livion of God, which among visible things she indulgeth, our soul will come forth from the communion of the Word full of divine energy and ardour, prepared to run upon this world's theatre the race of duty for the prize of life everlasting. She will erect herself, beyond the measures and approbation of men, into the measures and approbation of God, and become like the saints of old, who, strengthened by such repasts of faith, "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong,. waxed valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens."

ORATION III.

JOHN V.39. SEARCH THE SCRIPTUres.

THE OBEYING OF THE ORACLES OF GOD.

THE portion of truth which one can for himself examine is so mere a scantling of what is needful for the service of his life, and has in it such instability when not under the helm of authority, human or divine, that men have found it necessary to lay up and patronize a store of common truth, out of which each may be furnished ready to hand when he comes to need it, without the trouble of discovering for himself. This common store consists of the customs established, the opinions popular, the laws instituted, the private duties expected, and the manners approved. These are a grand legacy transmitted from successive generations, the accumulated wealth of the wit and wisdom of our fathers-in which to become conversant we are for nearly a third of our life regarded as under age, wards of our parents, and incompetent in great matters to act for ourselves. If we set any of these traditions aside, following our own inventions or giving scope to our personal freedom, we are eyed with

suspicion or punished as defaulters, and, in capital matters, banished from good society, from our native land, and from life itself. Thus it fares with human kind; they are knit generation to generation. Our fathers bind us, and we shall bind our children. No man is free. All men are constrained by an authority over which they have no control, and are in their turn controlling others who have yet to be.

Let no man, therefore, in the pride of his heart, revolt from the traditions of God as an imposition upon the freedom of his estate. If the wisdom of God take no hand in the ordination of our life, then the wisdom of our fathers will do it all. But for us we shall be the same governed and shackled creatures as before. We may change the place of our residence for a country where God's tra ditions are unknown, and thereby change the degree or form of the bondage, but the necessity of it for peace and enjoyment will still remain. We may change our sphere in life to one where God's traditions are trampled under foot, and find a momentary release, but soon the habits of our new condition will become as peremptory as those of the old. In truth, there is no deliverance. Society is beforehand with us; and along with its beautified fields and happy inventions and manifold conditions of comfort, hands down to us as the price of these a thousand laws and restraints upon the freedom of our conduct.

Such being the hereditary bondage of all ages and of all nations, those are the happiest who

have had the wisest and most virtuous ancestors, to derive to them only wholesome restraints upon the uncertainty of individual judgment and the waywardness of individual will ;-those being the most blessed of all, who have been favoured with laws and institutions from the perfection of wisdom which is with Him who knows the bounds. of man's capacity, and the limits within which his happiness and honour reside. For the wisest lawgivers being little acquainted with the secret workings of their own heart, whose mysterious orga nization is far seated beyond our observation, are still less able to comprehend another's nature, so as to prescribe with infallible certainty for its government. The best they can do is to point out some palpable errors to be avoided, some gross delinquencies to be shunned, some common rights to be revered, some noble actions to be honoured, some base actions to be disgraced. They can buoy some few of the shoals and rocks of life, but the tides and currents which pervade it are beyond their management. They can construct ports and havens for us to touch at, but the manning and equipping and propelling the vessel is with God alone. He who gave the soul her powers, and to all his works their properties, can alone sweetly accommodate them with ordinances. The best attempts of lawgivers are but rude artifices for compassing coarse designs, aiming at the security of some visible and external good, and that attaining not without great waste of private liberty, and happiness: whereas God, being perfectly ac-.

quainted with our most inward principles, and with all the shortest and safest roads to happiness, can with no more constraint than is necessary, carry us through all the departments and degrees of excellence. He therefore is the only fit lawgiver; his statutes the only liberty; all other obedience is an acquiescence in that of whose perfect rectitude we are nothing sure, and hath in it a kind of servility, but this is honour, this is exaltation, to employ all our powers for the poses for which they were given, and after the rules of him who gave them.

་

pur

The question therefore of a religious or an irreligious life, when thus opened up, no longer shows itself to be a question of liberty or of compulsion, but of one kind of authority against another. There are two competitors for our service, God and the world; and the question is, Which will we obey? Will we yield to the sovereignty of the various laws and customs which upon coming to man's estate we find established'; time-serving what has in it no wit but the wisdom of man, and no stability but the power of man, and which we had no say whatever in constructing, and which accommodates itself but ill to our conditions? or will we yield to the sovereignty of those institutes which have in them no seed of change, which are softly framed to sway the heart and to insinuate into all its corners the harmony and peace of heaven, which supply the deficiencies of our wisdom and stay the swervings of our life, and conduct us at length to the un