Now it is the inward disposition of the soul that decides its happiness or misery. It is so here. The body makes little difference. A soul possessed of heaven's own peace, is little shaken by the world's jars, or by the trembling of its clay tenement. A soul morally diseased, or ruled by selfish passions, or at variance with God and holiness, would be wretched in a body of iron nerves, or under features cast in the finest mould. The elements of our real life-the light or darkness in which we walk -the joys or griefs we feel-are not visible in the outward form. So that we inevitably conclude that—in the body or out of the body, it matters not-the happiness of our being depends mainly on the soul. Death will take away nothing from, and add nothing to, what is stored up in the soul. It will only rob the spirit that leaned on material things, and diverted itself by sensual indulgence or worldly association or outward forms, of the staff on which it leaned, and fling it back on itself, on its own spiritual bankruptcy, on its own meagre and dull society and weariness of existence, from which it once fled to the giddiest follies of show and pageantry. This refuge will be denied it. It can no longer go forth like the evil spirit of which we read, even into dry places, seeking rest which is never found. The dry places will be wanting. The soul can no more divert itself by eye, ear, or taste, but only sit down to the banquet of its own thoughts, and pluck the fruits from trees of its own planting.

Here, a wicked man will contrive, by the body's help, to get on with a kind of comfort. He will go out of himself. Intolerant of his own company, and wretched in it, he rushes to books, shows, balls, theatres, pugilistic encounters. He turns his back on himself and goes

abroad. But crumble off the instruments by which the soul converses with the external world, let it sink into itself, and then do you hasten and insure the result of making a man's happiness. or misery correspond to his moral being. The image in the mirror will not be more true. Then the passions which, like envy, gnawed the bosoms that cherished them, will have no check.

Now put this disembodied spirit on the track of an endless existence, without any positive infliction, but only just left to itself. Character, poured liquid into the mould of seventy years, has become cast iron. Habit is second nature, and confirms nature. How long must one wait before the soul, self-alienated from God, and thus excluded from every holy and pure joy flowing from divine communion, with tastes and longings and appetites that crave their old indulgence but are denied it forevermore, with habits of diverting and engrossing itself in what the crumbling body denies it access to henceforth-how long before it will sink under the intol erable burden and count conscious existence itself a curse and a perpetual torture?

Will it help the matter to take note how long it takes a man to become disgusted with himself and the world and his own existence here or rather how soon he runs through the world as he runs through his fortune - how soon with sun and moon and stars and flowers and feasts and dance and jests to help adjourn the crisis, it comes upon him? Was Lord Chesterfield, the prince of wits and gentlemen, a fool? Did he rush on a blind fate? And yet hear him, as if he had caught the echo of Solomon's "vanity of vanities," declaring that as for the rest of his life's journey, he meant to sleep it out in his carriage!

A man wants more than his wit, or fortune, or nobility, or philosophy, to reach hopefully, and peacefully, and cheerfully, the close of his three score years and ten. Old age that follows a reckless youth and a stormy manhood is apt to cling to a life it loathes, and to grow intolerably disgusted with an existence which it dreads to relinquish. Those former delights charm no more. The full soul loathes the honeycomb. The creature of fashionable folly is satiated, cloyed. Nothing but religion can turn the shadows of its declining years into the dawning twilight of immortal day.

If, then, it is folly, manifest and inexcusable, to plunge in youth into those follies and fashions, and indulge those tastes and form those habits, which will turn later life into an arid desert, and fill the soul with restless passions and discontent, how much greater and grosser the folly that wastes this springtime of existence, makes no provision for immortality, and flings the soul unfurnished upon the stern realities and sad experience of the life to

come.

You cannot doubt- -no man can-that the need of the disembodied spirit is that which gives to the soul here the peace of God and the blessedness of a renewed and holy nature. You cannot doubt-no man can—that the spiritual education which the soul receives on earth will cast its long shadows of curse or blessing over the immortality to come. You cannot doubt-no man canthat before every man is the awful possibility of an illimitable existence hereafter, when every added year shall press with a crushing weight of satiety and loathing on a soul left to itself, with no resources of divine or holy communion, but ever tossed on the restless waves of craving yet unsatisfied desires, and bitter or aching memories.

Will you then, an heir of immortality, pay less regard to the eternal years to come than to just this fleeting hour? A child, wilful and ungoverned, may rush into those paths of heedless pleasure which lead through the gates of dissipation to an infamous and wretched old age, if not to an early doom, and to a grave of shame-but will you with your eyes open, scorn the claims of that religion, by the power of which alone, your soul can be received, and your spirit be fitted for the joys and service of the spirit world? Will you, building for eternity, lay the foundation of your immortal destiny on the sands and pebbles of time-on the indulgence of wanton or capricious tastes, on show and pageant and fashionable folly and heartless, godless mirth, which, ere you die, may sink beneath you, and leave you at the mercy of your own vain thoughts and accusing memories?

What will you need most as a member of the great heavenly family, as a citizen of the New Jerusalem, as one of that great throng who cast their crowns at the feet of Him that sitteth upon the throne, and rejoice in the light of his presence and the joy of his smile forevermore! What will you need most in such a sinless and blessed world as you must imagine that of the saved to be, with angels and the Redeemed for your associates, and with no access thenceforth to the sensual delights that amused and diverted on earth?

Will you need that holy education for which the Scriptures are the text-book-lessons from the life and lips of Him who said "learn of me?"-the penitent believing spirit that humbly relies on the grace of Christ, knows no will but God's, and by discipline has been brought to a loving and cheerful obedience?

XXIII.

CULTURE OF A HOLY LIFE.

"The boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars."-Ps. lxxx. 10.

IF you had presented you from some kind and generous

friend, some very precious shrub or plant which he had brought you from a distant land, and you had planted it in a favored spot in your garden, how carefully would you watch over it, and study how you might protect it from exposure, and encourage its growth! It might not yet have produced fruit or flower; it might, indeed, be little more than a sightless homely root, but assured that it was capable of a bloom as exquisite as nature can boast, or a fruit as luscious as the tropics can produce how deeply would you be affected by anything which tended to injure it!

Need I say that if the seed of God's truth has been planted in your heart, and the Spirit of God has caused it to germinate, you have there in that invisible garden of which God has constituted you the keeper, a plant that outrivals in worth anything that is brought from distant continents or the islands of the sea. Let it grow as it ought, and its bloom is richer than that of the rose; its fragrance is sweeter than that of orange bowers; and its fruits have no parallel even in the fabled gardens of the Hesperides. It comes from far. It is an exotic