clayey tenements, which we must soon lay in the dust, we shall be launched into a boundless eternity-thrown upon the wide bosom of a universe which, for the variety, number, and magnitude of its creations, it hath not entered into the imagination to picture, which the power of numbers fails to tell; for it is in these that God, the almighty Architect, delights. He but develops these, in all the universe; so that, in the sublime study of creation, we every where discover these great ideas. Thus, the Psalmist speaks no less like a philosopher than a sage, when, enraptured in the contemplation of the universe, he exclaims :

"O Lord, how manifold are thy works!

In wisdom hast thou made them all;

The earth is full of thy riches.

So is this great and wide sea,

Wherein are things creeping innumerable,

Both small and great beasts."

soul, and so manage it This is sound doctrine.

The question still recurs, What was time given for? Not to pimp and pander to our appetites. A wise man once said, "O, sir, only consider the body as the servant of the as that it shall the better serve its master." Man must restrain his animal desires; he must put a rein upon his passions; curb them up, and say to them as God says to the ocean, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and here let thy proud waves be stayed." He is not to indulge them as the beast that perisheth--as the ox, fattening for the slaughter. This is the oracle of philosophy; better still, it is the oracle of religion.>

Time, then, is given to us to enable us to prepare for eternity; to train and discipline our spirits for the high and noble destiny which God would have us to enjoy, in his presence, forever. But how few of us seem to realize this truth! It is not Epicureans alone, who regard the sole use of time to be for the enjoyment of this earthly life. The philosophers of this school find those who agree, practically, with them, even among Christians. Many there are, who, though they wear the name of Christ, nevertheless, act as if the only end for which time is given, and their earthly existence prolonged, were to feed and gratify the carnal desires of our nature. With them, the man who has the most of those means by which these desires may be gratified, is the truly rich and great man. Though, in every thing which constitutes true nobility—a high and lofty moral nature, and the divine elements of Christian character-one may be as destitute as a savage, yet, if he have what the world calls wealth; that is to say, an abundance of the means which minister to the flesh and the pride of life, he is regarded as great and SERIES IV.-VOL. 1.

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rich. But how mistaken is this estimate! In the sight of God, and of him whose mind has been enlightened by the light which cometh from above, he may be but a pigmy; who, in the eye of the world, seems a Goliah of Gath--a worm, a wretch, poor, and blind, and miserable, and naked—instead of the great, and rich, and favored child of fortune, a blinded and deluded world regards him.

Now, suppose for a moment, that a man spends his life simply in living; that he eat, and drink, and dance, and die, and go to ruinsink into the grave, and sleep forever; or, worse, rot, and be lost in combination of other forms-what is the use of all this order of the universe-the philosophy of all this progress and decay, recurring in endless rounds of succession? What has the great Architect gained by it? Crop after crop springeth up, and is cast down by the frosts of winter, or moulders under the hand of revolving years; generation follows generation, and the places which know us to-day, will then know us no more forever. Where are the cedars of Lebanon? and Leviathan, monarch of the deep-where is he? and all the myriad myriads of tenants of the earth-where are they now? and what has God gained by the life and living of them all? I would leave you to pause upon these questions, my fellow-citizens, and, in connection with them, consecrate an hour to the consideration and answer of the question, Why has time been given to man?

I answer, it was given to him in subordination to the development of that destiny to which God designs and proposes to exalt him; for the purpose of raising him to honor and glory forever; to fit and enable him to honor God and enjoy himself eternally; to prepare him, in short, to enjoy God himself. This is a phrase we do not suffi ciently understand. I am persuaded many of us have but a very inadequate conception of the sublime significance of these simple words-enjoy God. We speak of enjoying the bounties of the earth; we say we enjoy a good harvest, good health, &c. We speak, too, of enjoying the Bible, but is this enjoying God? These are, it is true, gifts of God, and, to a grateful heart, who acknow. ledges them as his gifts, graciously conferred, they may be the occasions of joy in God; yet the question remains, What is the meaning of the phrase, enjoy God?" "In thy presence," says the Psalmist, "there is fullness of joy; and at thy right hand, there are pleasures forevermore." Now, to enjoy God, is to know him as he is; to love him, as he is altogether lovely; and to obey him, as the great proprietor and ruler of the universe: to attain to something like a comprehensive knowledge of his glorious, eternal, and immutable attributes; to appreciate, admire, and love him, for his infinite

beauty and perfect loveliness, and to feel our hearts subdued, by a sympathy divine, into a harmonious agreement and concord with his will, till our obedience shall be not from a sense of duty; not because of a written law; but the spontaneous outburst of a desire to please him, and to be like him; an expression, in fact, of our own highest pleasure, because of the perfect responsive sympathy between our every emotion and his holy and adorable will. This is to enjoy God. But in enjoying God, we participate in all that is his; and thus, the universe, and all the high and holy beings of the universe, shall be ours to enjoy. When there are many heirs to an earthly estate, the portion to each one is lessened; but it is not so with the inheritance beyond the Jordan. There, the heirs themselves will be a part of the possession to be enjoyed by each; and, the more numerous the multitude, the wider and fuller the sphere of enjoyment. There are great spirits to enjoy; such as Gabriel, Uriel, or he whom our poets call Raphael. What a rapture it would be, to sit for a few centuries and listen to the heavenly eloquence of one of these lofty, pure, and holy beings, discoursing of the time when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy! Nothing is more delightful, than to sit at the feet of sages, and listen to their lessons of wisdom. Men will travel' round the earth, sometimes, to enjoy the presence and converse of one such. But here, we shall meet with all the great of all time; yea, it may be, with those who burned in the presence of Jehovah, before time itself was born.

