vance no explanation of God's leaving so many nations to continue for centuries unvisited by the gospel; but we look abroad on the surface of this crowded planet, and when there pass before us the troops of the barbarian as well as the ranks of the civilized; when the eye glances from the towering cities with their pomp of architecture to the cavern and snow-hut of the wildest of savages, when the vision rests on the churches surmounted by the cross, or on the minarets of pagodas which speak the existence of a degrading superstition, we can still get uppermost the one great thought, that for the whole varied assembly a Redeemer paid down the purchase money of his blood. And though we may be perplexed at observing that what was done for all seems effectually applied only to a few; we can admire the unlimited extent of the deed, and leave it to God to justify the application; we can find the ground, both of prayer and praise, though faith all the while may be mightily exercised; and thus perceiving that God has achieved a vast, high, and immeasurable work on behalf of all, oh! we will comply with the injunctions of the - text: the air shall be laden with our prayers, supplications, and intercessions for all; the firmament shall ring with our thanksgiving for all.

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Thus, as we trust, we have sufficiently shown you that the universal redemption of mankind is pre-supposed when we are bidden to pray for all, and when we are bidden to give thanks for all. Our two topics may, therefore, be considered as sufficiently discussed, and it only remains to bid you strive to obey in your practice the exhortation of which we have shown you the propriety. Pray ye for all; give ye thanks for all; or as the Apostle elsewhere combines the duties, 46 'pray without ceasing, rejoice ever more." Who shall tell the power possessed by the meanest of the godly over and above that which appertains to the very mightiest of the ungodly? The poor man, when alone in his hovel, or when he has gathered his boys and girls around him may be literally a benefactor to the world, and bring down by his entreaties glorious blessings upon nobles and princes. Let no one say that he can do nothing for others, whilst as a pleader with God he may move the arm which moves the universe." If ye be Christians, remember your privileges ; pray to God for the world, it is a redeemed world, and God waits to be inquired of, that he may vouchsafe an outpouring of his Spirit which shall prepare the way for the coming of his Son, and for the setting up of that glorious sovereignty under which all shall be evangelized, and the kingdoms of the world become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ. Pray for your country; the destinies of the land may be in the keeping of the righteous; be ye fervent in supplication to God, and he may yet hold these islands in the hollow of his hand, whilst his strange work of vengeance is going forward on the earth. Pray ye especially for Christ's church that she may keep her gar'ments unspotted, and be only refined by her adversities. Yea, finally, let us pray each for the other, the minister for the people, the people for the minister, that thanks may be given in the great day of account that we have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.

16

KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTIVE OF SORROW.

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON TUESDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 14, 1856,

BY THE REV. HENRY MELVILL, B.D.

(Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty, and Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's)

AT ST. MARGARET'S CHURCH, LOTHBURY.

"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."-Ecclesiastes i. 18.

THERE is perhaps no portion of Holy Writ upon which it is so hard to fasten a spiritual interpretation as the book of Ecclesiastes. The uppermost feeling on the perusal of the book is, that we have before us the work of a disappointed man, grown morbid by his experience of the unsatisfying character of all created good. And without question such a feeling is in accordance with the actual authorship; for Solomon only gave the results of his own experience, when he declared: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." But the remarkable thing is, not that there should be traces of dissatisfaction with the world; but that in a work which is set down as inspired, there should not be a strong appeal from the present and transitory to the future and eternal. We certainly do not find in the book of Ecclesiastes what we might naturally have looked for-those lessons which our religion derives from the vanity of all that is terrestrial. A Christian who takes as his text: “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity;" would present us with a sermon which should breathe of eternity; and while setting the enduring things of hereafter in contrast with the perishable things of this life, should animate to the fastening the affections upon treasures which cannot be destroyed. But no such sermon exists in the book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon can scarcely be said to reason on the vanities of earth, as a man might be expected to reason unto whom had been revealed the certainties and splendours of immortality; and if the expressed sentiments are such as it is hard to show consistent with Christianity, the natural, and perhaps the unavoidable inference is, that there are not vouchsafed under the law those disclosures of the future with which Christianity came charged. The apparent bewilderment of mind, the weariness of a spirit which seems to have found no resting place, the exhibitions of death uncheered by a reference to immortality or the resurrection; these and the like characteristics of the book of Ecclesiastes ought only to summon forth our gratitude that we have lived later in time, and that we are not forced, even as were the most favoured under earlier dispensations, to grope darkly our way towards happiness and heaven. But whilst there is much in the work in question, whose obscurity we account for from a want of a fuller revelation, there is also much that has been confirmed and illustrated by the gospel of Christ. There is the statement, for example, in our text, which is broader and clearer to ourselves, because

