is-of thus expressing in act our true estimate of the relative value of "the things that are seen," and "the things that are not seen." It might be advisable that some of us should ask ourselves what we shall wish we had done with the means that God has given us, ten minutes after our hand has become unable to sign a cheque, and while the eternal world is just breaking upon us? Again, our estimate of the importance of the seen and the unseen, respectively, will affect our whole view and practice in the matter of education. If our horizon is confined to this life, we educate our children for this life, and for this life only. If we look with the Apostle to "the things that are not seen," we educate our children primarily for that endless existence which awaits them beyond the grave, and secondarily for this life, which is but a preface, though a most important preface, to that which will follow. If we are in the not-uncommon state of mind which holds this life to be certain, and the next possible, but only possible, we make education in the things of this life primary and obligatory; and education in the truths and duties which prepare for the next, secondary and optional. If we are parents, we say to our children, "Be sure, at any rate, that you learn your Latin and Greek, your mathematics and chemistry, your history and modern languages; these things secure success in life; and no harm will be done if you also make some decent acquaintance with the Bible and the Church Catechism." If we are schoolmasters, we perhaps announce that we teach religion to those who like it, but that for others we have a conscience clause; a conscience clause— that eloquent proclamation of a conviction that while education in the things that are seen is indispensable, education in the things that are not seen may be dispensed with; that characteristic commentary which an age of half-belief has learnt to make on the commission of our Lord, "Preach the Gospel to every creature, ," and on the resolution of the Apostle to "know only Jesus Christ and Him crucified."2 Nay, this is not all; we may sometimes meet with parents who do not scruple, both in public and private, to express-doubtless at the time with entire sincerity-their dread of unbelief; while yet they send their children to places of education where the teachers have a deserved reputation for information and ability, but which a young man will probably not leave without having forfeited the faith in God and Jesus Christ that was learnt at his 1 St. Mark xvi. 15. 2 1 Cor. ii. 2. mother's knee. No! next to our expenditure, our practice in this matter of education is a pretty accurate commentary on what we really hold for certain as to the relative value of "the things that are seen " and "the things that are not seen.' 66 991 So, again, in moments of prosperity, our real view of existence instinctively asserts itself. If we are looking only to "the things that are seen," we abandon ourselves without reserve to the ecstasy and delight of a sense of triumph or success. We pocket the new accession of wealth; we welcome the unwonted incense of flattery; we gloat over the tinsel of each scene which ministers to our self-love. Existence lasts but for a few years, and we make the most of each passing sensation while it is still ours to do so. But if we are looking to the things that are not seen," we cannot but regard times of great prosperity here with serious apprehension. They may wean our affections from our true home; they may make us forget that "here we have no continuing city.' Things visible may twine themselves round our hearts until we lose sight of "the things that are not seen; " until our spiritual sense becomes dull and obtuse, and the eye closes to everything that is not of the earth, earthy. This was our Lord's manifest reason for pronouncing a woe on the rich; they might so easily forget the true riches. This is His reason for pronouncing a woe on those of whom all men speak well ; 3 they are, like the false prophets, in a fair way to forget the true and awful standard of real excellence. In days of prosperity a Christian's prayer will constantly be, "O turn away mine eyes lest they behold vanity, and quicken me in Thy way." 3 There used to be in bygone centuries, perhaps there still is, a custom at the enthronization of a Pope which embodied this truth with a vivid effect. When, at the most solemn moment of the occasion, the procession, of which the new Pontiff was the central figure, was advancing along the nave of the great church, while all around contributed something to the idea of associated ecclesiastical and civil magnificence, a master of the ceremonies lit a torch, which slowly died away and went out. As he bore it aloft at the head of the procession, he chanted the words, "Pater Sancte, sic transit gloria mundi ". "Holy Father, thus does this world's glory pass away." That was a 1 Heb. xiii. 14. 2 St. Luke vi. 24; xvi. 9-11. 3 Ibid. vi, 26. ADV. SERMS.] + Ps. cxix. 37. 