ments, to him at least, can have no charm. So that we commonly find, united with a fearful ignorance of the difficulty of its acquisition, a general tastelessness and indifference to the promised happiness which it holds out.

But that man must have adopted very different views from these, who has learned to feel himself but as a stranger and a pilgrim here. To him, the principle contained in the text, while it helps him to look with a diminished interest on the attractions of the present world, is one which attaches a peculiar and hallowed charm to the future, and represents the prospects of eternity to his view, invested with the bright colouring of all those pure and pleasing associations which consecrate the name of home. It is no strange country to which the redeemed and the regenerate humbly trust that they are advancing. It is no foreign land, where every thing that they see and hear shall be incomprehensible to their understanding, or repugnant to their taste. Nor are they seeking an ungenial or inhospitable climate from which their nature itself is abhorrent, and for which, in the course of their probationary pilgrimage, they have not been duly seasoned and prepared. It is the proper sphere for which they were first created, unto which they were afterwards redeemed, and for enjoying which they were sanctified and re

newed after the image of the Son of God. It is into the presence of their own Father that they so ardently long to come; to the dwelling of beings congenial and like unto themselves; to the society of that "whole family" of sainted spirits, who are bound together by a communion for transcending the brightest dreams of earthly charity and love. And, if we may presume to interpret that high and lofty fellowship which attached our Lord, in more than filial devotion, to his heavenly Father, by so low a standard as the affection which subsists between the relations of earthly society, even he, methinks,—the pattern and perfection of humanity, -even he appears to have dwelt with somewhat of this natural yearning on the prospects of his return to the mansions above. Even he could, in a proportionate measure, justify by the force of his perfect example, this building up of religious hope on the basis of the social sympathies. The love of God towards his only begotten Son,the attachment and adoration of angels which led them, with no assumed or reluctant zeal, to sing with joy the glad tidings of his birth, or watch over the weary steps of his pilgrimage, or partake his triumphs, or minister to his griefs, all these things could not have appealed in vain to the deep sensibilities that glowed in his human breast. Nor can we interpret, but

by the same mutual bond of high fellowship and communion ever prevailing amongst the inhabitants of heaven, and in which the Son of Man was most intimately involved, that strong and stirring emotion which, as the Psalmist prophetically described, went through the crowded legions of the ministers of Jehovah, as they welcomed back the ascending "King of Glory" from his victory over sin and death. With an ardour, therefore, of attachment which we faintly shadow forth by the image of the love of home, it seems not too presumptuous to suppose that our Saviour himself was animated, in that deep sense of triumphant joy with which he loved to dwell on the thoughts of heaven, and "the glory which he had with his father before the world was."* And it was probably the same ardent and longing anticipation of his return to his home in the regions of light, which gave such an intensity to "the joy that was set before him," and the prospect of which enabled him to " endure the cross," and even "despise the shame "t of his ignominious and humiliating martyrdom.

Nor let it be said that, in mixing up religion with these cherished sympathies of our nature, we have been inventing mere imaginary parallels, or encumbering the majestic simplicity of genuine + Heb. xii. 2.

* John xvii. 5.

faith with the affectations of a morbid sentiment. The frigid stoicism, which, at the expence of all the tenderness of human affection, would exalt the self-sufficiency of a proud and despotic reason, much as it may harmonize with the spirit of a prevailing philosophy, is certainly not to be found in the bible. There we read throughout that the heart, the real source of moral action, and from which the intellect itself derives, if not its power, at least its tone, its direction, its character,—far from being overlooked, is the great and principal object of appeal. And, with reference especially to the point before us, it seems to be the spirit of a very prominent principle pervading the whole of Scripture, that we should build up our faith on no new or extraneous foundation, but on the basis of those same affections, renovated and restored from the ruin of the fall, which God first implanted there. And the love of home, with all its pleasing associations and kindly charities, was not overlooked amongst the rest; nay, it was a profitable and very fruitful source of illustration amongst that people whose changeful destinies and complicated trials seemed to bind them, with a peculiar jealousy of attachment, to the place of their security and rest.

Go back, for instance, to the Patriarchal covenants; by what significant comparison was the

distant prospect of Heaven brought home, in those strong and vivid colours, to their minds? Was it not one which associated the expectation of an heavenly inheritance with that of an earthly home? Was it not a place of rest, a permanent dwelling, an enduring possession, for which they so ardently longed, and in comparison of which, as the text intimates, they were content to regard every other spot in which they fixed their dwelling, as a place of mere temporary sojourning? Or, briefly alluding by the way to the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert, pass on to the captivity of Judah, and you will find the same lesson inculcated there. By that signal infliction alone, you will recollect, the sin of idolatry, that especial imagination of a carnal mind, by which the creature was worshipped instead of the creator, and the sublime perfections of deity were degraded by the grossest impersonations,was effectually eradicated from the Jewish people. And how was this great change effected? By teaching them experimentally to feel that, in their present life, they were but as strangers and pilgrims on the earth. By connecting with all their hopes of eternal happiness, their prospects of temporal release. By enforcing on them the melancholy, but wholesome conviction that human existence was coincident, if not synonymous, with the protracted term of captivity and sorrow. By