possessed of more knowledge, than could have been granted to Solomon, by whom it was delivered. The boundaries of knowledge have been vastly extended since the sentence was first uttered. Not only have there been great discoveries in philosophy and science, but you must take into account the additional mass of revelation, so that knowledge, at least clear and satisfactory knowledge, of the grand scheme of redemption, and the mighty realities of eternity is granted unto us, but was denied unto Solomon. We then have far larger means than had the monarch of Israel, of testing the truth of the maxim, "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.' We believe that there is a universality in this maxim which causes it to be applicable in every age and to every individual. We do not indeed imagine that even Solomon intended to imply that it were better to be without the wisdom, since it must have grief as its accompaniment. Neither does it follow, that because in increasing knowledge I increase sorrow, no pleasure whatever is to be found in the acquisition of knowledge. The propositions are perfectly compatible and must commend themselves as such to every man's mind, that he who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, and yet that he who increaseth knowledge is thereby advantaged and perfected. We wish to have this point well defined before we proceed to the illustration of our text. If I lay down the position, "He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow," and if I will admit no exceptions to the maxim, immediately you will refer to the knowledge of God and you will pronounce it a paradox, if not something worse, that the knowing God better should be the same thing as the becoming unhappier. But this paradox cannot in fairness be extracted from our text. We certainly expect to show you in the sequel that even when the knowledge in question is the knowledge of God, "he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." But then we wish it to be observed at the very outset of our argument, that this increase in sorrow is thoroughly consistent with an increase in happiness, for delight may, notwithstanding, be gained from making progress in wisdom; and above all, if sorrow attend the acquisition of knowledge, it in no degree takes off trom the profit or advantage of having the knowledge; the cause for rejoicing may keep pace with-nay, may vastly overpass the cause for lamenting, or the generated sorrow may itself be a communicated benefit. And certainly you may all perceive that if, for example, in knowing God better, I come to know myself better, the knowledge will bring sorrow at the sight of my own vileness, though at the same time it will impart joy at the sight of a mercy not to be overtasked by human iniquities. We wish you therefore to bear in mind through the whole of our discourse, that however we may contend for a contemporaneous increase of knowledge and sorrow, we give no countenance to the notion that knowledge should be avoided because of the accompanying sorrow, or that because in all cases the knowledge is attended by sorrow, in every case is that sorrow more than counterpoised by the benefit. We are persuaded, and we shall now go on to endeavour to show you, that "he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow;" and at the same time we are equally persuaded that in many instances, and especially in reference to the things of eternity, the increase of sorrow is the increase of knowledge, and that therefore he alone consults his own interest who seeks the increase of knowledge. With these preliminaries laid down, we come now to a very interesting inquiry. We will, in the first place, confine our attention to the present life; in the second place, we will extend it to the future life, and in both cases we shall endeavour to show you with how great truth it may be said, "In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.'

Now, it is a common observation, and one borne out by the experience of all who are qualified to give witness, that it is the property of knowledge to humble a man and not to puff him up or to make him arrogant. We may take it as a rule that you will seldom find falsified, that where there is conceit there is shallowness, and that the man who has palpably a high opinion of his attainments, and who moves through a circle in all the pride of a presumed intellectual superiority, is indebted to his not being well dissected and well

sifted, for the reputation he enjoys and the attention he commands. We do not indeed say that the man of powerful talents will have no consciousness of their possession, or that the man of high attainments in knowledge, will have no sense of the separation between himself and the great mass of his fellow men; but we are clear that the feeling of relative superiority will be altogether kept in check by that of absolute littleness. We are clear that the powerful talents will have taught their possessor their own weakness, and that the high attainments will consist mainly in the finding out that what has been mastered, bears no imaginable proportion to what remains unexplored. It is only he who knows little who thinks that he knows much. He who, speaking comparatively, knows much, will set what he has learnt side by side with what he has not learnt, and in place of admiring his knowledge, will be confounded with his ignorance. There is nothing which, however hard of acquisition, shrinks into so small a space as knowledge when acquired. A library would seem an atom when the bookcase is the mind. So that we may lay it down as an ascertained fact that the acquiring of knowledge is a humiliating thing. Each step only shows us that the plain is broader and longer than we had thought, and the further we advance the further off seems the boundary. Thus, self-complacency at our progress is inconsistent with progress; for if it be progress to discover that we are no nearer the end, what cause of exultation can making progress furnish? It is with the sphere of knowledge as it is with the sphere of light; enlarging it you enlarge equally the circumscribing sphere of darkness; but if it be thus certain that the increase of knowledge is accompanied by, if not identical with a growing sense of absolute ignorance, what can be clearer than that-"he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow?" The man who is consumed with a desire after knowledge will give his days and nights to the exploring one of its departments, or the toiling up one of its heights, and if with a vigorous step he make his way across the wide breadth of the district, or raise himself to some towering summit, will a feeling of satisfaction be uppermost in his mind? Not so; the advance made will be dissatisfying. The further the man has penetrated, the higher he has soared, the clearer view will he obtain of the immense spreadings of knowledge; or rather, the stronger will be his consciousness that what has been investigated is as a unit to infinity when compared with what has not been investigated.

