the kind purpose of God to man is finally frustrate and made of none effect. For man becomes to every good work and purpose, and most of all, to that great work and purpose of life, the correction of his own heart, useless. Then holy influences, and a Saviour and tan Gospel, and the world and life and time have been given in vain, no good has been done, no good can be hoped for, and like a barren tree, the man is good for nothing but to be cut down and cast into the fire.

If any man defile the temple of God' with impurity, says the Apostle, 'him will God destroy.' And lo! the work is accomplished. All in nature and in grace impure, no healthful pleasures left, the understanding, the conscience, the affections depraved, the heart separate from God, a greedy love of sin, and an utter and hopeless deadness to all the great purposes for which life was given. What yet remains to be destroyed? what yet remains of the fearful threat to be accomplished? What but the natural and necessary result of all this, the last draught of the cup of trembling, the fulfilment of that pregnant and terrible saying, 'everlasting destruction from the presence of God,' from the abode of love, from the light of heaven?

Knowing, therefore, the terrors of the Lord, my younger brethren, we persuade men. We do not speak to you on the score of expediency, nor tell you that vice will ruin your hopes in life, your health, your fortune and your reputation. But knowing God's just judgement on sin, knowing that he has so ordered our nature that sin at first defiles and at last destroys it,

6

we would fain persuade you to cast away the works of darkness, and glorify God in your bodies and spirits which are His.' We speak as unto wise men, judge

But we would not leave you here, we would set the fair side of the picture as well as the foul, blessing as well as cursing, the mercy as well as the terrors of the Lord, before you.

to the

So we remind you of the good gift of God to them who in a spirit of love to Him who died for them, and in humble reliance on His sacrifice and His promises, have given themselves up to the guidance of God's Holy Spirit, have been regenerated, and are constantly renewed by it. To them, pure, all things are pure.' God, who has so created man that vice in the natural order of things brings on ruin and destruction of all that is fair and lovely, has so created man too, that on that holiness to which under the Gospel dispensation man, by the free grace of God, may attain, there shall follow, as a condition and law of man's nature, happiness and enjoyment. True, the world is an evil world, it is full of change, and full of death, and full of sadness. And yet worse, it is full of sin, and the heart, the corrupted heart of man is like it, and full of sin too. Yet in the midst of the desert there are numberless green spots where the water springs, and the tree blossoms; there is a never ending flow of enjoyment provided by a gracious God for all the pure in heart. All their thoughts now flowing clear, from a clear Fountain flowing," they look round and seek for good, and find the

good they seek1. For there is good every where for the heart that can taste, and beauty for the eye that can discern it. God's hand is visible to the refined perception of purity, where the gross vision of the sensual will pass it unobserved. Yea! the whole

complex of human life, the whole checquered scene of human passions, and human virtues, and human woes, the pure regard with tranquil and unaverted eyes, untainted by the evil it presents, and so reaping from it those precious lessons of instruction which a wise Creator provided that it should teach to the pure and thoughtful heart. For they have obtained the glorious habit by which sense is made subservient still to moral purposes, auxiliar to divine1.'

To the pure,' then, all things are pure.' In the midst of an evil world, the fair face of nature, the calm and tranquil joys of domestic life, the deathless products of genius, the works of the poet, the painter and the sage, the interchange of thought in society, and its indulgence in solitude, and holy friendship and faithful, fervent love, these are all pure to the pure; pure sources of joy and gladness to the unpolluted heart. And yet more and higher than all, there come to them joys which the defiled and the unbeliever can never know. To them and them alone belongs the antepast of heaven, the heavenly joy of contemplation and prayer. The pure in heart can think with ever-kindling and ever-growing love of the purity, the goodness and the love of God; and soar

1 Wordsworth.

ing on seraph wings, can anticipate, as far as mortal frailty may, the time when faith shall expire in certainty, and hope in joy. The pure in heart alone can in some sort understand, adore and love the might and majesty of that pure love which offered itself as a sacrifice for sinful man on the Cross, for they alone are free from those base and polluting and defiling passions which render the heart callous to the sufferings and joys of others, and concenter every thought and wish and hope in self. Their's is indeed the vision and the faculty divine.

They look into

the life of things. That transformation of their nature into the perfect image of God is begun on earth, which is to be completed in heaven; and they will be changed from glory to glory until they see God as he is.

But how and when shall man, frail and corrupt by nature, attain to such purity, and then to such promises? Not by his own strength assuredly, nor by any strength but that which was won for him by the sacrifice of the Cross, the strength which will cheer the desponding and despairing heart, strengthen the feeble knees, and raise up the hands that hang down; the help of God's Holy Spirit, holy and making holy, purifying as well as pure. It is He and He alone that can create a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us. If we will not slight and grieve and quench Him, it is He that hath promised to make our hearts His temple, and that has told us that holiness becometh His house for ever.

And when shall the glorious work be commenced? Oh! say not that youth is stormy, and that the age

of passion comes in clouds and tempests. Listen to the tribute which one great spirit of this age has paid to another, speaking not of a self-righteous man or a mere moralist, but recording of one who has ever lived in the light of Christian faith and piety, that he 'passed from the innocence of youth to virtue, not only free from all vicious habit, but unstained by any act of intemperance or the degradations akin to intemperance.' Well has he added that 'it is not easy to estimate the effects which, by God's grace, the example of a young man as highly distinguished for strict purity of disposition and conduct as well as for intellectual powers may produce on those of the same age and pursuits as himself. Others learn to feel as degrading, what they before knew to be wrong, and to know that an opposite conduct which they might otherwise chuse to consider as the easy virtue of cold and selfish prudence, may be combined with the noblest emotions and views, the most disinterested and ima ginative1,' as it assuredly arises from the highest source, from love to God, and from a sense of the inestimable worth and value of that nature, which however corrupted now, was at first created, was then redeemed, and is yet sanctified by God Himself.

But not only may its sanctification be effected in the season of youth, but that is the fittest and most appropriate season. It is for no other reason that the wise man so earnestly urges upon us that we should ‘remember our Creator in the days of our youth.' It is not

Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria, speaking of Southey.