and unites him in spirit with those children of his Father who are to be, when he is not, to rejoice in their joy, their happiness and their comforts, and to seek to provide for those glorious objects. Without such forward looking thoughts, it were in vain to talk of any active or energetic spirit of Christian love. If we look only to our own time and place, and seek to exercise it there only, the heart will sometimes sink under disappointment, sometimes be thrown back on itself by the savage rejection of the benefits it desires to bestow, it will be crushed and broken. But when from the dark present it can look forward to the joyous and sunny future, it is refreshed, comforted, and sustained. It feels a lively gratitude to the Divine Author of good, for the human comfort as well as the heavenly strength which He imparts, and it goes on its way, its dim, dark, and perilous way, rejoicing, and knowing that though ‘it soweth now in pain and care',' the seed is not sown on the rock or the way side, but the harvest time of love will come in its due season.

If the power of the Gospel then hath implanted in us this Spirit of ardent, of enduring, and of patient love, as it hath assuredly at the same time expelled all sinful love of self from our hearts, we need not any longer fear to yield obedience to that natural and powerful impulse, which leads us to wish that, indissolubly knit with the good which we may have done or desired, the record of our humble efforts for the cause of God and the good of man may go down to future days. It is a principle of action which is re

1 Southey.

6

cognized by the Holy Apostle, when he bids believers to shine like lights in the world,' and by our Lord himself, when He says, 'let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.'

Of the strength of that feeling no one who knows human nature can doubt. Men,' says a well known1 ethical writer, 'have voluntarily thrown away life to acquire after death a renown which they could no longer enjoy. Their imagination in the mean time, anticipated that fame which was in future ages to be bestowed upon them. Those applauses which they were never to hear, rung in their ears; the thoughts of that admiration whose effects they were never to feel, played about their hearts, banished from their breasts the strongest of all natural fear, and transported them to perform actions which seem almost beyond the reach of human nature."

These words while they truly express the power of this passion over the human mind, imply a measure of no undeserved contempt for the objects to which it is commonly directed, while it is the ruling passion. But where the heart is Christian, and its ruling desire a desire to promote God's cause in the world, there this passion is checked, controuled, and made secondary though active. Then men no longer undertake what is great or praiseworthy in order that they may be praised; but being led, (through God's grace) by their love for Him, to a course of patient, lofty, self-devoting exertion for His creatures, they do not spurn

1 A. Smith, Theory of Moral Sent. Vol. 1. Pt. iii. Chap. 2.

their human nature and human feelings, they do not desire to rise above the purer and better parts of their humanity, but anticipate with righteous pleasure, the love which perhaps in their own, perhaps only in future times will be bestowed on them, and the kind sympathies which will be felt by the heart which hears of their sorrows, their struggles, their victory, long after the sorrows are hushed to rest, the struggles over and the victory accomplished.

As we believe such an indulgence of human feeling to be pure, so we are sure that its power is great for good. So hallowed and purified, the desire to be remembered becomes an aid of no mean force in root

ing out selfishness. It takes us off from our own narrow walk, and our own petty interests, it gives us a deeper and more affectionate interest in the welfare of all God's creatures, a warmer and more lively desire to become instruments in effecting His gracious purposes, and in carrying on His cause.

We are in truth all parts of the great family of God, and are bound to look backward and forward, backward to the efforts which our fathers have made for us, forward to those who are our children in Christ, and for whom we are to exert ourselves in this our generation. We are to love the memories of them who have toiled and bled for us, and to look forward with natural pleasure to the love which shall be felt for our names by those for whom we shall toil, and endure, and deny ourselves. God our Father hath set these feelings in our hearts, and hath given them unspeakable power over us.

No man who has examined the workings of his own heart, or even attended to its involuntary emotions, can doubt the immense influence which the records of the thoughts, and hopes, and struggles of the wise and good have had over his own life. How strong, how irresistible are the feelings with which we peruse the page that records the faith, the courage, the constancy, the life and the death of the Martyrs of our own church and country. These glorious records, these records which tell us what others have dared, and done, and suffered for us, for our sake, and to transmit to us the blessings which they had in trust for us, these are the sacred ties which link man to man, and age to age, and which prevent us from going on in a selfish isolation, and a perverse belief that others have been as selfish as we are. By making us know and feel that there never yet has been wanting a supply of men, who, under God's grace, were ready, at the expence of any toil and suffering, to hand down his gifts to them who were to come after, they become a means in His hand to shame us from our selfishness, and cheer us on to a glorious course of Christian exertion'. We hang in breathless emotion over every word of these records, our hearts burning within us, we feel that for a good man, like these, some would peradventure even dare to die, and we lay down the sad but glorious record with a sigh indeed for human suffering, but with an exulting certainty that even the poor and frail spirit of man, if it walks in faith and humility with its God, is strengthened by His spirit

1 See a very pleasing passage on this point, in Mr. Evans's delightful volume called the Rectory of Valehead.

till it rises superior to the weakness of humanity, till it can look with a constant eye on suffering, till it can triumph over chance, and change, and time, and death.

Is there one here, my brethren, who hath a spirit meet for such high communion, and who hath not communed in spirit with those sainted men who once trod our streets, and once breathed the air which we breathe, who in the calm and stillness of this school of learning (now granted by a kind providence to us, and by us, if we will, to be used through God's grace, for the strengthening, and purifying of our hearts drank in their intellectual and spiritual life, learned the true faith of Christ, learned that in that faith are hid all the best treasures of true knowledge, and learned that therefore for that faith, as it was their duty, so it was to become their firm, deliberate, and constant resolve to die? Is there one here who hath not in spirit followed our holy martyrs to the stake? Does not our heart go with Bradford when sending his exhortations to those whom he loved and to whom he had preached the word of God? Did he not tell them that it was one of his express purposes that they might hear of his sealing his doctrine with his blood, and assure them that if they are constant in the faith, his spirit will rejoice with them and for them in the trials that await them? Do we not hear Ridley utter his passionate farewell to this his cherished seat, and, while he calls on the walls and trees of his college to bear witness to his diligent study of God's word, express his thankfulness for the profit which he had thus felt all his lifetime ever after, his confidence that he should carry

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