of arithmetic it is which conducts every one of us to our latter end, and thus, through all the possible avenues of sense, and experience, and feeling, do such intimations multiply upon us, and these so plain and so powerful, and ever and anon recurring with such pathos and in such frequency, that, but to those who are sunk in idiotism, is it a lesson read and recognized of all men. Nor is there a living man

who does not know, that the march of our actual generation is but one vast progressive movement to the grave. It is not the acquirement of new truths, but the right use and consideration of old ones, which constitutes wisdom. It is not the discovery of what was before unknown, which signalizes the wise man above his fellows. It is the right and the rational application of what they know as well as he, but which they do not reflect upon, and do not proceed upon as he. It is not the man who outpeers his acquaintances in intellectual wealth, neither is it the man who outdoes them in homebred sagacityit is neither the one nor the other, who, in the best, and most significant sense of the term, is the man of wisdom. It is he, who acts upon the sureness of that which is sure. It is he, who proceeds upon the reality of that which is real. It is he, who feels greatness of desire after that which is great, and smallness of desire after that which is small, and shapes his doings to the actual dimensions of every object which is presented to his understanding. And neither is it necessary that, in respect of understanding, he should have a capacity for more than truths which are familiar to all, and are acknowledged of all. He has not to go in quest of strange or

distant novelties, but only to trace to its right purpose that which is near to him, and within' reach of every man. In a word, he has not to learn that which is known only to a few, he has only to consider that which is known to all. "O that they

this, that they He has not to be

were wise, that they understood would consider their latter end !” taught the number of his days, but taught so to number them, as to apply his heart unto wisdom.

He is not in the soundest physical condition, who lives on the high-wrought delicacies of an artificial and expensive preparation; but he, the organs of whose bodily constitution are best suited to the bread and the water, and the universal aliments which nature has provided for the healthful sustenance of her children. And he is neither in the best spiritual, nor even in the best intellectual condition, the faculties of whose soul are ever on the stretch after lofty and recondite doctrine, or its appetite for knowledge pre-occupied with various and exquisite speculation-but he, who thrives on the daily nourishment of such truth as is familiar to all-he, whose clear and vigorous eye admits most copiously of that light, which is poured around the orbit-he, the food of whose understanding is that common food which is most abundant, and would also be most salutary, but for the common disease that overspreads the families of our species-he who, with no taste and no capacity for what is remote or ingenious, rightly comprehends the truth that is at hand, and goes not beyond the simple elements of being in any of his mental exercises, but who, if right in these, has reached a wisdom which philosophy cannot reach, and who, if sound in his

practical estimate of what is due to Time, and what is due to Eternity, is a man of nobler aims, and far more solid and exalted wisdom, than science can induce upon any of its votaries. He lives not upon the niceties, but upon the staple of spiritual fare, and his spiritual frame is thereby upheld in strength and in prosperity; and in the plain certainties of the coming death, and the coming judgment, does he walk in a way more truly elevated, than that which is trodden by any son of literary ambition: and hence the impress of dignity and wisdom which we have seen to sit on the aspect of him, who, the father of a cottage family, has no respite from toil but Sabbath, and no reading but his much-read Bible, and that authorship, of old and humble piety, which lies in little room upon his shelves. To learn discriminatively and justly what wisdom is, you have just to place the most brilliant and accomplished philosopher by the side of this venerable sage of Christianity. The one knows much, but his is a knowledge which terminates in itself. The other knows little, but his is a knowledge which is turned to the purpose of his guidance here, and of his provision for eternity hereafter. Wisdom is not bare knowledge. It is knowledge directed to its best and fittest, and most productive. application. Thus it is, that there may be much knowledge without wisdom, and there may be much wisdom with little knowledge. It is not he who knows most, who is most wise, but he, who uses aright that which is known and familiar to all men. For, let it be observed, that it is with spiritual as with natural food. The most useful ingredients of it are the most abundant. Men may refuse to par

take of them, and starve and die, and thus become, what the majority of our species actually are-dead in trespasses and sins. To bring a man alive again from the apparent death of nature, we never think of wooing back the departed senses by the offer of luxuries. But we admit a supply of air, and try if he can breathe in this universal element; and make use of cold water, which is to be had in every dwellingplace; and ply his taste with some simple prepara tion; and could we restore him to the common enjoyment of these very commonest articles, we would be satisfied. And so it is in the case of spiritual torpor. To call it back to sensibility, we would never think of elaborate demonstration. But we would ring into our patient's ears the message of death, which every body knows, but few know with application. We would try to awaken his inner man, by the tidings of its immortality, which all profess to have faith in, while scarcely any human being lives under the power of it. We would sound the trump of alarm, and loudly speak of an angry God and a coming vengeance, notes as familiar to his hearing as is that of the wind of heaven which blows over him, while, in their terror and in their urgency, they are as unfelt by the soul, as if its ears of communication with a human voice were altogether closed. We would deal forth upon him the simplicities of the gospel-and tell of sin and of the Sacrifice-intimations which may be as readily taken up by the peasant as by the philosopher-but which, until roused from their carnal lethargy, are alike unheeded by them both. To recal them from such a paralysis. as this, we would not ply them with that which is

severe and elaborate, but would, if possible, quicken and revive them by that which is elementary. And not he who is led on by argument to that which is remote, but he who receives the touch of a quickening influence from that, the certainty of which is obvious to all, while the sense of it is nearly unfelt by all-he it is who hath attained the only true understanding-he it is who is wise unto salvation.

We cannot but perceive, how, while the doctrines of our faith are plain, in opposition to what is recondite, not requiring, like the difficulties of science, a prolonged and strenuous investigation—yet still, plain as they are, they need the influence of the Spirit for the true understanding of them, just as a dead body needs the touch of some miraculous personage, ere it can breathe the all-encompassing atmosphere, or use the universal elements, or be sustained by the common bounties of nature. And so of the soul. It is not by conducting it through any lengthened, or logical demonstration of the schools, that we restore it to that intelligence, the possession of which assures the possessor of life everlasting. It is by visiting it with the manifestation of certain great and impending, but withal simple realities. The wisdom which is thus gotten, is altogether distinct from the wisdom of philosophy -hidden in fact from many such wise, and many such prudent, and revealed unto babes.

Let us just look to the practical habit of nature, and see that, in the face of the clearest and plainest arithmetic, it gives a superiority to the present over the future world, and then may we acknowledge, that if it be needful to heal the diseased eyes of the