Guard it with jealous honor.

Keep it pure

from the stains of sin. Feel that no present pleasure and no worldly wealth can be an equivalent for the canker of lasting shame and remorse; and that you are rich, though with nothing else you can call your own, rich beyond all the gold of the world, so long as you have the treasure of a soul to bear through eternity an approving witness to you.

SERMON V.

THE DIVINE IN MAN.

"Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." 1 JOHN i. 3.

ARE not these very bold words? I should think they were bold words if only great men had been named; if one should say, my fellowship is with Plato and Milton. How much more bold when applied to Almighty God, and to the Lord Jesus Christ! It was indeed a great thing for the Apostle to say, our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son.

And yet there must be something in man which makes such a fellowship possible. The distance between some beings is unbridged and impassable. What fellowship has the oyster with the bird? What fellowship has the horse with an angel? The distance between man and God is not so great. There is a divine side to humanity.

If man

We all know there is another side too. has aspirations that run up to Christ and God, he has likewise lusts and passions that run down to beasts and devils. History has a great deal to say of these lower connections; our experience. of

life forces upon us some knowledge of them; we may find their traces, if we will search our hearts, in our own bosom sins.

But for the present let us look to the other side of humanity, its higher side, its divine side, opening towards God, connecting with God, making the fact of a communication, a tie, a fellowship, yes, and even as the Scripture expresses it, a oneness with Him, possible.

I know that some regard all views like these here alluded to as mere sentimentalism, fit for poetry, or a subject for a young girl's composition. They deem nothing certain but what the hard experience of life teaches, what is beaten into them by the strifes, and selfishness, and sins of the world.

But who of us would not say, not only that this is a one-sided aspect of the case, and the worst side of it, but that it is also the most deceitful side of it. In the noise and dust and struggle of the world, it is only when we get out into clear sunshine and quiet air that we can see our real position; and so, on the subject before us, till we get above the smoke and clamor of temporary passions and interests, into the bright and serene air of everlasting truths and principles, we cannot know who we are, and what relations we sustain.

If it be asked what are the evidences of this divine side of humanity, might I not appeal to the consciousness which every man has that he was

made for something better than the business of this world, however necessary and useful that business may be. He cannot help feeling that this does not fill out his ideal, nor exhaust his capacity, nor satisfy his longings. In his best moments he is conscious that his worldly employments are to his powers what playthings are to children -something to occupy the present time, while a nature far larger than they lies dimly behind them, and will soon rise above them. It is that aspiring nature which has fellowship with God.

In this freedom of my will-free, while instinct and necessity impel all other creatures, free to take its own way, and to be in a humble but real sense a cause, like God Himself,-is there not something divine in this?

In my perception of the Right, in my love of the Good, have I not the tokens of the image of God? The Right and the Good are the very essence of God's being; and so far as I have them I am admitted into God's family, and am a partaker of his very nature.

Look to the fact that man can conceive of the Perfect. An imperfect being himself, surrounded by imperfect objects, in the midst of an imperfect creation, he has the idea of something perfect stamped on his soul. That he is capable of having a perception of that idea, that he can reach up to it, get hold of it, and take it into his soul-here is a tie that connects man with the All-perfect One, and reveals the divine side of humanity.

may

The same remark be made of our conception of the Infinite. What a wonder that a finite being, surrounded with finite objects, should have in his soul the conception of something infinite! Whence came it? Who put it there? What is its meaning? Who can foresee all the growth of that seed? What an intimation and pledge of something divine in man!

When now, from looking to the soul itself, we look to its history in the world, when we look to the life of man, ignorant, benighted, and wicked as he has been, do we see no proofs that there is a divine side to humanity?

There have been sainted and holy men in the world, men who the longer they have lived have put off more and more the imperfections of humanity, and parting from the last coil of mortality they seem to have gone to the closest fellowship with God. There have been such men. Here is one fact. Who can deny it, or who can fathom all its significance ?

The ancients raised great and good men to the honors of divinity. They deified them. Their apotheosis what was it but a dictate of the instinct of humanity that in its best development it grows upward to be like God?

Look next to the meaning of worship. Consider what a large space worship has held in all human history. It has everywhere been one of man's leading wants and occupations. I know how some