And we suppose it to have been the result of such a consciousness as this, that the loftiest genius and the most varied information have been often found allied with the deepest and most genuine humility; and it is a refreshing thing to turn away from the haughtiness and self-sufficiency of much of modern philosophy, and to behold with what chastened and meek dispositions those whose names are a monument not to be overturned, carried on their searchings into the mysteries of nature. They measured their attainments by what was undone, and not by what was done; therefore, they always found a greater reason for confessing themselves ignorant than for supposing themselves learned. It was not possible, for example, that the great spirit of a Newton should grow vain and conceited as the fields of the firmament gave themselves to its marchings. Onwards indeed it stretched, leaving immeasurably behind the crowd of less gifted inquirers; but then what Newton learned as he leaped, so to speak, from star to star, and from constellation to constellation, was that each new mystery he fathomed served only as the antechamber to a deeper and a darker, and that to exhaust systems were to find systems inexhaustible. Therefore when he came down from some adventurous and splendid flight, and brought in his hands the spoils of planets, and nations thronged around him and hearkened to his teachings, he was still characterized by all the meekness and docility of a child; and in place of the arrogance and overbearing which you might have looked for as a produce of the mental greatness which drew the homage of a world, there was no trait by which the deportment of this being was so marked as by a modesty, and even a diffidence which was proof against success and grew with triumph. We believe of all who have given a like demonstration that high genius is not

the parent of pride, nor great learning the nurse of haughtiness; we believe of them that they found the increase of sorrow contemporaneous with the increase of knowledge, and that as they pushed on in the discovery of truth, they became at each step more and more aware of the insignificance of what they knew compared with what they did not know; so that to suppose them puffed up at their own progress would be to suppose them elated at their own ascertained backwardness. We think, for example, that when the telescope and microscope were first put into the hands of the philosopher, then was increase of knowledge hardly to be measured, but at the same time a consequent increase of sorrow. There was increase of knowledge; distant worlds were brought near, whilst worlds were found in every atom and in every waterdrop; and enlarging the field of contemplation man only learned that the workmanship of God, like God himself could never be explored. Man was never so baffled as at the moment when he most signally triumphed. No doubt it was a vast triumph when science put into his hands an apparatus by which he could gaze upon stars which had never been beheld by his forefathers, and carry himself into far off regions which had never before been surveyed by any of his line; and we are far from saying that there was not, or that there ought not to have been an emotion of gladness when longhidden depths of the azure laid bare their secrets, and the children of this world were allowed to look on and survey a new assemblage of worlds; but what has been the great lesson derived from this privilege, and what have men been most emphatically taught by the discoveries to which the telescope has led them? Certainly, if we have learnt anything, we have learnt that the universe is of an immenseness which overpowers imagination; we have learnt that in all probability, if we could transport ourselves to the most distant star which the optician has brought within the ranges of our vision, we should seem no nearer than at present to the outskirts of creation, or that stretching gloriously beyond there would be the arched fields of another district of immensity sparkling with constellations and burning with Godhead. We have learnt that our own system, with all its wonderfulness and all its magnificence is possibly little more than a point among the masses of the Creator's architecture; and if there came out an edict that it should be swept away, there would be left no perceptible blank in the unbounded expanse which serves as a stage for the display of Almightiness. And if such are the lessons taught man by the telescope, surely the very apparatus which must increase his knowledge must show him his ignorance. He was not only taught how little he knew before, but how little he would be able to know after. Would not then the increase of knowledge be attended by an increase of sorrow? Would not the very boundlessness of creation which he gathered from the disclosures of the telescope, and the fact made known to him by the microscope that in the minutest subdivisions of space there was the furniture and population of an universe-would not these, whilst filling him with admiration for the workings of Omnipotence, have filled him also with regret at the feebleness of his own powers? Would they not have conveyed to him an idea such as he could not have otherwise obtained of the utter vanity of the hope of embracing within the range of his investigation all the marvel and grandeur of nature; and what motto, therefore, could he have felt disposed to grave on an apparatus which amplified indeed vastly the sphere of his contemplation, but which taught him that when amplified the sphere was but a sand grain which, assisting him to be a learner, told him he could never be a proficient-what motto, if not the motto of our text-"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow?"

And in matter of fact, the earliest and at the same time the most wonderful lesson ever given to this creation was, that he that increased knowledge should increase sorrow. It was the tree of knowledge on which grew the forbidden fruit, by the eating of which our first parents forfeited immortality; it was the hope of an increase of knowledge which moved Eve to the act of disobedience, Satan telling her, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," and the woman perceived that the tree was to be desired to make one wise; and thus