them some goal, and with indomitable will bore down opposition till the cause was won.

For remember this: it is not the man with the greatest intellect or the most splendid imagination that comes to the front in the race of life; but the man of determined purpose, of firm resolve, who sets before him a thing to be done, be it great or small, high or low, and does it—who most truly can be said to spend a successful life.

Some among you have heard of that system of philosophy which denies or doubts the existence of an external world, and asserts that all we know or can know of that world are the sensations, which in its various phases it produces in our individual selves. I say nothing of the truth or falsehood of such a theory when considered in itself, but in connection with our subject this evening, it contains, practically at any rate, a germ of truth; for the world, as we find it, is the world as we make it by our thoughts and words and actions in our individual lives. Determine to be noble and to see noble things, and you will see them; determine to be great and to see great things, and you will see them; set before you thus early in your life something to do, and determine to do it, come what will, and the world for you will be transformed into that.

Jungles and briers and forest trees opposed the progress of the pioneers of civilization in the new

world; but on they pressed, and behold! now they rule a vast continent.

But the weak, the vacillating, the purposeless, are like the hero of the Roman poet, who rushed about wildly cutting ghostly shadows with his sword; or like the traveller floundering after false fires as they beckon him onwards into the ever-deepening

morass.

Ask yourselves to-night, What is my aim in life? What am I going to be? Not what profession are you going to adopt, though you ought to think of that early; but what are you going to be in a truer sense? What is your aim? What goal have you before you, or have you none? Is your life to be sublime, or is it to be contemptible? Is it to be that of a hero, or as that of the beasts that perish? Is it to be one of reason and light, or of sensuality and darkness? Can you answer me as Jesus answered His parents, "Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?"

Some of you are leaving school this term; I shall have no opportunity, perhaps, again to address you.

In the phraseology of the world, you "drop out of sight;" but do you drop out of mind? Nay! whatever you have done or left undone here will live-live, not only in God's Book on high, but in God's or the devil's work on earth. A vacant place!-there is no such thing. The place you have here will remain, though you vanish, from generation to generation, in

the acts, in the hearts, in the mouths, of those who

follow you.

It is an awful thought to know that we cannot die, and that, though this bodily presence decays and moulders in the grave, our works do not follow us there, but live and live through all ages in the actions of posterity.

And thus does the past merge into the future; thus is time linked with eternity.

"Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face "all that we have been, all that we are, all that we shall be; then, when the voice shall cry to us, 'What hast thou done? Where is the talent?"

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Yes, as one that on a mountain-top sees nothing a while for the thick clouds that encompass him, but soon the mists lift and the whole landscape below blazes before his sight; so then shall appear the life of each boy or man whose one aim, whose one purpose, has been set on the imitation of his God and Saviour; for though his deeds and words and thoughts here may have been obscured or blackened by the clouds of prejudice or contempt, they shall be made clear and transparent by the shining on them of the Sun of Righteousness.

SERMON VII.

False Lights.

PREACHED AT BRADFIELD, THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EASTER, 1883.

"But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone."—LUKE xi. 42.

I PROPOSE to speak this evening on a subject which is possibly more adapted for the consideration of those among you who are older, and consequently are in positions of responsibility more or less recognized; though I trust by God's help my words may not be above the grasp and comprehension of all.

I suppose that there is always the danger of attributing to the author of any saying, meanings and ideas which he never had in view, but which are forced out of the saying by the caprice or idiosyncrasy of the student. I am afraid this is a danger to which we preachers of the gospel are very liable, so that often words which were written for simple Christian people are wrested out of their proper meaning to

serve some particular aim and object. Of this danger I am sensible.

But, on the other hand, it is a grand internal evidence of the divine origin of our Lord's words, that the more deeply we ponder over them the greater variety of applications they suggest to us; and we are like miners, who find very little near the surface, but the deeper they delve, the richer are the veins of ore or mineral which are discovered, to give wealth, or light, or warmth to the upper world.

Yes, when we think of the sayings of Christ, they seem, without being unduly forced, to adapt themselves to all times and conditions of life, so that the New Testament becomes to the seeker after truth no mere talismanic possession, but a constant book of reference, to which we need never apply in vain to guide us in our ordinary moments, or in the vicissitudes of life.

Let us strive, then, to find to-night in the text before us some practical suggestions as to the guidance of our life.

On a superficial view, Christ appears merely to be reprobating a species of hypocrisy, common to all professors of morality, of insisting on some trivial outward observance to the neglect of some inner truth, of losing sight of the principle while exaggerating formalism, of clinging to the letter but forsaking the spirit. And so in our day this text has often