Now, the end of time is to lead us to this grand development. All time is, indeed, but the preface to the great volumes of man's glorious, and eternal destiny. Its mighty events, its wonderful revolutions, all its countless tomes of history, point us to something future; to a destiny higher and nobler than time can confer, upon which we are to enter, when time itself shall be no more. In the law and in the gospel we have both the way prepared, and the end pointed out and made accessible. Both point to something not in themselves, and teach us that the true use of time is to fit and prepare us for that future good-that joy and happiness prospective-which they invite us to labor for. And in any other view, must not every reflecting mind'ask itself, What is man's life worth, if he have no destiny higher than that of earth; no prospect more cheering, than that of living a few uncertain days of sorrow and toil here, and then to perish, as the pitcher at the fountain broken, or to vanish, like that vapor, which the sun no sooner makes visible, than it melts and dissipates forever? Yet how few of us live as though we appre

ciated the true use of time! Truly do we need to pray, "Lord, so teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

With respect to the subdivisions of time, I have only to remark, that we have various epochs of time given and arranged for convenience, as well as for instruction and enjoyment-millenniums, centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, aud seconds. Some of these are natural, and some are supernatural, and, in both, the arrangement is simple and beautiful. God makes the year, the month, and the day, by the periodic motions of certain of the heavenly bodies, and these are, therefore, natural. The year is measured off by the motion of the earth in its orbit, and is the period of one complete revolution of our sphere in its career around the sun. The month is determined by a similar periodic motion of the moon around the earth--her controlling centre; and the day, by the revolution of the earth upon its own axis, once every twentyfour hours, by which we and all its tenantry are, imperceptibly, whirled through space, at a velocity of one thousand miles per hour. All these are subdivisions, dependent upon operations or motions taking place according to uniform laws, and are, therefore, properly designated as natural divisions of time. But whilst we see the physical causes of these, we discover that God has other divisions of time, which are not marked by any natural phenomenon, but which He has pleased to ordain for religious purposes. Nature discloses no reason for these. The philosopher searches in vain for their explanation in nature. He may scale the universe, and he cannot find, in all the arena of its vast and sublime motions and laws, any thing which he can lay as the foundation of the week. Man never invented it; it is the period of the creation--a period of God's own appointment. Moses, in his sublime cosmogony, discloses to us the mystery of its institution. By the seventh day," says he, "God had completed his works which he had made; and he ceased, on the seventh day, from all his works which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that on it he had ceased from all his works which he had created and made." Thus, we discover, that it records and commemorates operations anterior to the creation of man, and, therefore, beyond the reach of his observation and memory. But, whilst this is the wonderful origin of this subdivision; whilst it points us back to the beginning of creation, it may be designed to symbolically represent its duration also. A day, with God, is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, and, therefore, the six days of operation in creation, may represent

There is an ancient kind, and it is a very

six thousand years of operation in duration. tradition among the Jewish Rabbis of this generally received opinion among the most learned expounders of the Bible. It has, at least, the sanction of analogy, and I, therefore, myself, concur in thinking it highly probable that there is, in this division of time, a mystical significance as to the duration of the present order of things, with respect to man and his present habitation-the earth. The idea is beautiful, and suggests many important and valuable reflections. We are, according to this view, living

in the evening of the sixth day--the Friday evening of the week of time—and, therefore, approaching the winding up of its great drama. Many things seem to indicate that this is the fact, but I only state it here as a strong probability.

Fifty-two weeks make a year; but besides this division of time, God has made the first of every thing sacred. Let me impress this important and significant fact upon your attention. God created light, the first born of the material creation, and made it the symbol of that life and immortality which were brought to light by the gospel. He has claimed a peculiar right over the first born, and granted to them special and peculiar honors and privileges; and, when he separated from the nations of the earth the Jewish people, in order to make a volume of types, whereby to picture forth the glorious developments of his benevolence to be made under the gospel, he took to himself the first born of every thing-of man, of beast, and of the fruits of the field. All the arrangements of the Jewish institution seem to have been made upon this plan. Their year of release was a Sabbatical year, and their consecrated symbols were of the first born. Thus God, through all the dispensations of his providence, points us to a day of deliverance and rest, and to the advent into our world of him who is the first born of the whole creation; and now, in harmony with the whole drama of time, and in fulfilment of these ancient symbols, he has made the first day of the week sacred to the first born from the dead. It becomes us, therefore, though not tied down to the rigid forms of the law, to consecrate it to him; to make it a day of solemn rejoicing, and of grateful recollection of, and devotion to, him, who has made it ever memorable by his resurrection from the dead, and hallowed it as the epoch of that new creation of which he is the author, and which shall never pass away. The earth shall be burned up; the elements being on fire, shall melt with fervent heat; and these lofty heavens shall be rolled up as a scroll, and, with a great noise, pass away; but on their ruins, this new creation shall rise, beautiful as the morning, and eternal as