in days like these may any one speak in scorn of the bloodstained banner that waves over the soldier of freedom and native land, but the expansive aims of a true philanthropy reach abroad to take the whole world in the embrace of their sympathies. One cannot love God without loving his brother also, and when you look on the humblest hero of charity, out of love to God seeking to teach the ignorant or uplift the degraded, what a shrivelled and contemptible caricature of greatness is the richest miser, the greatest warrior, the most surprising genius, a Croesus, a Pharaoh, a Cæsar, by his side.

A Christian life is the only one worth living on earth. Any other soon foams away to dregs-and such dregs! what they are, let a Dives, a Chesterfield, a Byron tell! Back of all the show and pageant, behind the close-drawn curtain, there are just "the tawdry ornaments, the tallow candles, the wires and pulleys," which the English nobleman described. A bubble's life is dignity to this. An actor's part is sincerity to this. To be true, earnest, effective to make existence here anything else than tragedy or mockery, rubbish or crime, we must adopt the Christian's standard.

XX.

THE FIRST AIM OF LIFE.

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness."-Matt. vi. 33.

OME of the gravest mistakes of human life grow out of

that should be put second, or putting second what should be first. There can properly be only one thing put first, and that is, religion-the fear of God. It is the foundation of character, and effort, and happiness. Nothing else will endure and sustain the superstructure of a true life.

Few, perhaps, will dispute this in words, but they do in deeds. They seem to me like one who in the winter time, when he proposes to build himself a magnificent palace, goes, not to the granite quarry, but, to the mountain glacier, and hews out, perhaps, enormous blocks of beautiful ice, and lays them deep and firm as a foundation. On this, he piles all his life-wrought materials, and within the structure he places all his treasures. Every thing he has, and his life itself, are staked on the durability of the ice blocks. For months there is, perhaps, no sign of yielding, but, at last, it may be suddenly, the whole structure sinks into a mass of rubbish.

Is this fancy? Is it not rather parable coined out of fact? What is the foundation on which thousands build?

What lies at the base of all their schemes and efforts? Are they not building on to-morrow's uncertainty, on some dream of success, on some fond imagination, iceblocks all, that will melt under the heat of trial, and leave all that rests on them to sink to ruin?

No one can build, no one has a right to build, till he can build on the Rock of Ages. We are all building, whether we know it or not, for eternity. We may put up wigwams or hospitals, tents or temples, but our aims and deeds, whatever they are, are the soul's palace, under the shelter or shadow of which it will dwell forever. The question with what we build is a grave one, but the question on what we build comes first. It matters little whether I use hay, wood and stubble, or marble and granite, if in either case they rest on quicksand. A great genius with splendid attainments makes a more imposing ruin, but a ruin nevertheless. He seems to me, without religion, like a magnificent arch supported on a wooden frame, with the keystone left out. It may stand for years, but its fate is just as sure as that of the props that support it.

Your first great duty is to shape your life to the great end for which it was given. Let religion draw the outline and then fill it up wisely and well. See that its scope is right. You may journey at railroad speed, but if you go the wrong way, there is no progress. You may toil long and hard, but if you weary yourself with vanity, it will amount to nothing. A life made up of rambling and zigzag will do very well if it ends where it began. One who spends his life in gazing at rockets will see little of stars and sun. Thousands live extempore, watching for the next meteor of politics, gain or fashion. Their future, so far as they note it, is just a

mirage of fancy, all this side the grave. They never ask, why am I here, what is my proper business, what is the great end I should ever keep in view? They ramble on with little thought of where their last yesterday will leave them. Life has no more shape to it than the gravitation of indolence, taste or circumstance gives it.

Or, if there is a plan, how often is it a false one! It would make a meteor of what should be a star. It would debase an heir of heaven to a millionaire, a tide waiter, or a fop. It would draw off talent and probation and even the river," the streams whereof make glad the city of God," into currents to turn the machinery that saws logs and weaves cotton. It would put the Bible under foot that it may stand on it and so reach higher to grasp the prize which the Bible forbids to seek. It would substitute gold for grace, and gain for godliness. It would fill God's temple with money-changers. It would sacrifice the soul's everlasting birthright to pamper the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.

This is a "Comedy of Errors" beyond any that the genius of the great dramatist ever invented; comedy that runs into deepest tragedy, that begins with a jest and ends with a sigh, that lulls to heedlessness and wakes to

remorse.

All this would not be of so much account if you could satisfy yourself that there was no God to judge you, no future existence for the soul, no high and glorious destiny to which God invites it, no capability by God's grace of turning this life into an introduction to the everlasting blessedness of heaven. But if any one to gratify you should attempt to prove this, with what horror would you regard him! You would feel that his argument was atheism and his logic despair. With a shudder you

would say,

"to corruption thou art my father, and to the worm thou art my mother and my sister."

Ah! it is not in man calmly and complacently to look upon such a doom. The soul shrinks from it as the flesh does from torture. We feel that we were made for something better. The instincts of our being crave immortality. There are moments when the bounds of time seem to us like the shell of the bird ere it spreads its wings. We can rise heavenward. The stars seem but the milestones of everlasting progress. The soul aspires to freedom from its fleshly chain. This life is the childhood of being, this world the perch whence we are to soar away.

Shall man then, when the light of revelation confirms. all this and more, be content with a meaner ambition than the heathen artist who said, "I paint for eternity?" Shall you, a child of God, be content with the heritage of a slave? Will you, with lips that can lisp "Our Father," pawn your birthright for a prodigal's portion? Will you, who may be even now a king and priest unto God, kindle the fires of Baal and do sacrifice to mammon? With joys even now offered, sweeter than Eden's fragrance, and with treasures in the love of God richer than gems and gold from uncounted mines, will you choose rather the sands of the world's deserts, and its apples of Sodom that are ashes to the taste?

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Sixty centuries empannelled on the jury give in that verdict. It pronounces him a fool who presumes to live without God and has no hope. He has not truly began to live who has not yet met the claims of his Maker. He may count his years by the score; his success by honors; his wealth by thousands; but these are all only autumn