younger days, that the picture was a correct one. To-night, we have been among a very different sort of preachers. Donne, Hall, Hammond, Taylor, Baxter, were all men in right earnest Christian men, deep in the life of God. They did not discharge themselves of their sermons as the condition of holding their dignities; they preached in high and in low positions, in ease and in danger, in sunny and in stormy times, with the same fervour, the sau:earlessness; through all their individual peculiarities breaks ever forth the same love to God and to human souls; whether high Church or low, in the Cavalier or Roundhead camp, it may be safely said of every one of them, this man felt that he had a Father above him; he knew that his Redeemer liveth; he spoke by the power of the Holy Ghost, who dwelt within him. And you must not imagine that these were all, or nearly all, the great preachers of the century. Mary names, I doubt not, have risen to some of my hearers' minds as I have been speaking; but time has compelled me to pass them by; the learned and pious Hammond, the faithful chaplain of the unfortunate king Charles I.; Howe, the saintly author of the "Blessedness of the Righteous," the "Living Temple," and the "Funeral Sermons for Queen Mary, and for Mr. Baxter;" and others, whom I would fain have taken in. When I think of such as these, and look on the times in which we live; when I see the stir that is happily once again taking place about preaching, and watch, not without anxious concern, the progress and prospects of the movement, I am tempted, I own, to breathe a fervent wish for my Church and my country, that God may send us the like of them again. VARIETIES OF SPIRITUAL LIFE. THREE summers since I was enjoying the scenery of the Tyrol,—and, on the border of that land of beauty, spent a day at the glorious Koenig See. Shut in by mountains,-on one side gently shelving down, on the other abruptly shooting up, the lake lies like a grandly bordered mirror to reflect the brilliance of the summer sun. Amidst the silence of a spot which spoke sublimely to the heart, and the solitude which peopled the mind with pensive thoughts,while open to the awe-inspiring influences of nature, suggestive of deep imaginings about the infinite, the eternal, and the divine,-my eye was caught by innumerable tiny forms and colours on the surface of the water. They were prismatic effects of sun-light on the ripples, as if broken chains and rings, of gold and green and crimson, were thickly scattered there: while weeds and water plants were plain enough beneath, covering the bottom of the lake. Little creatures and images were they of the glorious light above, refracted and broken on the wavy surface spread below. When sitting down to prepare this Lecture I thought of that picture of the Koenig See, as no unapt illustration of my theme to-night-the Varieties of Christian Spiritual Life -for all those varieties show reflections of the Sun of Righteousness on human hearts,-many-coloured, many-formed, imperfect, broken, confused, changing, with things beneath of a different kind, the weeds of fallen human nature. Without detaining you for a moment from our large subject, let me direct your thoughts first, to facts illustrative of the varieties; secondly, to powers which cause these facts; thirdly, to something like a classification under which the varieties may be ranged; and fourthly, the lessons which the whole review suggests. I. Amongst the names illustrative of the varieties of spiritual life in Christendom, the first which I shall notice is that of CYPRIAN. He may be regarded as a type of spiritual life common in his own day, and, allowing for modified developments, of great prevalence, as to its distinguishing features, in after times. We have a bundle of letters preserved, written by this remarkable man. The first which we open-that which lies on the top-an epistle to Donatus, gives us a key to Cyprian's character. He is at Carthage, writing in a beautiful garden, during the vintage,—the shoots and tendrils of the vines, shaken by mild autumnal breezes, forming an arbour. He looks from his retreat upon what he calls "the billowy world." The state of society is terrible. The Roman empire is thoroughly demoralized. War, banditti, gladiators, the immoralities of the theatre, and the injustice of the forum, oppression on the one hand, and servility on the other; the covetousness and luxury of the rich, the want and misery of the poor, are the only things which Cyprian can see, as his anxious eye glances over what lies around him. From that world he feels himself to be separated by divine grace. His pleasures are of a purer description. As the sun goes down, psalms and |