our Lord's-day rest and exercises promote these. But certain thoughts occur, in themselves discouraging, yet to which this chief thought in some or other manner encouragingly applies. We may think of the variety of our weekly duties, the many different kinds of work we have to do. But let us consider this, that moral combinations are as manifold and wonderful as those of the external world. What diverse substances are composed of the same few elements variously combined. What numberless effects of pleasure result from the different arrangements of the same forms. Now, kinds of moral beauty and manifestations of worth are in their diversity and variety as much combinations of elements and forms few and simple as are natural groups and objects. Lovely and very wonderful is nature's coloured apparel; but nature's 'coat of many colours' is indeed composed of few. It contains all secondary beauties made by manifold admixture of primary ones. And there are primary graces as there are primary colours. The splendid and numerous exhibitions of Christian excellence arise from the various intermingling of these primary graces. If our Sabbath work is the cultivation of right spiritual dispositions, for which of our varied duties and opportunities may we not provide as we strengthen these?

But again. It is not just the variety of duties that occurs to us, but the want of harmony and proportion in our own being. The experience of the week often makes a man feel about himself as about a mechanism, the construction of which he very imperfectly understands, which he knows is out of order and is anxious to rectify, but which, though he has learnt to use it, and can at times manage it pretty well, yet he uses without comprehending fully its plan and peculiarities. We feel that though upon the whole we are going on right, yet our life is confused and disorderly. What shall we say to this? We will say, that if in a certain sense mechanisms, let us remember we are living ones-organisms. The organism is a machine so related to its motive power, the life, that by means of a more healthy life, it possesses a certain property of working self-rectification and adjustment. Let a good man comfort himself with this thought—as he receives with hunger and thirst God's truth and grace, to become a 'saving health' for his life, his being acquires a true and increasing tendency to harmonize itself. We may be advancing to health when not yet healthy. Confusion itself may be an indication of approaching order. One duty done may discover ten duties unthought of, but the performance has given us power to labour as well as disclosed work to do. The more right things a man does, the more naturally, the more readily does he do others also, for all good things are mutually helpful and have to each other the most secret and curious affinities.

But there is yet a third troubling thought. Some men specially apprehend danger from one particular quarter. They have one enemy by whom, when attacked, they are usually and in a moment overthrown. This foe, perhaps not even formidable to others, is to them a haunting terror. What shall we say of such men? We again say,—

The strength of the Sunday may be the safety of the week. When there is in a man a tendency to a sin of a particular kind, there are yet times when strong temptations addressed to this the weakest portion of his nature will yet be powerless. Not that he need be at these times thinking of this temptation, and purposing resistance. But he is in a condition of mind much higher than the average one, that in which the temptation attacks and conquers. Such better states of mind will tend to elevate the average ones. But for their full effect, the man must often at these times consider his sin, confront it with its opposite, and stir up his whole soul to hate it. In our best spiritual states, it makes us quail and sicken to set such evil things in the full light of our countenance. This must be done; yet we need not fix on them a prolonged gaze, but discerning the hideousness, may turn earnestly to what is bright, fair, and pure. Our true thoughts, our right and pure emotions, have a real, though it may be quite undiscernible, tendency to deliver us from every kind of error and unholiness whatsoever-tendency, we say, by no means a present power for such deliverance. And so we may seek the general enlightenment and purification of our mind with the more zeal, because of our strong desire for some particular deliverance. What a man does when tempted will come to depend often not so much upon what he then feels, as on what has become by the right employment of best times, the usual tenor of his feeling. He has been an affectionate student of good, he has thought of evil with deep and hearty repugnance. Inclination now beseeches him to do this thing. But his heart has felt rightly and strongly. He will sternly say, Silence! and when inclination not only speaks, but struggles, he will put forth a strong arm and hold it back. These struggles will in some cases so exhaust feeling, that it will seem as if the honest and good heart' were dead, though it has but swooned; yet a strong will, obeying a convinced mind, may presently conquer, and soon the heart warmly utter its thanks. The Sabbath, then, is a day of hope. Viewed generally, it is to the pious as the heart of the week, sending forth with strong pulsations life-blood to the remotest parts, through the days as the great channels, on through the hours, and so as by scarcely traceable paths even to the minutes and seconds.