and in part an equally marked unlikeness, to its Maker.

And, first; we know, by instinct and by revelation, that God has made us in part like to Himself, that is, immortal. This bodily frame we look upon, although it is a part of ourselves, is but the least part; although it is a partaker of Christ's redemption, it is but the shrine of the redeemed spirit: we feel that a man's self is his living soul-the invisible, impalpable spirit, which comprehends all his being with an universal consciousness, and is itself comprehended only of God. The body is its subject, its organ, its instrument, its manifestation, its symbol; it is not itself. All things that affect the body are external to it, separate from it. The very life of the body is but a lower energy of the true life of man, and is also separable and distinct. It

may be quenched, and yet the soul shall live-it may be, shall live all the more mightily, and wield higher powers and intenser energies, as unclogged and disenthralled from the burden and the bondage of its lower life. It has a life in itself, which, embodied or disembodied, shall live on-outliving not the body alone, but the very world itself. All things visible shall decay; the very heaven shall pass away like a scroll, the very earth shall melt away under our feet; even now all things are hurrying past us, are dropping piecemeal, are dying daily: but

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we shall live for ever. We shall rise on the heaving wreck of material things. All All men, both good and evil, shall live on; all that ever have lived, live still; all that ever died since Adam,-Abel the righteous, and Enoch that walked with God, and John that lay on his Master's bosom, Balaam that tempted the Lord, Judas that sold his Redeemer, Herod that mocked the Lord of glory, the very men that nailed Him to the cross,-all are living in some unseen abode. In this life they were a mystery of mortality and immortality knit in one. They were in their season of trial; and their day ran out, and their award was fixed, and the mortal fell off like a loosened shroud, and the immortal spirit passed onward into the world unseen.

And, in the next place, we learn that our nature stands in a marked contrast to the divine; that the immortal nature which is within us is of a mutable kind, susceptible of the most searching changes. God, who is immortal, is also changeless. He is "I am that I am," "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." In Him "is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." But we, who, by His almighty power, are made immortal like Himself, unlike Him, are daily changing. We are susceptible of forms and characters stamped upon us from without; of habits and tempers of soul fixed by energies within. We grow, we de

cay, we fluctuate, we become what we were not, what we were we lose again; and yet we must be immortal. The most fearful and wonderful of mysteries is man. To be mortal and to be mutable, to be under the power of change and death, would seem, like the meeting of kindred imperfections, to be consistent; that we, who change daily, should change at last, once for all, from life to death, from being to annihilation, would seem like the carrying out of a natural law; and the last change to be like all other changes, save only in that it is the greatest and the last. But to be ever changing, and yet to be immortal; that after this changeful life ended there should be life everlasting, or the worm that dieth not, - bespeaks some deep counsel of God, some high destiny of man; something that is ever fulfilling, ever working out in us, whether we will or no.

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And so, indeed, it is. We are here, upon our trial, for this end. We are sent into the world, that, by our own will and choice, we should determine our eternal portion. This is the great moral design and purpose of Him that made us; and therefore He made us as we are-mutable, that we may take our mould and character; and immortal, that we may retain it for ever.

1. Let us consider, then, first, that our immortal being is always changing for good or evil, al

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ways becoming better or worse.

We came into

this world with a bias of evil on our nature; but in holy baptism we received a gift which redressed the balance, and made us free to choose. From that day we have stood between two contending powers. On the one side, the world, the flesh, and the devil; on the other side, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; the powers of darkness and of light, of death and of life; the kingdom of Satan and the Church of Christ; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,-the gospel of salvation, and the holy Sacraments; all these, as antagonist legions, have contended for us, and cast in turn their power and their hold upon us, and we have hung in the poise and vibrated to and fro, wavering in weakness and wilfulness, a spectacle to men and angels, till, for good or ill, choice or time has determined the suspense. And this is the key to all the moral phenomena we see around us. The ten thousand various and conflicting characters of men are, each several one, nothing more than the shape and attitude in which they finally issue from this moral conflict. All men are good or evil, just as they incline determinately to this or that side of this moral balance ; and their determined inclination is their character. All our life long, and in every stage of it, this process, which we vaguely call the formation of cha

racter, is going on. Our immortal nature is taking its stamp and colour; we are receiving and imprinting ineffaceable lines and features. As the will chooses, so the man is. Our will is ourself; and as it takes up into itself, and, as it were, incorporates with itself, the powers and the bias of good or ill-such we become.

2. In the next place, consider that this continual change is also a continual approach to, or departure from God. We are always tending to God or from God; and this must be by the force of moral necessity. We are always growing more or less like Him, and therefore nearer or further from Him. On these two lines all moral beings are for ever moving. The holy, the pure-hearted, and the penitent, have fellowship with angels, and walk with God, and God dwells in them with a growing nearness day by day; they are ever more and more one with Him, and partake more fully of the Divine nature, and are filled with the will of God: they abide in God, and God in them; they are one with Christ, and Christ with them: they are taken up as it were into the company of heaven, and, by the ascent of their moral being, climb upwards to the throne of God. But the sinful, the impure, and the impenitent, have their fellowship with fallen angels, and their moral being is in warfare against God, their will struggling and