ness; and that reflection and these principles conduct to pure religion for their completion, their strength, their crown; religion, which holds out the highest object and requires the noblest means: the one, happiness, infinite, and everlasting; the other, character, purified and elevated towards the utmost perfection of humanity. There may be dejection in the wise man's course; but though cast down, he is not forsaken. Black clouds may lower over the scene, but upon them is the rainbow, and after them comes a brighter sunshine. With all his aberrations and depression, his life is still a progression; and so is his immortality. In some disappointed mood he may ask, 'What hath the wise more than the fool?' But his calmer meditation on the course of his existence will be like the vision of Jacob; it will be as a ladder, set up on earth, but its top reaching unto heaven. The patriarch was sleeping at its foot-sleeping a brief time, while his frame was weary and his vision was blissful; but early in the morning he rose, the strength of his body and the piety of his heart alike invigorated; offered his vows to God, and went forwards on his way, trusting and rejoicing.

SERMON VI.

HUMAN BROTHERHOOD.

ACTS xvii. 26.

And hath made of one blood all nations of men.

Had the fact that Paul preached at Athens been mentioned without particulars, how great would have been our curiosity to know how he conducted himself who eminently ranks as a philosopher among the apostles, when he stood alone, an apostle among philosophers! This was the noblest arena on which he had ever struggled; he had fought with beasts at Ephesus, but at Athens he contended with the master spirits of mankind. He was at once in the very palace of intellect, and the sanctuary of idolatry. All that his writings and recorded actions have unfolded of his character rush upon our minds, and deepen our interest, and exalt our expectations, as we behold him, impelled by the fervor of zeal, and armed only in the simplicity of truth, advancing to glorify Jesus of Nazareth as the Lord of faith, in the awful presence of this world's wisdom. Well did he acquit himself, in a speech where reason lays the broad basis of a spiritual theism, and revelation rears the lofty structure of judgment and

immortality. He spoke, as apostle should speak at Athens, in language worthy of himself, and his illustrious character, and heavenly commission;-worthy of the dignified auditory before which he pleaded; worthy of diffusion and transmission to remotest countries and ages, for reverential study; and worthy to be the shrine of those fundamental and everlasting principles which constitute religious truth, and are Christianity. Nor is it to him alone that our interest clings; for, from the dawn of intellect and freedom, has Greece been a watch-word in the earth. There rose the social spirit, to soften and refine her chosen race, and shelter, as in a nest, her gentleness from the rushing storm of barbarism-there liberty first built her mountain throne, first called the waves her own, and shouted across them a proud defiance to despotism's banded myriads: there the arts and graces danced around humanity, and stored man's home with comforts, and strowed his path with roses, and bound his brows with myrtle, and fashioned for him the breathing statue, and summoned him to temples of snowy marble, and charmed his senses with all forms of elegance, and threw over his final sleep their veil of loveliness: there sprung poetry, like their own fabled goddess, mature at once, from the teeming intellect, girt with the arms and armor that defy the assaults of time, and subdue the heart of man: there matchless orators gave the world a model of perfect eloquence, the soul the instrument on which they played, and every passion of our nature but a tone which the master's touch called forth at pleasure: there lived and taught the philosophers of bower and porch, of pride and pleasure, of deep speculation and of useful

action, who developed all the acuteness and refinement, and excursiveness, and energy of mind, and were the glory of their country, when their country was the glory of the earth.

But although such associations as these work powerfully on our feelings as we turn to the page where what is most brilliant in profane and important in sacred history come in contact, we must remember that Athens appeared to the apostle under a very different aspect. There are sufficient indications that to the splendor of its name, and the charms of its literature, he was no stranger, nor insensible. The intellectual superiority not only of its sages, but of its inhabitants, must have been to him a welcome congeniality and a strong excitement; but it was something else which stirred his spirit in him, and stimulated the moral daring of the effort, through which the historian has enabled us to track his course, or rather to watch his flight. Athens was the very focus of idolatry. Its altars, statues, and temples were multiplied beyond parallel, and reckoned more numerous than those of all the rest of Greece together. Petronius, the satirist, who was living then, said, "That his country was filled with gods, so that it was easier to find a god than a man.' Athens was called the altar of Greece; and that 'the city was wholly given to idolatry,' or more correctly, was so full of images, roused the apostle to come forward as the champion of Jehovah, and demand the restoration of their homage to its rightful object, the only God, the Father of Christ.

On many minds the effect would have been differ

ent, for idolatry there put on a most fascinating and a most formidable shape. It had much to impose on the senses. Probably no scene of mortal creation was ever so enchanting as that presented in a walk through Athens during its splendor. From the plundered and disjointed fragments of its beauty, our artists draw their noblest inspirations; and in them our country boasts a treasure of which all civilized nations may envy the possession. Oh! to have seen them glittering in their own, sunshine, in proud harmony with the temples from which they have been torn; to have passed through those streets which were but long galleries of godlike forms in marble, and ascend that Acropolis which was the citadel, not only of their safety, but their fame; to have witnessed the living magnificence of their worship, and especially of their festivals; the gorgeous attire of their priests; the solemn pomp of their sacrifices; the interminable variety of their processions; the multitudinous concourse of their citizens; the clouds of fragrant incense that alone could obscure their transparent atmosphere; the thrilling delight of music resounding from roofs whose beams had been the masts of Persian fleets; the majesty of their theatres, which inspired the sense, not so much of pleasure as of sublimity; the agonizing excitement of their games, and the distribution of those simple prizes of the palm branch, or the crown of olive, pine, or parsley, for which Europe has no sceptre or diadem that the victor would have taken in exchange must he have bartered his Grecian glory too; to have seen these, and idolatry pervading them all as their vital spirit, and reigning by them over hearts and