strong the ribs of this ship of state, for the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies are already his answer to that petition; I plead not that God would pile up riches in this land, for wealth has dropped down in our midst in floods, and is to come in yet greater streams; but I pray that there may be such a spirit of Christianity among the people, that, great as it is, vast as its power is, it may stand and look abroad, Christlike, upon the nations, winning them to civilization; winning them to amenity of manners; winning them to true piety; winning them to that which shall redeem their bomes from barbarism, that shall redeem the common people from oppression, and that shall make them strong in the Lord, until that bright and blessed day shall come, when we shall have no occasion to say to any man, "Know ye the Lord," but when all shall know him from the least to the greatest. God speed that day.

PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.

We desire to adore thee, our Heavenly Father, for thy justice, for thy truth, for thy love and mercy, and for all that we have known of them in our own experiences, and for all that which men have testified to, so that we know that thy government is, over all the earth, a government of goodness and mercy, and that the power which rules above is not tyrannical. We are not in the hands of a despot. Thou art our Father; and to all who will draw near to thee in love thou art ineffable in mercy and in goodness. Thou wilt bear with their weakness. Thou wilt show them the way. Though they stumble therein a thousand times, thou wilt lift them up. Thou wilt be patient with their wanderings, and bring them back again, so that they do not let thee go, but seek to serve thee with all their heart. Thou wilt forgive all their transgressions, and all their infirmities thou wilt help and succor with more than parental tenderness. Art not thou the God that we need, long suffering, and filled with goodness? Art not thou the God whom sinners need, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and yet that will by no means clear the guilty? We rejoice in thee. We rejoice that all the foundations of truth, and honor, and justice, are guaranteed by thee. Nor shall man's delinquency, nor any power infernal, overthrow the established order of virtue and rectitude. Forever and forever guarded and guided of God, they shall go on throughout the world, governing and to govern, until their mission is fulfilled, and justice shall have brought forth love, and all the universe shall be at peace and in joy.

We beseech of thee that thou wilt grant to us more and more perfect disclosures of this thy royal nature, that thy sovreignty may not seem something pressing upon us, something overwhelming our freedom; that we may behold in it all the guarantees of our liberty; that we may see that it is so full of love, and that it moves and administers for the purposes thereof.

And we pray that we may be won from selfishness; from pride; from every passion; from the lusts of the flesh; from all vanities and pomps that war against the soul; from everything that tarnishes the purity and lustre of thy nature in ours.

And we beseech of thee that thou wilt teach us how more and more to

refine our life and power; how to make it more spiritual; how to seal it with all the signets of immortality. We beseech of thee that thou wilt grant that we may live more and more for the life to come; that our heart may be there, our treasure being there; that our affections may be set upon things above, and not upon things on the earth.

Forgive us all our sins, and teach us to forgive one another. By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, may we learn to be meek and gentle and forbearing to one another, and to be forgiving to one another, if we have offences one against another.

We beseech of thee, O Lord, that thou wilt grant thy blessing, this morning, to all that are in thy presence. To all that sit in darkness, bring light. To all that are in despondency or dispair, bring hope. To all that are in bereavements, bring strength and encouragement and comfort. And we beseech of thee that thou wilt grant that none of us may repine when the hand of the Lord is laid in chastisement upon us. May we remember that whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. And may we be prepared by chastisements so to grow in spiritual things, that, at last, when life itself shall depart, and all its visions and dreams give way, the glorious realities of thy kingdom shall come, where, because we have suffered with thee, we shall reign with thee.

Have

And now we beseech thee to look upon thy cause everywhere. compassion, we pray thee, upon all those who are laboring in thy cause in destitute places, amidst discouragements and trials of their faith. May feeble churches be strengthened. May thy ministering servants, in the midst of sickness, and disappointments, and all manner of trials, still be girded with the strength of Almighty God. We pray that intelligence may prevail; that schools and colleges may come up in remembrance before thee; and that they may become sanctified fountains not only of learning but of grace.

We pray for the nations of the earth. Teach them to make war no more on one another. Bring in that day of purity and justice and truth when there shall be no use for war; when men shall learn the things that make for peace, and make for the welfare of one another.

Let thy kingdom come, and thy will be done in all the earth.
We ask it for Christ Jesus' sake.

Amen.

PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON.

Our Heavenly Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt bless the word spoken, and grant that it may do us good. May we ponder the way of thy providence, and the permissions thereof. May we look upon the distress of all nations; and may we pray and long that out of it shall come some knowledge that shall do other times good. If it be in accordance with thy wisdom, stay the hand of violence; but if the vials must be poured out, O Lord! let it be a short day. Let the thunder sound and cease. May thy lightning come, and return again to its sheath. And grant that the day may speedily come when men shall be lifted so far above selfishness and passion that there shall be no need of force, no need of chastisements, and no need of war.

And to thy name shall be the praise, forever and forever. Amen.

PATIENCE.

"For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise."-HEB. X. 36.

The implication is, that many of those to whom the apostle wrote, consciously having performed their duty in the Lord, had not received any token or evidence of the fruit of the performance of duty, and were discouraged, and thought it perhaps a vain thing to attempt a religious life-reasoning in this way: "If we attempt any secular improvement we see that the work which we are performing grows under our hands. If I be a husbandman, I perceive, on sowing the seed, that there is use in it; for it springs up, and I have my harvests. If I am a vintner, I perceive, in my vines, and in the fruitage, that for which I labor. And even when I do not perceive at once the full fruit, I see the tokens of its coming, and all the steps by which it comes."

