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the eyes and the pride of life-or, if it be, might we not live in nobler dreams than these? The poets and prophets, the wise men, and the scribes, though they have told us nothing about a life to come, have told us much about the life that is now. They have had they also, their dreams, and we have laughed at them. They have dreamed of mercy, and of justice; they have dreamed of peace and good-will; they have dreamed of labour undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed; they have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in store; they have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of providence in law; of gladness of parents, and strength of children, and glory of grey hairs. And at these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held them for idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we accomplished with our realities? Is this what has come of our worldly wisdom, tried against their folly? this, our mightiest possible, against their impotent ideal? or, have we only wandered among the spectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of the tombs, instead of visions of the Almighty; and walked after the imaginations of our evil hearts, instead of after the counsels of Eternity, until our lives-not in the likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of hell-have become "even as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away"?

Does it vanish then? Are you sure of that?—sure that the nothingness of the grave will be a rest from this troubled nothingness; and that the coiled shadow, which disquieteth itself in vain, cannot change

life that now is, as you

into the smoke of the torment that ascends for ever? Will any answer that they are sure of it, and that there is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither they go? Be it so; will you not, then, make as sure of the are of the death that is to come? Your hearts are wholly in this world-will you not give them to it wisely, as well as perfectly? And see, first of all, that you have hearts, and sound hearts, too, to give. Because you have no heaven to look for, is that any reason that you should remain ignorant of this wonderful and infinite earth, which is surely and instantly given you in possesion? Although your days are numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary that you should share the degradation of the brute, because you are condemned to its mortality; or live the life of the moth, and of the worm, because you are to companion with them in the dust? Not so; we may have but a few thousand of days to spend, perhaps hundreds only-perhaps, tens; nay, the longest of our time and best, looked back on, will be but as a moment, as the twinkling of an eye; but yet, we are men, not insects; we are living spirits, not passing clouds. He maketh the winds his angels ; the flaming fire, his ministers. And shall we do less than these? Let us do the work of men while we bear the form of them, and as we snatch our narrow portion of time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow but glorious inheritance of passion out of Immortality—even though our lives be as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

But there are some of you who believe not this— who think this cloud of life has no such close-that it is to float, revealed and illumined, upon the floor of heaven in the day when He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him. Some day, you believe, within these five or ten or twenty years, for every one of us the judgment will be set, and the books opened. If that be true, far more than that must be true. Is there but one day of judgment? Why, for us every day is a day of judgment—every day is a Dies Iræ, and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of the west. Think you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave are opened. It waits at the doors of your houses-it waits at the corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment—the creatures whom we crush are our judges the moments we fret away are our judges— the elements that feed us judge as they ministerand the pleasures that deceive us judge as they indulge. Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear the Form of them, since those lives are Not as a vapour, and do Not vanish away.

"The work of men”—and what is that? Well, we may any of us know it very quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it is a mortal one —we want to keep back part of the price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only mischief in a cross was the weight of it—as if it was

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only a thing to be carried, instead of to be crucified upon. "They that are His have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts." Does that mean, think you, that in time of national distress, of religious trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of humanity -none of us will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put themselves to any wholesome work, none take so much as a tog of lace off their footman's coats, to save the world? Or does it rather mean, that they are ready to leave houses, lands, and kindreds-yes, and life, if need be? Life! -some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless as we have made it. But "station in Life " -how many of us are ready to quit that? Is it not always the great objection, where there is question of finding something useful to do-"We cannot leave our stations in Life"?

Now, those of us who really cannot-that is to say, who can only maintain themselves by continuing in some business or salaried office, have already something to do; and all that they have to see to, is that they do it honestly and with all their might. But with most people who use that apology, "remaining in the station of life to which Providence has called them," means keeping all the carriages, and all the footmen and large houses they can possibly pay for; and, once for all, I say that if ever Providence put them into stations of that sort-which is not at all a matter of certainty-Providence is just now very distinctly calling them out again. Levi's station in life was the receipt of Custom, and Peter's

the shore of Galilee, and Paul's the antechambers of the High Priest, which "station in life" each had to leave with brief notice.

And, whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, those of us who mean to fulfil our duty ought first, to live on as little as we can; and secondly, to do all the wholesome work for it we can, and to spend all we can spare in doing all the sure good we

can.

And sure good is first in feeding people, then in dressing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, or any other subject of thought.

I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let yourselves be deceived by any of the common talk of indiscriminate charity. The order to us is not to feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious hungry, nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply to feed the hungry. It is quite true, infallibly true, that if any man will not work, neither should he eat-think of that, and every time you sit down to your dinner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, before you ask a blessing, "How much work have I done to-day for my dinner "—but the proper way to enforce that order on those below you, as well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest people to starve together, but very distinctly to discern and seize your vagabond, and shut your vagabond up out of honest people's way, and very sternly then see that, until he has worked, he does not eat. But the first thing is to

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