sins of a wicked world. Christ is all in all. He is ready to hear the prayer of the destitute, and to comfort the poor and needy when they call faithfully upon him. "I am the resurrection and the life," says he, "he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die." The outward tabernacle may decay -dust may return to dust-ashes to ashes -earth to earth-but the soul shall ascend to the living and eternal God. There, with Jehovah, shall the faithful dwell for ever and for ever.

SERMON XXIV.

1 COR. i. 19, 20.

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

"Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world ?"

"THERE is no new thing under the sun," declared the wisest of men. Emphatic and decisive as the declaration is, it appears to clash with the novel, and what are conceived by men, the momentous schemes of the day. The desire of novelty has always been a dominant passion in the human breast. Man will rise up early, and late take his rest, and devote his care and his undivided attention to accomplish, what

he conceives to be mighty achievements of intellect, of industry, or of power, for the sole gratification of astonishing his fellows. He will by means of an instrument, wonderful indeed to a finite capacity, gaze upon the heavens, and discover, as he fancies, by reading their constellations, the future events of the world. He will mark the state of the atmosphere, the sun, the moon, and the stars, till in his imagination he conceives he has obtained the counsels of the Deity. He will with his mighty vessels propelled by a power that almost bids defiance to the storm, sweep the ocean from shore to shore-and successfully cut his way through the powerful billows, be the tempest ever so violent. He, ingenious and indefatigable in quest of novelty, will pass over the earth with a velocity scarcely credible. Nay, he will dive into her very caverns in search of some new object to gratify his passion, and to excite the admiration of the world. He will calculate, as he fancies, the decay of cities and the fall of empires.-He will, in frenzied imagination, unwrap the heavens,

and disclose the glories and beauties of the abode of the unseen Jehovah. He will take his flights to unknown countries, spurred onwards by ambition and desirous of a name, and leaving his mark upon the before untouched tract, will exult in a discovery on which he rests his hopes of future celebrity. His mind, disdaining limits, dwells upon things near and things far distant with the like ease, fixes itself upon visible and invisible objects, and ranges at large upon the grandeur of creation, with an elasticity of which it is scarcely conscious to itself. But with what effect? Nature remains the same. The desired object is not to be found. The secrets and counsels of Deity are indiscoverable; and man, with the pride of the human heart reduced, acknowledges the irrevocable declaration of Solomon, that there is no new thing under the sun." "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe ? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath

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not God made foolish the wisdom of this world ?"

In making these remarks, my brethren, we would not be understood, as regarding lightly the exercise of the intellect of man ; on the contrary, we look upon the mind as one of the noblest gifts vouchsafed by the Deity. By the mind the powers of the creature are known,-it is a gift that raises man above the beast, and renders him lord of the surrounding creation. It affords him an intellectual enjoyment which cannot be described; it raises his thoughts by inductive reasoning from the earthly to the heavenly, and makes him aspire to a higher and better existence. It can indulge in contemplations upon the glories and wonders of creation,-it can dwell upon the attributes of the Deity, and receive his eternal love as precious to its existence. It can fix its attention upon the records of the Bible, and though it may be depressed by the great fall that took place in the Garden of Eden, and by the consequence of original sin, it can throw off the despondency, wrung, though it be,