"Now," says the apostle, "ye that are spiritual husbandmen, as it were, have need of patience, after ye have done the will of God and nothing comes, until you receive the promise." It is recognized that there is a long space between the doing and the fulfilling, as there often is, and that that is the point where men specially need patience, and patience for the purpose of keeping up their faith in the reality of personal religion. For the context is this:

"Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him."

Patience is not one of those stupid experiences which have been sometimes in vogue. It is not the grace of indifference or of laziness. Neither is it a kind of dogged obstinacy under difficulties. It is the sequence of enterprise and of endeavor, and is an act of self-control. It is the control of one's desires, either when he longs for gratification and has it not, or when he is under the pressure of suffering. It is the power of holding one's self calmly and contentedly under deprivations. or under difficulties.

SUNDAY MORNING. July 24, 1870. LESSON: ROMANS XII. IIYMNS (Plymouth Collection): Nos. 40, 531, 1257.

It is another name, then, for self-control, and self-control under circumstances of suffering.

In the text, the teacher points to a very common experiencenamely, impatience because labor does not bring forth its results immediately. Divine providence is conducting a double system in this world, or rather a single system with two developments. Constantly these two elements in it are clashing, by reason of men's misunderstandings; but they are coöperative and harmonious in the plan of God. There is a physical life in this world. We are grounded in that. We begin in that. It is the root of all our life. But out of that is to spring a still higher life; and the problem of living in this world is the development of that other and higher manhood out of that lower or physical manhood.

While this development is going on, we are the subjects of material laws. We are living in societies, under occupations, under governments; and we are obliged to carry ourselves with a wisdom which is adapted to the physical senses. Yet while we are doing this (we learn this first, and it is very apt to be the strongest impulse in us)—while we are doing this, there is, at the same time, to be carried on another development to which this is auxiliary, and for which this has been originally constituted-the unfolding of the higher spiritual life, which is so different from this lower one, that it is called a "new life" created by the spirit of God in man.

And although he that is living in the highest development of his spiritual life is living in a way which harmonizes him with all physical influences; on the other hand, a man may live so as to be in harmony with all physical laws, and yet not be developing his true spiritual life.

These two elements, which are going on together, induce a conflict and a misapprehension and a jar; and men are sacrificing their higher life for the sake of gaining this lower and physical life.

Thus we have this duality recognized all the way through-the life of the body and the life of the soul.

Now, our Father is conducting a providence which recognizes both of them, but subordinates them, keeping the lower low, and the higher supreme. He administers all the time among the infinite choices that are to be made in adapting his providence to his subjects. He is perpetually administering his government as we that are wise parents administer ours in the family. We take care of our children's bodies; of their food; of their dress; of their physical comfort. At the same time it is with reference to an ulterior manhood. And in every instance, if there is a choice in reference to truth-telling, purity, delicacy of mind and generosity of love, we teach the child to sacrifice the lower for the sake of keeping the higher. We are in our households carrying

on a duplex education, which is at its base physical and in its higher developments moral and social. And that which we are doing in the small, God is doing in the large sphere. And the human race are being developed at the bottom physically, and at the top spiritually.

We find a recognition of this matter in the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians, by a relative valuation of the two systems:

"We look not at the things which are seen [not at the sense-life], but at the things hich are not seen [at the invisible, spiritual, immortal life]: For the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."

In other words, the apostle weighs the one world over against the other, and says the real and the most abiding is not that which is regarded by men as on the whole an imaginary and simply conceptional world. Most men, if they talk about substantial things, mean things that can be put into the scales and weighed. "It is bone, and blood, and flesh, and body, and matter, that is real," they say; "and the other things the poetic and imaginary, the picturings, the beautiful thingswell, yes, they are real in a sense." But the apostle says, "The foundations are in the invisible; and they are eternal. This is the transient state; this is that which comes and goes, and is forever in mutation. He who once reaches this sphere, as from organized matter, becomes an intelligent being. He has risen, as from the clod; but as compared with the ultimate development, he has hardly begun to rise. For there is the manhood, there is the reality, there is the Saviour, and there is the eternity, out of sight-invisible."

There is, however, one element which runs through both parts of this providence; viz., the time element. In general, the time legitimately required for the accomplishment of an end, or the production of an effect, measures the value of that effect. Or, in other words, the things that you can do very quickly are usually of the least value; and the things which legitimately require the longest time in the doing, are the things that are of the most value. The presumptions, therefore, are that things which come quick are of small worth, and that all things that require a great deal of time, a history, involve in themselves elements of a greater value.

Physical qualities and physical objects are very near at hand. A man clears up a forest, and lays down his farm, and sees, from day-today, what he is doing. The spot where the sun goldens the ground grows larger from day-to-day. As he hews, and the chips fly at every stroke, and the log shapes itself at every blow, and the house goes up, timber by timber, or brick by brick, he sees, every night, what has been accomplished since morning. We raise our harvests in the same. way. In the Spring, after a few days, we see the sprouting grass, as it were; and then, after a little, the growth and the development.