2 K word of solemn truth in a scene not unlikely to overlay spiritual realities by temporal pomp ; that is a stern warning which any of us might do well to remember at the proudest and brightest moments of life; when friends surround us with kind, or even flattering words, such as self-love might easily weave into a robe that would hide our true self and circumstances from our gaze. "Thus does this world's glory pass away." It is a commonplace, no doubt; but each generation of men forgets the accumulated teaching of experience, and has to learn for itself the old lesson, as though it were strictly original, over again. Only when the evening of life is coming on, and the shadows are lengthening, do most men, who are not deeply influenced by Christianity, repeat such a warning with entire sincerity. How could we bear If there is nothing So, again, in the dark days of trouble. them if this life were indeed our all? beyond "the things that are seen," pain is a weird mystery from which man naturally escapes in the easiest way open to him. But if suffering has a purpose in it which will be made clear in eternity; if each stone of the great temple of souls must be chiselled until it exactly fits the place reserved for it; if each blow that falls upon it is aimed by the unerring hand of the Divine sculptor, and if more blows are needed when a place of conspicuous honour is destined to receive a form of more than wonted beauty;-then we may suffer in silence, and may hope. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." If we look at "the things which are not seen" by the eye of sense, we reckon that the sufferings of this present life are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.' 66 Advent is a time for careful inquiry into our true state of mind in respect of the two worlds with which the Apostle is here concerned. God grant that we may employ it as He wills, in a matter of such vast importance. "O lead us unto Thee, the hidden Well, With Thee alone, there hidden are on high And they who drink of joys Thy Hand supplied, 1 I Cor. XV. 19. 2 Rom. viii. 18. 3 Baptistery, pt. iv. p. 102, IN SERMON XLI. THE PURPOSE OF DISORDER. (FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT.) Ps. CXLVIII 8. Wind and storm fulfilling His Word. N this Psalm, written for use in the Jewish service immediately after the return from the Captivity in Babylon, all the works of God, both on earth and in heaven, are summoned to praise the Creator as best they may. The heavenly bodies, the spiritual intelligences who inhabit the heavens, the earth with its various forms of life, culminating in man, are to praise Almighty God by unconscious obedience to the law which governs them, or by conscious acknowledgment of its Author, as the case may be. The sun and moon, the stars, the fire and vapour, the snow and hail, the wild beasts and the cattle, the birds and reptiles, and, in their magnificent freedom, so perfect in its obedience, the holy angels,-these all do obey the law of the Creator. There are fallen spirits who yield Him no obedience; whilst man lives on the frontier between obedience and rebellion. 66 It might at first sight seem that there are forces in nature which have escaped from God's rule, and are in insurrection against it, since they bring upon His world destruction and death. And therefore, when the Psalmist names storm and wind," he carefully adds, "fulfilling His Word." The storm and wind, he maintains, although somewhat against appearances, do obey God's Will; but appearances may point so much the other way that the fact can hardly be taken for granted, and requires an explicit statement. Wind and storm, seemingly the outbreak of anarchy in the midst of the realm of order, are yet in reality the expression of the same Perfect Will as that on which they violently innovate. His Word." "Wind and storm fulfilling I. "Fulfilling His Word! We may remember, some of us, a walk through a park on the morrow of a hurricane. Leaves, twigs, branches, wrenched violently from their trunks, strew the soil in every direction. Oaks which have stood erect, perhaps since the days of the Plantagenets, now lie prostrate. Nor is vegetable life the only sufferer. The eye rests on what may remain of young birds dashed from their shattered nests upon the ground, or perhaps, here and there, of an animal which had run for shelter beneath the cover of a tree already tottering to its fall. Everywhere we are met with a scene of ruin, which nature, with her patient energy, will take years to repair. Or we are on the sea-coast. The angry waves are subsiding; and as we watch them, they presently lay at our feet the timbers of what a few hours ago was a home of human beings; and then one and another fragment of a ship's furniture is floated up; and then perhaps, at last, a human body, so bruised and gashed by its rude contact with the rocks as to be barely recognizable. And then, as we walk on, we meet a bewildered mother, with her infant child. She is going to find that her fears are too well grounded. That corpse which we have just left will tell her that she and her infant are alone in this world, and that she will never again hear the voice or look into the eyes which have made her young life so bright and joyous. 66 Fulfilling His Word!" Somehow or other, then, His Word is fulfilled in this devastation and disfigurement of that which His Hands have made; and the agent which inflicts it obeys some law, as regular as that which governs the motion of a planet, although with more complex conditions. In its early history this earth seems to have been the scene of a series of catastrophes ; each of them the product of existing laws, tending to prepare a home for higher forms of life. God-we may dare so to speak of His works in nature as distinct from His action in the moral world-God might have ordered it otherwise; but He has, in fact, made death the precursor and the servant of life, at least almost everywhere in nature. Alike in the vegetable and the animal worlds, the dead furnish nourish |