THE FOURFOLD FORMS OF PIETY.

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new truths all radiant of God. Here are the great evils of church and state, of social and domestic life, wrongs to be righted, evils to be outgrown: it is the business of piety to mend all this. Ours is no age when Religion can forsake the broad way of life. In the public street must she journey on, open her shop in the crowded square, and teach men by deeds, her life more eloquent than her lips. Hers is not now the voice that is to cry in the wilderness, but in the public haunts of men must she call them to make straight their ways.

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We must possess all parts of this piety, - the intellectual, moral, affectional,-yea, total piety. This is not an age when men in religion's name can safely sneer at philosophy, call reason nal," make mouths at immutable justice, and blast with their damnations the faces of mankind. Priests have had their day, and in dull corners still aim to protract their favorite and most ancient night; but the sun has risen with healing in his wings. Piety without goodness, without justice, without truth or love, is seen to be the pretence of the hypocrite. Can philosophy satisfy us without religion? Even the head feels a coldness from the want of piety. The greatest intellect is ruled by the same integral laws with the least, and needs. this fourfold love of God; and the great intellects that scorn religion are largest sufferers from their

scorn.

Any man may attain this piety; it lies level to all. Yet it is not to be won without difficulty, manly effort, self-denial of the low for the sake of the highest in us. Of you, young man, young maid, it will demand both prayer and toil. Not without great efforts are great heights won. In your period of passion you must subordinate instinctive desire to your reason, your conscience, your heart and soul; the lust of the body to the spirit's love. In the period of ambition you must coördinate all that is personal or selfish with what is absolutely true, just, holy, and good. Surely this will demand self-denial, now of instinctive desire, now of selfish ambition. Much you must sacrifice. But you will gain the possession, the use, the development, and the joy of your own mind and conscience, heart and soul. You will never sacrifice truth, justice, holiness, or love. All these you will gain; gain for to-day, gain for ever. What inward blessedness will you acquire! what strength, what tranquillity, what loveliness, what joy in God! You will have your delight in Him. He his in you. Is it not worth while to live so that you know you are in unison with God; in unison, too, with men; in quantity growing more, in quality superior? Make the trial for manly excellence, and the result is yours, for time and for eternity.

II.

OF TRUTH AND THE INTELLECT.

BUY THE TRUTH, AND SELL IT NOT; ALSO WISDOM, AND INSTRUCTION, AND UNDERSTANDING. - Prov. xxiii. 23.

TEMPERANCE is corporeal piety; it is the preservation of divine order in the body. It is the harmony of all the members thereof; the true symmetry and right proportion of part with part, of each with all, and so the worship of God with every limb of the body. Wisdom is to the mind what temperance, in this sense, is to the body; it is intellectual piety; the presence of divine order in the mind; the harmony of all the faculties thereof; the true symmetry and right proportion of faculty with faculty, of each with all. It is a general power of intellect, which may turn in any one or in all directions; the poet is a wise man in what relates to poetry; the philosopher, the statesman, the man of business, each in what relates to his particular function. So it is a general power of

mind. We say "knowledge is power," but mean wisdom, which is general intellectual ability, the power of knowing and of using truth.

This wisdom implies two things: the love of truth as truth, which I spoke of the other day as the intellectual side of piety; and, secondly, the power to possess and use this truth, either in the specific form which is sought by the philosopher, poet, statesman, and man of business, or else in some more general form including all these; the power of getting truth either by the mode of reflection, as truth demonstrated, or by the mode of intuition, as truth seen and known at sight. For the acquisitive part of wisdom is the generic power which includes both the specific powers, of intuition and of reflection.

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Truth is the object which corresponds to the mind. As the eye has the power of sight, and as the special things we see are the object of the eye, so is truth, in its various forms, the object of the mind. If a man keep the law of his body, in the large sense of the word Temperance, he acquires three good things, health, strength, and beauty. As a general rule these three will come; there are, indeed, particular and personal exceptions, but such is the rule. Let any race of men, say the NewEnglanders, for a hundred years fulfil all the conditions of the body, and observe the laws thereof,

they will become distinguished for these three things.

In like manner, if a man keep the law of his mind, and fulfil its natural conditions, he acquires wisdom, acquires intellectual health, strength, and beauty. Here also there may be particular and personal exceptions, but such is the rule. Let any race of men, say the New-Englanders, for a hundred years fulfil the natural condition of mind and keep the law thereof, we should have these three qualities to a greater degree than the ancient inhabitants of Athens, long regarded as the most intellectual race in the world; we should have the quality of wisdom which they had, but with more intellectual health, strength, and loveliness, more truth and more power to use it, inasmuch as the human race has acquired a greater intellectual development in the two thousand years that have passed since the days of Aristotle and Alexander. The laws which regulate the development of mind, in the individual or the race, are as certain as the laws of matter. Observance thereof is sure to bring certain consequences to the individual, the nation, and mankind. The intellectual peculiarity of a nation is transmitted from age to age, and only disappears when the nation perishes or mingles with some other tribe inferior to itself; then it does not cease, but is spread more thinly over a wider