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is the life which God lives for

ever in heaven. That is The one Eternal Life, which must be also the Life of God. For, as there is but one Eternal, even God, so is there but one Eternal Life, which is the life of God and of his Christ. And the Spirit by which it is inspired into the hearts of men is the Spirit of God, who proceedeth alike from the Father and from the Son.

Have you not seen men and women in whom these words have been literally and palpably fulfilled? Have you not seen those who, though old in years, were so young in heart, that they seemed to have drunk of the Fountain of perpetual Youth,-in whom, though the outward body decayed, the soul was renewed day by day; who kept fresh and pure the noblest and holiest instincts of their childhood, and went on adding to them the experience, the calm, the charity of age? Persons whose eye was still so bright, whose smile was still so tender, that it seemed that they could never die? And when they died, or seemed to die, you felt that THEY

were not dead, but only their husk and shell, that they themselves, the character which you had loved and reverenced, must endure on, beyond the grave, beyond the worlds, in a literally Everlasting Life, independent of nature, and of all the changes of the material universe.

Surely you have seen such. And surely what you loved in them was the Spirit of God himself, that love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, which the natural savage man has not. Has not, I say, look at him where you will, from the tropics to the pole, because it is a gift above man; the gift of the Spirit of God; the Eternal Life of goodness, which natural birth cannot give to man, nor natural death take away.

You have surely seen such persons-if you have not, I have, thank God, full many a time; but if you have seen them, did you not see this ?-That it was not riches which gave them this Life, if they were rich, or intellect, if they were clever, or science, if they were learned, or rank, if they were cultivated,

or bodily organization, if they were beautiful and strong; that this noble and gentle life of theirs was independent of their body, of their mind, of their circumstances? Nay, have you not seen this-I have, thank God, full many a time-That not many rich, not many mighty, not many noble are called: but that God's strength is rather made perfect in man's weakness, that in foul garrets, in lonely sick beds, in dark places of the earth, you find ignorant people, sickly people, ugly people, stupid people, in spite of, in defiance of, every opposing circumstance, leading heroic lives, a blessing, a comfort, an example, a very Fount of Life to all around them; and dying heroic deaths, because they know they have Eternal Life?

And what was that which had made them different from the mean, the savage, the drunken, the profligate beings around them? This at least. That they were of those of whom it is written, 'Let him that is athirst come.' They had been athirst for Life. They had had instincts and longings; very simple and humble, but very

pure and noble. At times, it may be, they had been unfaithful to those instincts. At times, it may be, they had fallen. They had said:

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Why should I not do like the rest, and be a

savage? Let me eat and drink, for to-morrow 'I die;' and they had cast themselves down into sin, for very weariness and heaviness, and were for awhile as the beasts which have no law. But the thirst after The noble Life was too deep to be quenched in that foul puddle. It endured, and it conquered; and they became more and more true to it, till it was satisfied at last, though never quenched, that thirst of theirs, in him who alone can satisfy it-the God who gave it; for in them were fulfilled the Lord's own words: Blessed are they that hunger and 'thirst after righteousness, for they shall be 'filled.'

There are those, I fear, in this church-there are too many in all churches-who have not felt, as yet, this divine thirst after a higher Life; who wish not for an Eternal, but for a merely endless life, and who would not care greatly what sort of life that endless life might be, if

only it was not too unlike the life which they live now; who would be glad enough to continue as they are, in their selfish pleasure, selfish gain, selfish content, for ever; who look on death as an unpleasant necessity, the end of all which they really prize; and who have taken up religion chiefly as a means for escaping still more unpleasant necessities after death. To them, as to all, it is said, 'Come, and drink of 'the water of life freely.' But The Life of goodness which Christ offers, is not the life they want. Wherefore they will not come to him, that they may have Life. Meanwhile, they have no right to sneer at the Fountain of Youth, or the Cup of Immortality. Well were it for them if those dreams were true; in their heart of hearts they know it. Would they not go to the ends of the earth to bathe in the Fountain of Youth? Would they not give all their gold for a draught of the Cup of Immortality, and so save themselves, once and for all, the trouble of becoming good?

But there are those here, I doubt not, who have in them, by grace of God, that same divine

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