nor duty move you, you must be of poor natures. None but bad influences are on the other side. Idleness pleading the charms of sloth; conceit inflating with a silly self-satisfaction; despair saying "I cannot; " pride saying "I will not.” It is the lotos-fruit, and the charmed cup, and the siren song, set in competition with the voices of heaven; and you may think the lotosfruit delightful, but it means exile; and the charmed cup sweet, but it means degradation; and the siren song enchanting, but it means death and shipwreck on the desolate and loathly shore. Oh yes, this is all more or less possible, and the outcome of it is a life wasted for want of humility or want of purpose. But I sayfor I have often and often witnessed it, and prophesied it, and been true in my prophecy-that any boy who steadfastly resists those evil influences, any boy who works and denies himself, and prays to God to bless and help him, may win if he will. Whole-heartedness, manly determination, noble resolve, above all, the humility which always accompanies true worth,--I would rather possess these a thousand times, and I should feel certain that, even for worldly success, they are infinitely more valuable than the mere flash in che pan of a conceited cleverness. The "modesty of fearful duty" is more blessed of God, and more beloved of man, and more valued even by the world, than the raw presumption of a shallow quickness, and the crude self-confidence of an ignorance which takes itself for knowledge. I say that these things will succeed; but even if they do not-and of success we all think far too much—they at least involve that holy self-control, that contentedness of heart, that capacity of service, which are more golden than earthly gold, and are the success of heaven itself. So that to the youngest and most

self-distrustful boy here I say, My child, doubt not, only believe; cast your bread on the waters, you will find it after many days. God says, "Ask what I shall give thee." Ask in faith, nothing doubting, and do your duty while you ask, and then not only have you no need to envy the gifts of any living man, but the very angels up in heaven--even those nearest to the throne, lucentes et ardentes, the shining spirits of knowledge, the burning spirits of love-might, with no sigh, exchange their lot with yours.

2. And though I believe, nay, though I know, this to be true of earthly things, it is ten times more indisputably true of the better and the heavenly. Oh, covet earnestly the best gifts, and you shall have them. Here God says to you with yet more earnest insistency, "Ask what I shall give thee." Dost thou love uprightness? Ask it, will it, and thou shalt be upright. Dost thou love purity? Ask it, will it, and thou shalt be pure. Dost thou feel the high ideal of moral nobleness? Ask for it, will it, and thou shalt be noble. Were an angel to glide down upon the sunbeams, and offer you anything which you sincerely desired, would you not think it at once ungrateful and senseless to refuse? Is it less senseless to refuse when God offers you an immortality of blessedness, and garlands that cannot fade? Perhaps you have lost the wish for such blessings, as the drunkard, loving only that which is destroying him, loathes the pure water of the springs. Well, God can restore you the moral and the spiritual taste yet undepraved. Let the "sorrow rise from beneath," and the "consolation will meet it from above." He offers it you again to-day. Pointing to the fair fruits of the Spirit which grow upon the Tree of Life; pointing to the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out of the

throne of God and of the Lamb; pointing to the heaven of radiant peace which shines in every cleansed and forgiven heart; pointing to the peace which passeth all understanding, and which man can neither give nor take away, He has said to you often from your childhood, He says to you once more in this sacred place to-day, Ask what I shall give thee." He said it to Solomon in the dim visions of the night, He says it to us by the voice of His Eternal Son. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened."

June 15th, 1873.

SERMON XVIII.

SOWING AMONG THORNS.

JER. iv. 3.

"Thus saith the Lord, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns."

LAST Sunday I spoke to you of the first part of this text, and tried to urge upon you as its message that you should, with all your hearts and all your souls set yourselves to the fresh duties which now, at the beginning of another term, devolve upon you here. The second half of the text seems appropriate for to-day; it dwells, not on the need for labour, but on a danger which, if neglected, would render that toil unfruitful. It warns you that it is not enough to break up your fallow ground, nor even to sow good seed; but that the ground must be a clean fallow-that it must be free from pre-occupations-that there must be room for the good seed to grow.

The metaphor must be clear to the youngest boy. The field is the human heart; the seed is the word and the will of God; the harvest is your sanctification. When the heart is simple, and innocent, and free from wrong, there are no thorns there; it is as Paradise before Adam fell; nothing grows in that heavenly garden but the golden fruits of the Spirit and the fair flowers of grace. But when man fell, the ground was cursed;

thorns and thistles grew in it; only by the sweat of his brow could man wring from it the bread of life. Even so it is with all of us. When, in growing years, we pass forth out of the Paradise of our early innocence, the soil of the heart is more or less encumbered; the seeds and roots of evil things are in it; those evil things must be cleared away, must, at the worst, be utterly kept down, or the good seed will produce nothing but barren and blighted ears.

You will all remember the Parable of the Sower. There some of the seed falls upon ground so bare that it will not grow at all, and the fowls of the air carry it away; just as there are some natures so callous, so past feeling as to seem incapable of even a good impression. And other seed fell on stony grounds, on natures so thin, so shallow, so poverty-stricken, that the seed appears only to wither, scorched by the first sun, because it has no strengthening root. And other seed fell among thorns. Not, observe, on full-grown thorns-no sower would be so senseless as to sow seed there-but on thornroots lying under the surface, hidden, unnoticed, of which we are afterwards told that they sprang up. Yes, the soil looked good enough, but roots of bitterness were in it, and under it. The fallow had been broken up, ploughed it had been and harrowed, but not deeply, not resolutely, not faithfully enough; and so when the sunbeams fell on it, and it was watered from above with the gracious dews of God, the seed grew indeed, but the thorns grew also, and stronger and more rapidly, and the more they grew the more they robbed the good seed of heat, and light, and moisture, and so absorbed into their own evil nature the whole strength and energy of the soil, that the green blade could never become the ripened ear, and at last, as you looked upon