it needs. Its inward, spiritual, vital premises involve the conclusion more surely than any curious and subtle analysis of the understanding can reach it. "Faith" itself, as our text avers, "is the basis of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," and needs not that any other foundation though of rock, or pillars though of iron, should be put underneath it. As we believe in the world below because we have senses, and not because somebody attempts logically to prove it to us, so we believe in the world above by the inner perceptions of faith.

In fine, the same faith, while convincing us of this durableness of our real life, redeems us from the bondage of death, to which many, all their lifetime, are subject. Thus the apostle declares of Christ, that he "abolished death." For just in the degree that, through a religious faith, the feeling of immortality grows in the soul, the death of the body loses power to disturb or alarm it. Principles and affections are developed, on which, we know and are inwardly assured, death cannot lay that icy finger which must chill every flowing drop in the circulation of animal life. The spirit, alive to its relations to God and to all pure beings, is conscious of nothing in common with the grave, has nothing that can be put into the grave save the temporary garment that it wears; and its mounting desires, its ardent love, its swelling hopes, its holy communings, are not stuff woven into the texture of that garment, but are as separable from it as the lamp from its clay vase, as the light of heaven from the clod it for a passing moment illumines. In fact, in this state of inward

life, the ideas of the spirit and death, of dust and the soul, cannot be brought together, any more than can the ideas of virtue and color, thought and material size.

Death is dreadful to the man in whom no such soaring wishes and expectations have been born, whose spirit is dormant, whose faith is dead, the active principles of whose nature are sunk in the flesh and the material world; who, by love of pleasure, has identified himself with the body, nor can clearly, even in thought, disentangle his soul therefrom; or has gazed on no prospects beyond houses and lands and earthly goods. Death must be dreadful to him; for it must seem to be the death of all: it must look like annihilation. As a candle goes out in a deep pit, so he must fear lest his life should be quenched as he is lowered into the tomb; nothing being as yet distinctly unfolded in him which can live, and, as a triumphant survivor, ascend from the wreck of matter and mortal decay; no "faith" now, when all other props fail, to be the "basis of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

But to the believer, who has cherished and cultivated a spiritual, evangelical faith, death, robbed of these terrors, comes not as a destroyer, but a deliverer; finds in him, not a victim, but a victor through his Lord Jesus Christ. The life that is in his spirit from God is the pledge of its own endless continuGod help us to secure that basis nothing on earth can shake, that evidence nothing can refute !

ance.

114

DISCOURSE XI.

POSITIVE FAITH.

Acts xvii. 19.

MAY WE KNOW WHAT THIS NEW DOCTRINE, WHEREOF THOU SPEAKEST, IS?

PAUL was in Athens, and Athens was another name for a place of philosophic and religious speculation; the "air full of noises" of disputing sects and schools, Stoic, Epicurean, Greek and Jew, with their doctrines of one God and many gods; of cold destiny as the guide, or mere pleasure as the end, of life. The apostle, with his characteristic ardor, plunges into the midst of every little gathering swarm of debaters in the synagogue and the market; and, either by the superiority of his power or the singularity of his views, soon attracts general attention, and becomes the central figure in that motley, many-tongued group of citizens and strangers. They take him, carry him to their high court of Areopagus, and ask of him a fuller exposition of his faith; which, from Mars' Hill as his pulpit, he preaches to the whole assembly and to the world. The calm utterance of his unwavering convictions in that scene of scepticism, contradiction, and intellectual curiosity, suggests to us the importance of a positive reli

gious faith; and to this subject I invite your at

tention.

Passing in review the various forms of opinion that have prevailed from age to age, or that now have dominion in one or another section of the church or the world, it is easy to see how much they express which we do not believe; easy to reject the loudest and most pretending theories; to smile at and scorn modes and judgments, once supremely potential over the human mind; to brand much as obsolete or exploded, and much as exercising sway only over ignorant, superstitious, and bigoted minds. But, meantime, amid all this negation and contempt, the question comes back and thunders upon us, What do you believe? What is your true substitute for the supposed erroneous ideas of past centuries or present millions? May we know what your doctrine is respecting these high themes, God and man, life, death, and eternity?

You disown, as absurd or groundless, this or that notion or dogma, or mass of notions and dogmas. Let them pass, as unworthy further notice, into the receptacle of things forgotten and "lost on earth; but recall your attention to the substantial and positive principles, if any such there be, which you maintain; and, if none such there be, consider how much you gain, or how lofty a height of reason you reach, by merely sitting in the seat of the sceptic and scorner, and not burning with the enthusiasm and love and devotion of the religious believer.

You disallow perhaps the Hindoo's doctrine of manifold successive incarnations, from age to age,

of the Supreme Being. Do you accept, with all its consequences, the New Testament teaching of one incarnation, or manifestation in the flesh, of God in Jesus Christ? You deny the blind fate of the Greek and the Turk. Have you trembled in mingled awe and joy at the thought and in the use of your moral freedom? For herein is the importance of a real positive faith on any point; its tendency to pass into disposition and act, moulding the heart and life. And here is the misery of having an unbelieving or indifferent mind about religious truth, that the heart becomes a prey to mere inclination and the present world, and that the powers of the world to come are unloosed from it. Positive faith, even though we have but a little, a few sentences, a creed of a handbreadth, including simple and grand points, only embraced and held-to vitally, as dying martyrs have clasped the Bible or the Cross to their bosoms,— will exert an astonishing influence. As it is said there is electricity enough latent in a drop of water, could it be developed from all its affinities, to charge a cloud, and make a shining thunderbolt; so there power in the shortest and most obvious doctrines of our religion, in the very particles of faith, if practically brought out and applied, to dissolve our earthly reliances, and revolutionize our lives.

is

Do you believe in so plain a thing as this, "Thou God seest me"?— that, in every thought and deed and purpose, you are seen by God? What, then, is the deed you do, the thought you think, the purpose you intend, under that secret, blazing inspection? What the sentiment you express, upon the