In old age, our difficulties are of a different kind. We have drawn so near the edge of life,—there seems so little of it left to walk,—we feel, perhaps, so unwilling, and even so fearful, to be cast over that precipice to which we seem approaching,— the present seems to lack so many interests that the present used to have,—so many companions that used to be in life and friendship and sympathy around us, have fallen asleep,— that we are disposed to turn away from the future, which is so brief-the present, which has so little to interest us,—and live in that which is gone-the past, which stretches out amply and full of stored-up materials behind us. And our temptation is to find the elysium of our thoughts in it, and to say that the former days were better than these. This is our temptation, but it is not our duty. Our duty is, and it is often a difficult one, to take to us all the better and brighter part of what is around us,-renewing our covenant of sympathy with the young,-sharing in their interests, helping where we can in their nobler toils,-advancing with their advances, and entering into their hopes and happiness. Oh! happy the old age that is in any way bound in sympathy to youth, and that has by these means something to live for yet! Happy the old age that closes not up its heart to the better desires and the nobler labours of the generation that is around it, but casts itself with affectionate interest and sympathy into whatever is best and happiest in the time that now is, and moves with the moving world! Gracious and enchanting as the sight of this cordial faith and lively sympathy in old age is, it is not afforded without much self-discipline and effort; it is not afforded without much contention with the temptation that too easily besets this time of life, to live in and mourn over the departed past, and to part with all faith and hope in the present.

But between these two seasons there is an intervening period that has its own peculiar dangers too-its own peculiar

difficulties in the way of maintaining a lively trust in the possibility and the duty of continued spiritual progress and high achievement-its own peculiar difficulties in the way of receiving the truth that Christianity may, if we will, sanctify us wholly, and preserve our whole spirit and soul and body blameless. There is apt to gather over the heart of maturity a hard and torpid film of coldness and doubt. It is part of the order of Providence that we shall at this time be deeply engaged in the realities of life. At no period of human existence is life so intensely real and actual, and man so surrounded with close-girding relations, as at this. The ties that bind him to earth, to family, to business, to practical forms of duty, are most numerous now, more numerous than in the season ere all were formed, than in the season when some will be dissolved. Many of the fancies and visions of a former anticipation are burst and broken, and the calm retrospect of a subsequent time has not yet arrived. At this middle period of life, man may have more and firmer principles and habits, but he is apt to have fewer and weaker hopes and faiths. A large part of his ideal, in reference to himself and others, has failed to be accomplished. He begins, like the wedding guest in the gospel, with shame to take a lower seat. He expects to have no worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with him, and his ears are not expectantly open to any words which shall say to him, "Friend, go up higher." He begins to think that he shall be thankful if he preserve his footing and do not fall. He begins to listen to such a prayer as says, "The God of Peace sanctify you wholly, and preserve your whole spirit and soul and body blameless till the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ," as to something strange, unearthly, impossible, belonging to an age of spiritual faith and labour that has passed or never was. And for this reason I say, that never in youth were, that never in age will be, the great purpose and object of the coming of Jesus Christ, never were or will be the hopes

and possibilities of his best progress and of his highest good, in greater danger to that man, than in this season of flagging trust, of hesitating step, of doubt, misgiving, hopelessness and fear. He must believe once again; he must, unless he is spiritually to perish, revive and lift up again the noblest faiths he ever had. There is much in his favour, if he will believe it; the serenest, brightest, greatest period of his life is yet before him, if he choose. The tumult of early years is passed, and the fever of life is cooled. He stands calmly between the two ages, with deepened convictions of the evil of evil, the goodness and happiness of good. A profounder love and pity hold him, or may hold him, for all the sorrow and all the weakness of human life; a more matured and experienced judgment, a more firm and steady hand, render him more competent to work the remedies. All that this man wants is the deliberate faith that the gospel is a power which, if he will work under it and with it, is able to sanctify him and all men wholly, to fill his soul with brightest hope, his life with holiest labour, and preserve his whole spirit and body blameless.

From the moment in which he takes this faith into his heart, he becomes a new creature; anxieties begin to disperse, hopes begin to prevail; his heart is moved and filled with a desire to do good as he hath opportunity; kindness takes the place of bitterness, love the place of envy; a great calm spreads over the sea of his soul; he has begun to live with God, and earth is sweetly and surely becoming a kind of heaven to him. Oh! let us not fling this lofty happiness away from us! Let us believe that we may go on ever unto the very end of life, becoming fuller and fuller of the dispositions and the acts which at length by God's mercy will sanctify us wholly, and present us without any fatal fault before the throne of his glory! We may try all other, all more selfish forms of good, but none will bring peace and joy to our inmost souls like the peace and joy of a gradually growing and maturing Christian

soul. May the God of Peace comfort, encourage and strengthen us, that we may be able to run the race appointed us with fortitude and courage, and be met at the goal by that dear Lord who shall welcome us as fellow-labourers and fellow-strugglers into the joy of his eternal rest! Amen.

THE UNITY OF GOD.

BY REV. E. G. HOLLAND.

GALATIANS iii. 20:

"God is One."

RELIGION and Worship, so universal in the history of man, arose from native fountains of humanity, called forth by the varied revelation, from without and within, of a Sacred but uncomprehended Presence. From the element of reverence, from a sense of dependence inseparable from human nature, and from those cognitions by the intellect of the presence and action of an Infinite Mind which all nations, in different forms, have been able to make—from these three sources did religion and worship arise. That which gave them birth continues their existence. Every fundamental want of human nature must appear, however modified the expression, in each generation of its existence, with its representations in external forms and institutions. Religion and worship, therefore, though always subject, in the manner of their expression, to the changing conditions of human culture, are, as facts of life, everlasting, their abolition involving the idea of the extinction of the soul itself. The person of no religious want is an anomaly. The sense and perception of the Beautiful doubtless preceded the earliest vestiges of the fine arts,-Raphael, Phydias, and all the grand masters, being the fruits and triumphant demonstrations of the element of Beauty in all men; and from the same necessity did Religion precede all books,

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