on that promised inheritance, which is a joint heirship with Jesus Christ. No higher reward can be desired or proposed, to encourage our hearts under trials, and animate our exertions in duty. Let us all yield ourselves to be drawn by the cords of divine love, which has been wonderfully displayed, and cheerfully submit to the “glorious gospel of the blessed God." Let us also take heed that we do not "receive the grace of God in vain,”—that we do not think lightly of religious truths, nor neglect the things that belong to our everlasting peace.

But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.

THE young man of whom St. Matthew makes this remark, appears not to have been vicious, but simply worldlyminded. He had kept the commandments. He had observed the common rules of justice and temperance. But when required to go on to perfection, and give his very heart and soul to God, he drew back. The demand was too high. He was not the slave or lover of vice, but he was not ready to become the ardent and devoted lover of virtue.

It is so with many of us. We are not ready to yield ourselves the slaves of sin, but neither are we ready to give ourselves to the pursuit of great excellence. And we compound the matter by observing with considerable regularity and attachment the forms of religion, but giving the heart, and every warm and devoted feeling, to the world. In a word, very many who would revolt at the idea of vice, are willing to be worldly minded.-It may be a less sin and a less evil,-but it is not a sin of doubtful character of which they are guilty, who resolve with themselves that though they will not, on many accounts, run into

great and open vice, yet they will take the world easily as it passes, they will be no examples of strictness, they will partake freely of its offered pleasures up to the very limits of allowable indulgence. A determination of this kind is full of treason against the nature which God has given us, and against his will. He wills our moral exaltation and perfection, our transformation into his image. The worldly minded chuse to retain their likeness to that which is of the earth, and thus, as effectually as the vicious, though, in another way, cross and defeat the purposes of God.

This is not stated beyond the truth, nor beyond the scripture estimate of the grossness of the sin. "If any man love the world," says St. John, "the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but of the world." The love of the world is exclusive and engrossing. If it takes possession of the heart, the saying of the apostle is infallibly verified; the love of the Father cannot exist, or thrive there. It is extruded or overlaid. The worldly minded are bent upon some project, or pursuit, or pleasure, which absorbs and fills the mind, and for the time satisfies the desires. The soul does not crave any thing more or better; and if it be occasionally sad and discontented, the recurrence of its customary resources and objects of satisfaction restores its tranquillity. A regular routine of successive duties or pleasures occupies it so entirely, that what relates to its spiritual and future interests finds no entrance, can gain not a moment's attention. The amazing fact, though speculatively admitted, that the soul is to live after death, is as little considered as any other of the most ordinary character. The reflection that the way in which life is past, though very pleasant now, may be followed by remote consequences of pain that shall infinitely outweigh whatever passing joy it may afford this reflection seems never to interupt its festivity or its busy occupations.

Levity is a frequent characteristic of the worldlyminded. We may indeed often meet with the sedate and methodical professional or business man, whose mind is fully set upon this world, and wholly thoughtless upon another; but the more frequent examples of worldly mindedness are those whose worldliness is accompanied or produced by great levity, thoughtlessness, thirst for excitement and pleasure. But however this may be, I am now only concerned to say, that all the elements of happiness with the worldly minded are found in what relates to the well being in the present life,-to the pleasure of the body, to the attainment of power or wealth, to the gratification of pride or vanity. It is not necessary in order to constitute a worldly mind, that it derives all its happiness from the sources of this world; it is sufficient that it relies on them principally and most firmly. He is a bad man, whose bad deeds outnumber his good ones; he is a covetous man, whose mean and narrow actions are more than his generous and just ones; he is an ill tempered man, whose prevalent humor is pettish or surly; he is a sensual man, who thinks more of the indulgence of appetite than of the culture of the mind and heart; and he too, is a worldly man, who loves the world better and more than those things that are better than and above the world; whose thoughts dwell more upon it, whose affections fasten more upon it, than upon those things which in his heart he still knows to be infinitely more worth loving.

But a word more is not needed to show what a worldly mind is, or wherein it consists. If it be what I have described, it is wholly opposed to the existence and growth of religion in the soul, and is in no case consistent with a christian hope, and is accompanied with so much doubt and anxiety as to be the source of but little comfort.

I. In what way then, let me ask, if it is so dangerous, does it obtain its bad supremacy?

The encroachments of a worldly mind are gradual; its growth is slow, but sure and regular; its dominion is established through plausible appearances and pretences.

1. A devotion to business, the pursuit of one profession by which a livelihood is to be secured, or a reputation to be gained, is a broad avenue for the entrance of worldlymindedness. It is strictly true, though it may sound paradoxical, that the most faithful discharge of the duties of our callings, is attended with peculiar danger as it respects the religious affections and a right state of the soul. For it is apt to beget in time a total neglect of, and indifference to any considerations, but such as relate to worldly prosperity and promotion. So that he who entered life with a proper observance of both his religious and moral duties, preserved a due balance between what he owed to man and to God; has often ended it the veriest slave of the world; totally absorbed by it, wholly careless of any thing besides or beyond it. Yet so gradual and slow was the progress of the change, that he was not aware of it ; he was not aware that his virtues were gradually changing into vices; that what tended at first to make him respectable and honored, was at last, from being carried to an extreme, to make him wretched, and the foe of his best and highest interest. Yet such has often been the issue. And the lesson to be derived from the fact is, not that religion is hostile to the moral virtues, but that we are criminal in permitting those virtues to run into vices, and even a right interest in temporal pursuits, to draw away the soul wholly from God.

Let me not be misunderstood. We are doubtless to love the world, its duties and callings; but it is equally plain that we are not to love them too much or too long. It is our particular business to ascertain where the virtue of loving rightly ends, and the vice of loving too well begins. It can form no apology for worldliness, that we were occupied industriously with the regular business of our station. For the soul, though made for earth, was made for Heaven too; and those duties are equally demanded of it which fit it for the one as for the other. He does but half his work, who lives but for this world, though he lives well and honorably for it. It is just as