and earthly employments which are a part of our duty, but which are only for a time. It makes up for the weariness of knowledge itself, much of which is in every season of life attended with many uncertainties, clogged by speculations of little interest, and terminated for the most part by that boundary beyond which time is not to extend.

We are in a disordered and sinful world. We are to govern ourselves; to avoid danger from within and from without; and to live often in the sight of sin, till the heart turns from the view with disgust, and longs to pass out of the enemy's land, and saith, When will the wickedness of the wicked come to an end? Then, how doth the sorrowful spirit call to mind that a thousand years are with the Lord as one day! It suffers in hope and doth not faint, for it expects to see the goodness of the Lord. It saith within itself, “There remaineth a rest for the people of God."

III. Let us consider the entire frame of this high and holy state; the life of those who are dead to the world, having chosen a better lot; and whose hopes are no less than immortality and perfection; who loathe the burden of mortality, and are weary of sin, and are at rest only in that sanctuary of the soul, the love of God.

"If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above." The love of God as their Father, and of Christ as having died for their pardon, and promised that through obedience to him they shall inherit immortality, hath crucified the world to them, and them to the world. And they are now become, altogether and unreservedly, God's. They have given him their heart. They are a royal priesthood, offering up themselves daily to God; a holy nation; for they walk not after the course of this world, but are now of the kingdom of heaven. The law of heaven is their rule; the praise of heaven is

the honour they seek; the company of heaven are the society whom they desire, above the friendship of earth. Their heart is in heaven, for that is their trea

sure.

Having decided on giving eternal objects the first place in their regard, they learn at once their duty, and are reconciled to it. Many believe in heaven, who do not believe in the way thither. But those who love heaven for what it is, for its perfect purity, for the holy love which unites all glorified spirits to God, comprehend at once the vastness, the variety, the connexion and the inseparable union and mutual inhabitation, so to speak, of the duties of a Christian. Take one away, and the whole falls to the ground. Remove one, and the image of God in the soul is broken, and with it the hope of the Christian perishes also;

or is turned into vain confidence, and becomes the most dangerous entanglement of the partially enlightened.

He whose affection, whose whole mind is purely turned towards God, seeks not to magnify himself in any one duty, but his God. He fears not reproach, and he courts not praise; but desires that God would lead him nearer himself.

For he walks by faith, out of sight of the eyes of men, who do not see the awful scenes which strike him; who hear of eternity, and yet do not dwell upon the thought; who are too much fixed to earth to lift their eyes to the heavenly world; to Jesus Christ, and to God, all in all.

He alone who contemplates the divine purity, who marks that from it proceeds every part of the revealed will of God, that the presence of it alone is the happiness of heaven, and that men's disobedience to it is the misery of the world, values heaven and the hope of immortality aright, as the perfecting of his nature, by making it like the divine. He alone sees the necessity of the whole law

of God; he alone, therefore, is reconciled to it. 66 Thy will be done on earth even as it is in heaven." This is the disposition of all who seek those things that are above. And as they see their duty, searching the revealed will of God, and are reconciled to it, so they are ever active either in thought or in deed in the service of God.

above?

For how are we to seek the things "Strive;" endeavour by every means; be unmoved in your purpose; constant in self-examination and prayer; so strive, by forming the whole soul to the love of God and of man, to enter into the kingdom of peace and love. Remember that as you must put off this mortal body before you can see God, much more must you put off the defiled garments of pride and impurity, and cleanse the spirit from the pollution of the world.

But you are young, and cannot so part with the things of earth. You have op