I have had no success and no reward?" Does any one believe that such a case can possibly occur? Great as the obstacles in our way may be, does any man doubt that they will yield if we give only one half the time, patience, self-control, and vigorous discipline, which are squandered on inferior pursuits?

It is a great deal more to consider that, at any rate, amid all the obstructions both to will and to do, the measure required of us will be that we do what we can. What a rule of warning as well as of encouragement!

It is another great thought that the infinite beauty and worth of spiritual excellence may justify all the labors and struggles, the falterings and perils, by which it is achieved, just as the richness of the fruit justifies all the long and slow processes, the dews and the rains, the winds and the storms, amid which it is matured.

Once more, it is a further encouraging reflection that our present encounter with difficulties may have the most important bearing upon all our future progress, a bearing which only in the other world we may fully comprehend. If we shall then see that these difficulties stand connected with all just possession of ourselves, and that they were the needed teachers of watchfulness, patience, humility, prayer, self-discipline, and inward energy, it may be that the glorified spirit will see few

things for which it will more bless its divine Governor and Guide.

And finally, it is, I suppose, for all these reasons that the sacred writers give us repeatedly those remarkable texts, which show that while they recognized the fact that the religious life was a scene of struggle, they yet described it as a struggle that is spanned by the bow of hope. There is a ring both of warning and of courage in their words: "Take to yourselves the whole armor of God." "Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." "God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." "Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it until he receive the early and the latter rain." "Be ye also patient, for in due time ye shall reap if ye faint not." "Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."

SERMON IV.

THE SOUL.

"What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" MATTHEW xvi. 26.

THE institutions and habits of thought of the times before Christ regarded men chiefly in the mass. Their worth was estimated by a computation applied to them gregariously, as capable of bearing so many arms, or furnishing so many servile attendants in the retinue of the great. Now and then there might be an emperor, a general, a philosopher of sufficient importance to be counted as an integer; but most men were fractions so small that only when a large number were united were they counted at all.

With a dim faith in any existence hereafter, how could there be a higher idea of man than this? Where all thought is confined exclusively to the present scene alone, a thousand men seem of no more consequence than so many tenants of the mole-hill, or so many insects sporting in the warmth of a summer's sun.

But as soon as men came to have any assured

belief in a life beyond the grave, a life which will be of infinite duration, and may yield a priceless worth to each believing heart, they perceived that there are higher interests than those which concern men in the mass. A future mysterious destiny attached significance and importance to each individual; and the startling truth was announced, that even the whole outward world was not a measure of the worth of the soul.

When we speak of the worth of the soul, perhaps there is, with those who hear this language, an incredulous feeling arising from the question, Why do not souls generally show some signs of their worth now? If the soul of the beggar has an infinite value, how happens it that this value has reference only to a future life, where we cannot now measure it, or realize it? Why is not a little bit of this value apparent here upon earth, enough to keep him out of rags, enough to give some hint of his future greatness, enough to make him an interesting and hopeful being, and to awaken in our hearts some emotions of affection and respect?

Instead of this, as one may say, it seems as if the present system of the universe was utterly careless and wasteful of human souls, and treated them as things of absolutely no worth at all. There are at this moment three hundred millions of human beings living in a savage state, hardly one step above that of the brutes; and if each one of

them has a priceless soul, why for ages have they lived and died like the most worthless things on the face of the earth?

What a revelation is made by a walk through some overcrowded and filthy street in a great city! As we look down into the cellars, and up into the garrets, and find them filled with newborn human beings, more than one half of whom will be swept away by want, foul air, the cholera, the plague, while the most of those who grow up will wear out a few years in the lowest forms of existence, truly, if all these have souls for each of which a world must not be exchanged, why do they vegetate only like so many pestiferous weeds in the great field of humanity?

Thoughts like these may have perplexed us, and it may be well to look at them.

So far as the perplexity arises from the great number that are born into the world, we must not overlook the evident plan of the Divine Being to give the blessing of existence to as many as He can. In looking through God's works we find them everywhere teeming with life. There are creatures so infinitely small that to them the leaf of a tree is a continent, and a drop of water is an ocean; and every leaf and every drop is filled with them; nor is there marble so hard, nor fire so hot, nor frost so cold, nor spot in the whole universe so deserted, but it has myriads of living witnesses of the skill and beneficence of the Creator..