as an ordinary course. From his usual goodness in giving to the plant its growth and to the flower its glory, the strains of the Psalmist may worthily be ours without alteration or exception: "Thou visitest the earth and blessest it, thou makest it very plenteous, thou waterest her furrows, thou sendest rain into the little valleys thereof, thou makest it soft with the drops of rain, and blessest the increase of it." When such is the care of Deity for all his works, can he be ever regardless of that race which with most care and goodness he created, and has redeemed? When we behold him employing himself in the care of the various classes of inanimate creation, opening his exhaustless treasures to preserve the beauty, convenience, and richness of this globe, and in this his annual labour having ultimate reference to the comfort and delight of this human race, what want of justice, of gratitude, of resolution, does it argue in man, either to feel deserted or to trust in his own arm! Despondence in the virtuous is criminal. Immoderate anxiety even about our food and raiment is an unnecessary trouble. He is the truly wise and happy man who, from observing the constant care of Providence over all his works, has learnt to hope in the Lord and stay upon his God. This was the particular lesson the Saviour had in view when he invited his disciples to the subject we are considering; and it would contribute much to our felicity if the spirit of the remark were always operative in our bosoms: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow."

Once more we may profitably "consider the lilies of the field, how the grow," by viewing them as emblems of human life. In their origin, formed of the dust; in their infant state, tender and feeble; in their condition, exposed to gales, and droughts, and untimely frosts; in their duration, a short fleeting season; in their end, returning to dust; how coincident the emblem with the life of man! Nothing can be more striking; nothing more affecting. It is as if our temporal being, its glory and perishableness, its various changes, and its end, were painted in the lily of the field, for the instruction of the young, of the gay, of the VOL. II.-32

beautiful, of the aged, of man in his best and every estate. "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof, is as the flower of the field; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth." In this view of the objects we are considering, what a multitude of reflections crowd upon my mind! Come, ye who have reached your growth, consider the lily in its germ and budding state. Behold what care of the cultivator, what constant supply of moisture and heat, what kindly dews and genial beams, are necessary to protect its tenderness, and unfold its glory. Such was your infant state. Learn, then, your debt of gratitude and duty to the parents, who, under heaven, guarded and aided your earliest and tender youth, watched with anxiety each forming bud, and helped it to expand, and raised you to whatever of strength, or usefulness, or excellence you now possess. Let the young, whose hearts "rejoice. in their youth," and in the prospect of many days, come and observe the lily in its most vigorous, promising state. Behold, an unexpected blast cuts it off in a moment; or a secret worm gnawing at its root, is hastening its decay; or if it escape all accident and injury, and reach maturity, how soon will it have been in its glory and begin to fade! Short is the inference, and alas, alas, how often realized! "In the midst of life we are in death," come up like a flower, and are cut down. Let the beautiful, the rich, and the accomplished, come and contemplate the lily in its most lovely bloom and glorious array. So short-lived as is the plant, still shorter is its flower; of a day's duration, incapable of permanence. A sultry sun will fade it. Embosomed in it, an insect may consume it. While it is viewed, it fails. If it reach evening without change, it is rare as the phenomena of nature. What a caution against indulging pride, or vanity, or any great delight in external charms and adventitious glories! They, like the blooming flower, are as frail as beautiful, as transient as splendid; seldom are retained to the evening of our day; and often are sad proofs that "man at his best estate, is altogether vanity." Finally, approach, my fathers, whose heads are white with nature's honours, and contemplate the lily with

all its buds and blossoms gone, its form and organs of life contracted, and the fluid which conveyed its life dried up. Autumn has faded the vigour and glories of summer, and winter is hastening to lay it low in the cold death of vegetative nature. It urges you, methinks, to bless the providence, which, while most of those who entered with you upon life, have disappeared, has hitherto continued you, and to prepare to resign that vital seed into the hand of the great Husbandman, from which, quickened by him in its earthly bed, shall spring your renovated existence.

But gladly I return from the mention of winter to the spring, to observe in the last place, that the reproduction of the vegetative race furnishes a physical assurance of our restoration to life, after having complied with the law of our nature, and death has held over us a temporary reign. When we behold dead matter rising into life, and the seed which has decayed in the earth springing into new being-becoming the plant again, and vested with new vigour, and all its former properties; what can prevent that our bodies, after decaying in dust, may again be quickened and restored to new existence? When we reflect how from the pro. miscuous earth the almighty agent separates the particles necessary to give to each of the myriads of plants its own nature, and, notwithstanding the infinite blendings and variations of forms and colours, returns to each with unfailing accuracy those which belong to its kind; what difficulty can there be in believing that to each of us in the resurrection shall be given his own body? While we "consider the lilies of the field, how they grow," it cannot be thought "a thing incredible that God should raise the dead." These, though lately decayed, did not perish. We behold the seed after dying in the earth rising into new life before our eyes in its own nature, beautiful and vigorous. Let the skeptic explain this wondrous work, which, if he had never seen it, would have seemed as improbable as a human resurrection; or else forbear with presumptuous curiosity to demand, "how are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come."

Such are the instructive lessons to be derived from considering the lilies of the field with an intelligent, moral eye. Were their soft accents heard, more than for beauty, more than for physical properties, they would be valuable to man. They teach affecting truths. They address kind lectures to the mind. They are the handmaids of Christianity, illustrating its doctrines with interesting analogies, and enforcing its precepts with affecting appeals to the heart. It is our excellence and duty to hear them. The patriarchs learnt much of their goodness in the field. Our Lord and his disciples, with singular effect, oft lead our minds to nature's school. And if what has been said be not transient in our bosoms, as the duration of the objects we have been contemplating, it may not be unprofitable to have followed them at this time. Sure I am, you cannot leave it without joining your voices in the grand poem, which thence perpetually ascends to heaven, "Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty, in wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy riches." "And worthy art thou to receive honour, and glory, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy glory they are and were created.”

SERMON LVIII.

THE OBLIGATION AND MEANS OF LIVING IN GOD'S SIGHT.

HEBREWS, Xi. 27.

"He endured, as seeing him who is invisible."

I' F there be one consequence of man's depravity which more than another occasions unhappiness, error and vice, it is his easy habitual forgetfulness of his Maker. The sentiment of a God, everywhere though invisibly present, noticing the conduct of his creatures, would, if it were fully and always felt, have the strongest influence to keep men in the path of duty, and to render it to them a path of peace. But, prone to forget the existence and observing eye of the Almighty; absorbed in the pursuit of objects which passion starts; unsuspicious of any other spectators than mortals; and fearful of no other evils than fortune's frowns, what wonder that man, frail heir to a thousand weaknesses, temptations, and troubles, so seldom passes this difficult life without discontent and transgression! The sentiment of a Deity holy and good, supreme over all, and omnipresent, is necessary to keep him from offending, and to inspire him with strength and resignation. You will not then unwillingly lend your attention to a discourse whose object is to induce and aid you, like Moses, honoured in the text, to conduct yourselves, in every period and condition of life, as under the immediate eye of an infinitely holy, powerful, and gracious Being.