ation to those regions above the firmament, where bliss is infinite and universal, as well as everlasting. Let him look forward to the period when his days shall be numbered, as a release from worldly trials and vexations. Let him project onward his ardent view, to the certainty of meeting relatives from whom he has been separated during his bondage in the flesh; friends, long beloved and painfully remembered in their sad separation; associates whom he had zealously honoured in life, and tenderly lamented in death. Let him look forward to a renewal of the most exquisite endearments to be continued for ever; "where there shall be no more death." "There the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces." Let the Christian rejoice, to think that though here subject to the dominion of a mortal adversary, that adversary will ultimately be overcome for ever, and the released victim transported to the regions of eternal glory. "And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth; unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen!"

SERMON III.

THE DIVINE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE.

1 JOHN, CHAP. IV. VER. 7.

"Love is of God."

LOVE is a divine principle, as it forms part of that perfection concentrated in the Godhead; and divine principles are immutable laws. Love, in truth, is the root whence all the other attributes of Divinity branch out and diverge into infinity. It is the great feature of divine perfection; "the length and breadth, the depth and height" of the Godhead; for, not only, "love is of God," but "God is love." He is at once the sum and fulness of it; its essence and perfection. From Him, and from Him alone, it was communicated In God it is a principle, intact, unfailing, universal. In man it is likewise a principle, but dimmed by the infirmities of humanity. It is, however, in him also an instinct and a passion. Hence, in the two latter forms, it is developed

to man.

in infancy and in manhood, clinging to the heart, with more or less intensity, during the entire period of its existence. In the former aspect of its divine identity, it will accompany us into the boundless realms of joy, where God is so near and the communion of saints eternal. There, like our bodies, it will be glorified in us. Heavenly love will absorb and enrapture us. We shall there feel and diffuse it, in its completeness, in its incorruption, for we shall imbibe it without mixture from the Divine Fountain. Here it is mixed up with alloys, with selfishness, with distrust, with those infirmities introduced into the world by sin. There it is untouched by anything extraneous to itself, having no variableness, no impurity. There it is effused in its universal and unlimited ascendancy; universal in its influence, unlimited in its duration.

I would bid you mark, that a wide distinction. must be made betwixt that love essential to the divine mind, being a necessary element of it, and that mere animal emotion which is the cause of so much evil, in this unfixed condition of things. The first is a principle out of which no evil can arise, because it essentially belongs, and only so belongs, to the source and sum of all good. The other is a passion, or the vehicle of passion, out of which much and continual injury is produced, because passion, I mean animal passion, under that corruption inseparable from the tyranny of unchecked desire, is the product only of evil. It is exclusively human; the lea

vening medium which disturbs all the better qualities of our nature, often swelling them into distortion, sometimes into terrible deformity. The principle is the origin of infinite and perpetual benefit; the passion of constant and increasing mischief. The last is the bane; the first the antidote. So excessive, however, is sometimes the bane, that the antidote, when applied by mere human agency, fails to remove or abate it. It outgrows the remedy; thrives in its strength to a Titan's energy, wielding in its vigorous grasp, the most colossal engine of destruction. Nevertheless, the principle has been mercifully communicated from God to man; often, indeed, subjected by man to that corrupting process, which evolves the passion by the taint of sin falling upon and marring it. Still, it may be, and is, exercised among us, however imperfectly, in that high character of moral influence which bears its impression from him who communicates it, and this love is, "the fulfilling of the law." With veneration to God it unites charity to man, and, when it does this, you may believe that the heavenly principle is fixed within the soul: when otherwise, assure yourselves it is not there.

In God, I need not tell you, this principle is incapable of corruption; but in man, diffused through his whole being at his creation by its all perfect original, it was debased by the Fall. Until then it was unassoiled. Sin had not reached it. It bore the hue and fragrance of heaven,

whence it was spread over the boundless tract of the universe. But when sin crept in upon the human heart, the taint swept over every moral quality by which the primitive humanity was signalized, and this great governing attribute of our spiritual being was imbued with that malignant virus infused from the venomous sting of guilt. Henceforth, passion grew out of it, passion organized and directed by sin, putting forth its luxuriant but poisonous blossoms. Then, all the tempting, yet deadly fruits, issuing from the criminal encouragement of that noxious growth, matured with amazing celerity and were tasted with fatal effect. Guilt cast over it her malignant influence, fixing disease upon the body and infirmity upon the soul. Clouds, pregnant with disaster and with death, overspread the whole moral hemisphere. Seeds of bitterness were planted in the human heart, by the hand which had withered within it that sweet bud of joy unfolded at the Creation. From these, misery rose to sturdy and luxurious life, assuming ten thousand shifting forms, some repulsive, some hideous; many, nevertheless, inviting to the eye, agreeable to the touch, yet deadly to the taste. The one drop of gall, cast by Satan into that fountain of bliss which gushed from the bowers of Eden, turned the pure to impure, and hatched the serpent-egg of vice, which has multiplied from one to millions, polluting the face of the whole earth.

The original stock through which