may

be their rank or condition, the noblest part which life offers them to perform,

is that of being faithful to the vows and the promises of their baptism. And in now concluding, my young brethren, these humble illustrations, I conclude, with the solemn assurance,-that, if the beneficence of Heaven were to grant to me the accomplishment of all my prayers for you, and for those who are most dear to me, I would ask for you no other blessing, than that of a steadfast and unshaken faith in the Gospel of him who ought to come, and who has come, "to make you

"wise here, and wise unto salvation."

SERMON XI.

ON THE LOVE OF EXCELLENCE.

PHILIPPIANS, i. 10.

"That ye may approve things that are ex"cellent."

THESE words are part of the warm and beautiful prayer of the Apostle for his church in Philippi: "And this I pray "for you (says he) that your love may " abound yet more and more unto knowledge, and in all judgment,—that ye may approve things that are excel"lent, that ye may be sincere, and

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"without offence till the day of Christ;

"being filled with the fruits of righteous66 ness, which are, by Jesus Christ, unto "the glory and the praise of God."

It is a passage which it would be well for us to keep perpetually in our remembrance, as it expresses, in a very striking manner, the nature of that religion which the Apostle taught, and the consequences which he expected it to have upon the minds of mankind;-not in subduing their understandings, and making them the slaves of any dark or illiberal superstition, but in blending religion with every common business of their lives,—in rendering it the means of leading them to "all knowledge, and all judgment," of elevating their minds to the approbation of things that are excellent, and of thus carrying them on, through the grace of their divine Master, to the highest state of perfection of which mortality is capable,-that " of being fil

"led with the fruits of righteousness, "which are, by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and the praise of God."

Of the moral and intellectual discipline of which the Apostle thus sketches the outline, there is one branch only of which I am now to speak,—" that ye may "approve things that are excellent."—It is the affectionate wish which the Apostle forms for his disciples. It is a wish which probably every thoughtful man has formed for himself; and it would be well for all the interests of humanity, if it were formed in every youthful bosom. "It is from the heart," says the wise "that all the issues of life pro"ceed;" and it is, in truth, much more in the right government of it, than even of outward action, that the genuine wisdom of human life is shewn. It is in that secret and dark recess, unknown to every human eye, and searchable only by the eye of "Him who inhabiteth in

man,

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finity," that the springs of Vice or Virtue begin their infant course. It is in the private meditations of youthful years, in the secret opinions which the young then form, and the sequestered wishes which they then indulge,-that their future character in life, and even their fate in eternity, is determined; and that from the shade of secret thought, they all come forward upon the stage of active life, either to be the blessings or the curses of the society to which they belong. The influence of example, the contagion of temporary manners, have in truth no farther effect upon them, than as they fall in with the character and dispositions which have been thus forming in solitude; and he who has not learnt to "keep his own heart with diligence" in the morning of his being, has lost the best hope of honour in its noon, or of dignity in its close.

By what means then shall the heart be