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contentment and joy which they can find only by looking within; and can find there only by bringing the inward life into conformity with the law of its own well-being. There is no other way. It will not do for us to turn away from this subject, as being mystical; it is not mystical, but, to a mind accustomed to self-scrutiny, entirely simple and practical. It will not do for us to say, that we have no taste for such things; that we are practical men; that we are not used to these refined speculations on the inward springs of happiness that we will not attend to them. We must do it; or virtually renounce all pretensions to acting wisely and rationally, and throw up to chance our prospects of happiness,-here, or hereafter. Besides, why should it be accounted a less practical thing to study into and obey the laws of our inward than of our outward well-being? Is it the distinction of what are called practical men, that they care about every thing but themselves?

Would to God I could press home this consideration with such earnestness and power, that all who now hear me might feel its weight and solemnity. It is, as I believe, the great doctrine; the sum and substance of all spiritual wisdom; the "life and immortality" brought to light in the gospel. We look at the wretched victim of intemperance as he staggers along the streets, we go into our prisons, and behold the miserable outcasts who have brought themselves under the heaviest penalties of the laws of their country; and we wonder that they could so far forget what was necessary to their own well-being, as to be guilty of such folly; going directly against laws which they know to exist, the penalties of which they know. But why stop here with our wonder, for the folly does not stop here. There are other laws beside those of

10

THE LAW OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE.

the body, which the drunkard violates, and those of the state, which the felon violates; there are the laws of the soul, of our own inward peace and life. Whoever violates these by neglecting his own moral and spiritual culture, or through a wrong state of the affections, or a want of faith, whatever may be the external decency of his manners, or his condition in society, stands convicted of the He also flies in the face of laws which he same folly. knows to exist, and the penalties of which he knows. Nay, he is guilty of a worse folly, for he strikes immediately at his own happiness, not merely as connected with his body and the outward world which are passing away, but as connected with that mysterious and immortal element of his nature, which will continue to be, and to be as he shall make it, when the heavens are no more.

ease.

If I am right in the doctrine of this discourse, then have I indicated in what way the servant of Jesus Christ should qualify himself for the ministry of reconciliation. His office in regard to the soul resembles that of the physician in regard to the body; namely, to promote its proper expansion and growth, and to keep off or to cure disBut would a physician feel himself qualified to enter on the duties of his profession without first making himself acquainted with the laws of the body on the observance of which life and health depend, that he may know when and how far these laws have been violated in a particular case, and in what manner his patient may be brought into harmony with them again. It will hardly "I will do for a minister at the present day, to say, preach as many sermons and make as many pastoral visits as my brethren do, and then, if I fail, the fault will not be mine." No two congregations, hardly any two individuals are alike, one being inclined to skepticism,

another to indifference, and a third to fanaticism; and a minister, therefore, in order to be successful must be able to accommodate his preaching and conversation to the peculiar wants of his people, individually and collectively; and this he can only do by means of a wise moral and spiritual discrimination. Mere metaphysics, as that term is commonly understood, or an exact analysis of the mental faculties, will not be of much assistance to him in this respect; because what he wants to know is not how the mind is constituted, but how it acts, on being variously affected and modified, as it is, by peculiarities of temperament and circumstances. It is not the mere frame-work of the soul, if I may so express it, which he needs to understand, but the law of the soul's life; not the law of its constitution, but the law of its life. And this he must study in the living subject;-in himself; in the lives of men remarkable for their piety; and in the history of great revolutions of moral and religious sentiment like that which took place at the Protestant Reformation, or in the rise and growth of Methodism. Nay, he may study it in the accounts that have appeared of the wildest and most debasing fanaticisms, which are to our profession what collected specimens of morbid anato my are to the physician; for they make us acquainted with the forms which the religious sentiment, when diseased or perverted, will put on; and they also warn us of the consequences of presuming, though with the best intentions, to tamper ignorantly with the tremendous energies of man's spiritual nature. Above all, he will study this law in the very genius of Christianity, which plants all hope on a regeneration of our inward being; in the revelation which the gospel has made of the hidden springs of the spiritual life; and

in the solitary and

sublime manifestation which it has given us of a "perfect man in Christ Jesus."

Again, if I am right in the doctrine of this discourse, I have indicated what should be the principal object of preaching. It should be a plain and practical unfolding of the law of the spiritual life, connected with an earnest inculcation of the duties that law imposes on all men, if they would be true to either of the two great instincts of their nature, a desire of happiness, or a desire of perfection. It is not enough that we assert in general terms the reality of the spiritual life, and declaim about its superiority and divinity, and assure our hearers that in some way or other their happiness is wrapped up in it. We must endeavor, as God shall give us light and power, to solve the problem, to clear up the great mystery; we must unfold the law of man's inward being, point out its connexion with his whole being, and show that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth," but in the state of his consciousness; or, in other words, that he is, not according to what he is outwardly, but according to what he is inwardly. This, as it seems to me, is the preacher's peculiar and indispensable work. Other influences are in operation,—our physical wants, the business of the world, the dictates of mere selfishness, the needs and collisions of society,—to which every one is more or less subject, and which must have the effect more or less to bring out and educate the lower faculties of the mind and heart. But we can hard, ly expect them to reach and awaken the finest and deepest instincts of the soul, or call attention sufficiently to the capacities and duties which belong to our spiritual being, or grow out of our relations to the spiritual world. Accordingly we find that thousands live and die without.