one should look forward with complacency to his entrance upon such a heaven, without a growing conformity in his character here to that which he believes and rejoices to believe shall be his condition hereafter. He cannot look with pleased expectancy to such a place, without gathering the radiance of its virtues upon his soul; and if, amid the crosses and fatigues of a treacherous world, this be habitually the hope by which he is sustained-then, as surely as by any law of his moral or sentient constitution, this also is the hope by which he will be sanctified.

Before quitting this subject, let me simply advert to a cause, that serves very much to aggravate the struggle of a Christian here below, and to expose him to a still more acute sense than he might otherwise have had, of that deadness and deficiency from the spiritual life, under which even Paul and his converts are represented as groaning inwardly. What I allude to, though perhaps it looks like an excrescence from the main subject of these remarks to allude to it at all, is the way in which an aspiring Christian must be weighed down, as to all his holy and heaven-born tendencies-by the engrossments of business-by the multitude of hours that he consumes every day among the attentions and labours of a pursuit, along which he never meets with any one of the influences of sacredness-by the exhaustion in which this lands him on each recurring evening-and by the call that he feels to lie upon him, of giving the first and earliest vigour

of his necessary repose to the very toils, that so spent and secularised him yesterday. To a man who has been visited with any unction upon his soul from the upper sanctuary, I cannot figure a heavier burden or a sorer discomfort than this; and just as we have thought it right occasionally, even from the pulpit, to protest against the keen and busy and almost gambling adventure of an overtrading age-so would we protest against that total absorption of spirit, that overwhelming load upon all its faculties, that utter alienation from better things, which must ever accrue from an undue and over-driven employment. The two evils work in fact to one another's hands. The man who trades beyond the compass of his means, gives himself more to do than he can well overtake; and so has to labour at the desk of his counting-house, or to bustle among markets, or to run to and fro among customers and correspondents at a distance, beyond the compass of his time or his physical strength and so, in the neglect of all spiritual cultivation, his heart becomes a wilderness, and his family ceases to profit by his instructions or his example, and Christianity goes to utter waste on a mind thus overrun with the cares and the keen ambitions of a perishable world, and the good seed of the word of God is choked and overborne-And all from what? from the temptation that he has given way to of extending, and that to undue dimensions, a business that, within safe and moderate limits, might have yielded him a quiet and comfortable

passage through this land of vanity. There never was so cruel a sacrifice as this-of all the snugness and tranquillity that he might have perpetuated, in the character of a thriving well-conditioned, though withal perhaps a plain and unambitious citizen— had he only not adventured himself on the high and slippery places of daring speculation; and given up his domestic evenings, and his unbroken Sabbaths, and the perennial contentment that used to flow within his bosom, and his simple gratifications, and all the quiet opportunities that within the shelter of an humbler but happier sphere he would have enjoyed for communion with a present God and the preparations for a future eternity. Be assured, that there is a limit which ought to be laid on the number and extent of the services, that are rendered to the great divinity of the place. The commerce of the world cannot be pushed beyond a certain barrier; and the share that each individual takes of it cannot be so pushed either without the ruin of his fortune, or at all events, the utter ruin of a mind wholly given over to a most deceiving and a most dangerous idolatry. Take pity on yourselves. Take pity on your clerks and journeymen and apprentices. Offer not the encroachment of one moment upon their Sabbaths; and even be careful through the week, lest they be drudged and worn out of all energy for a far nobler service and a far higher interest than your own. There is nought for which I more admire the Bible, than the experimental sagacity

wherewith it pronounces on all the habits and temptations and characteristics of human life in each of its varieties—a sagacity that might still be recognised even in modern days; and though the apostle had lived in our city, and spent years in the capacity of a student or a spectator on the exhibitions of our nature that he found in it, he could not have more happily described the wretchedness and the folly of extreme mercantile ambition, than in this passage to Timothy-" But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil-which while some have coveted after they have pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

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LECTURE LVIII.

ROMANS, viii, 26, 27.

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God."

VER. 26. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.'

It would appear from the first clause of this verse, that the great subject of labour and sore anxiety to Christians, and under which they groan inwardly, is their deficiency from holiness; and the great subject of their hope, is the perfect holiness that awaits them in heaven. But, additionally to this expectation of the future, the apostle also tells us here that there is partly a deliverance at present a foretaste of that which they are looking forward to; and from the nature of the foretaste, we may infer the nature of the anticipation. Now the benefit that they have in possession is help against their infirmities; and so the benefit which