And miserably as we may often come short, we must on no account lose sight of it. We shall sink into utter worldliness if we do, and the shadows of death shall cover us from the light of heaven.

Let not the Divine ideal, therefore, ever perish from your hearts. Quench it not by the darkness of sinful passion, or the neglect of hardening worldliness. Let it live brightly in your inner being, amid all the cares, and sorrows, and doubts of time. Whatever may be doubtful, this can not be so-this image of purity, and peace, and heaven. Does it not rise all the more vividly against the shadowy background of earth's confusions and miseries? Limit it not by your narrowness; dim it not by your superstition or your unbelief. Far as you may be from it, still lift your eyes toward it. And although, like the weary traveler amid Alpine hights, who sees before him the glory of the morning light, and aims to stand within. its moving splendors, which vanish as he approaches, you may find it pass from the fullness of your possession here, and the unfulfilled vision may haunt your dying dreams, yet fix steadily your heart upon it, for it is yours, although not now and near-the sure mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

PART II.

BUSINESS.

I.

WHAT TO DO.

HE Christian ideal of life has seemed to

THE

many so far removed from the world and its ways, that they have been driven to seek after its attainments in an entire abstraction from the world's business and pleasures. They have sought to flee from evil, and not to fight with it. But we rightly judge that this is at once inconsistent with Christian truth and futile as a moral aim. Our faith is "the victory that overcometh the world," and not the beaten foe that flies from it. The world is not merely the mass of evil and misery that is around us, but especially the evil that holds our own hearts— the enemy of spiritual life, and strength, and peace that we carry with us wherever we go, and which is indeed often nearer to us in quiet solitude than in the stirring mart.

Moreover, as the world is constituted, it is no question of choice, but of obvious necessity, that most men spend their lives in its business and employments. Every one has his work to do. The whole fabric of our modern civiliza