cence, infinite improvement, a conscience alive to every imperfection, does not the very freedom which we each feel is intrusted to us, proclaim, as with the very voice of God, "I have set a race before thee"? Yes, the mingling voices of conscience and Providence and nature admonish us that we are made for perpetual progress in knowledge, wisdom, and goodness, and by their ever-varied and powerful appeals are urging us upward and onward. Conscience, the whisper of God in the soul, his "most intimate presence in the world,” — is daily teaching and enforcing this lesson. It comes to us as often as morning returns, with its renewed opportunities of improvement and of benefi- it comes to us at noontide amidst the multitude of a Father's mercies, it comes to us sweetly at the even-tide of a well-spent day, solemnly at the close of a day misspent and wasted. The dissatisfaction which will steal over us in many an hour when we fancy we are doing much and yet fear we are doing nothing, the consciousness that when we have done all we are still unprofitable servants, the deep self-reproach we feel when any little progress we may haye made in wisdom or goodness is suffered to damp our zeal for further and nobler improvement, these are but so many tones in which conscience is daily reminding us for what we were created. Nothing short of moral perfection will satisfy the inward monitor, and give man the peace for which he strives and sighs. So - -- long as we offend, at least habitually, in one point, though we keep the whole law beside, we feel and should feel as if we were guilty of all. No obedience can atone for that one wrong trait or habit. Such is the teaching of conscience. Providence, by all the changes of our eventful lives, is repeating the lesson and the law, teaching us, as worldly treasures and comforts drop from us, like the leaves of summer, to live above the world, and labor for "an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away," reserved for them that patiently continue in well-doing. Nature, with her thousand voices, admonishes us to be diligent. Day unto day utters this speech, night unto night showeth knowledge of this, that we should be growing "wiser and better as life wears away.' Seasons, as they succeed each other, each reaping the benefit of its predecessor, admonish us thus to make each period of our moral life redound to higher progress in the next. How natural the exclamation which the prophet puts into the mouth of a slothful and sinful people "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved"! How many are often visited by uncomfortable reflections of this nature, — are compelled to say, as seasons and opportunities pass, not only that they are not saved, but that they are not even seriously seeking salvation! By such modes as these God is calling us to Christ, and he, in turn, is calling us to God, summoning us to be perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect. By the memory of the toil he underwent, the comforts he denied himself, the sorrows he suffered, that he might become a perfect and remain a pure man, might keep undimmed the image of God within his bosom, and leave us an example of what humanity aided from on high can bear and can achieve, by the disinterested devotion with which he bore and forbore, and accomplished all, by the war he waged even unto death with the sins that beset every mortal's pathway,— he is still entreating us to "run with patience the race that is set before us." From his bright abode he is beckoning us to tread the path which he has trod, and share the triumph he has won. He holds out to us a crown of glory, and says, "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in his throne." of conscience, It is very evi It cannot be that all these voices Christ and God are lost upon our ears. dent, if only from the pains we have to take to content ourselves without obeying it, that we hear the admonition and feel its force. True, our eyes are holden often, that we do not see the full beauty of Christ's character, the full glory of the prize of perfection; but this is not the worst,—our feet are holden by heavy weights, so that we cannot run, without tiring, the race marked out for us. Would we only lay aside every weight that now hangs about our hearts and encumbers our steps, we should run our race, not with patience only, but with joy. There is a weight of skepticism lying on the worldly mind,- a lurking doubt of the value and reality of religion, and a doubt of the attainability of holiness, arising from long-cherished low tastes and selfish purposes, as well as from daily contact with depraved example, which hangs like a mill-stone around the necks of many, and prevents their rising above the world. Talk to them of loving virtue for virtue's sake, doing duty because it is duty,—striving to be perfect as God is perfect and because he is, they will answer you with that shallow smile of worldly wisdom which seems to say, "All very beautiful; but we do not see any living examples amongst us of that disinterested . virtue, that high allegiance to duty, which you, in the simplicity of your heart, call on man to practise." It is this secret, this shallow skepticism which chains multitudes to the earth, conscious the while that they were born for heaven. They look upon the average goodness of the world as the standard at which they are to aim, and with which they are to rest satisfied. At most, they are satisfied to be as good as the best seem to them to be. And thus they naturally bring the standard down to their own level. Let any one who is laboring under a skepticism like this converse with his own heart in his better moments. He knows that virtue is something real,- that it is not a shade,that it is not a vain thing for man, because it is his only lasting good and real life. He knows that every man was made for virtue, is capable of generous virtue, and that to point to the imperfections and inconsistencies of presumed or pretended saints, as a proof that man is not called to be perfect, is pitiable sophistry. Let him turn his eyes away from the world a little while, and look unto Jesus. Contemplating his holy and harmless life, holy and undefiled, though spent in the midst of corruption, harmless, meek, and merciful, though embittered by perpetual persecution, let him remember that there is a pattern of what man might and should be. I know what reply the weakness of the flesh, backed by time-hallowed misrepresentations of our Saviour's nature, will make to such appeals. They will be pronounced presumptuous. I shall be reminded that Jesus was in a totally different sphere from ours, that he was endowed with miraculous gifts, and was made conscious, in some manner are." - to us wholly mysterious, of a special commission from on high. I nowhere read, however, nor do I believe, that his goodness was a miraculous gift, any more than all goodness is. I believe that it grew up to perfection through just such discipline as is appointed for us. I read that Jesus "was tempted in all points like as we I read that he prayed ;- why, if not for moral strength? I do not believe that his virtue was a mechanical or miraculous thing, - that he was merely a passive instrument of the Divine will. He had a will of his own, and he freely submitted it to God, saying, "Not my will, Father, but thine, be done!" The question is not, then, what sphere we are called to fill, but whether in that sphere we are not sacredly bound to manifest just such a spirit as Jesus did in his. We, too, have each a call and a commission from on high, as truly as Jesus had. Our faculties and our affections, which are the inspiration of God, and our position in the world, are a call from him, clearer and stronger, perhaps, than any outward call could be; and the very emotions of admiration and shame with which we follow our Saviour's history and unavoidably contrast its spirit with our own, are as good as the audible voice of the Author of our nature, saying, "Go, and do thou likewise." O, let not that dead weight of skepticism, that unmanly and irreverent distrust of our nature, our calling and our destiny, drag us down to the dust! Let this burden be dropped at the foot of Christ's cross, and consider whether there is no meaning in the word which says that he is the "Captain of our salvation"! But how many there are who even see the beauty of holiness, feel the worth of virtue, find no peace |