And I offer, in conclusion, my fervent wish and prayer for my friends who worship here, that you may have more and more of the spirit of the psalmist, to desire the one thing so dear and precious to him; to assemble from sabbath to sabbath all the days of your life in the house of the Lord to keep holy time; to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple; and that by worshiping God here in the beauty of holiness, you may be prepared, when you leave the body, to behold his unveiled glories and to feel the full influence of his love in his heavenly presence forever.

9*

THE WORLD TRANSIENT; VIRTUE ETERNAL.

1 JOHN ii. 17.

THE WORLD PASSETH AWAY AND THE LUST THEREOF; BUT HE THAT DOETH THE WILL OF GOD ABIDETH FOREVER.

THE design of the text is obvious: it is to inculcate the transitoriness of all things pertaining to the present state, and to admonish us that virtue, obedience to the will of God, is the only permanent good which neither time, nor change, nor death can affect; that this is of supreme value, and that all else is of secondary and trifling importance in comparison with this. Texts of similar import are scattered throughout the scriptures. They occur under every form of admonition and warning. And they thus show the extreme need, which the men whom God commissioned to teach their fellow-men, foresaw there would ever be, of impressing the human mind with the truth they convey, by often repeating it in various forms of expression. The experience of mankind, in every age and in every condition, equally evinces the need they have of being warned, and on their guard against an overweening attachment to the world; to that which is of subordinate value in itself, and which is perishable in its nature and passing away.

The love of the world, the influence of sensible objects, is

the grand enemy of human virtue; the tempter which seduces men from the path which conducts to glory, honor and immortality, and allures them to that which leadeth to destruction. The world is necessarily the first to get possession of the mind. in childhood and youth. And owing to the negligence and worldly example of parents, by far the majority of children, even in christian communities, grow up with few or no religious impressions; with little of that moral culture or spiritual instruction which alone can counteract the influence of the world, and prevent its acquiring an exclusive dominion over the mind. It is true that, as we advance in life, experience, observation and reflection unite to convince us that this world is not everything to an intelligent, moral and immortal being like man; that there are other objects and beings than those that are present and visible, to which we sustain most important relations, and on which our real and only permanent interests and happiness most essentially depend. The events of providence which we witness, the changes which we experience in our minds, our bodies, connections and possessions, teach us that there is an unseen and uncontrollable agent at work, whose will all these events and changes obey; and who has decreed that this world and the fashion of it, and we with it, shall pass away. God has, indeed, in his works, his providence, and especially in his word and in the institutions of religion, furnished abundant indications and means wisely fitted to remind us of the fluctuating, mutable and transitory nature of all things below the heavens; and which, in his goodness,

he has designed as monitors to warn us that this is not the place of our rest; to detach our thoughts and affections from the world, from the things that are seen and temporal, and to direct them to the things that are unseen and eternal.

Yet notwithstanding all the proofs within and around us, of the unsatisfactory nature and short duration of everything here below, the world is ever insinuating itself into our regards and fastening itself upon our affections by innumerable influences and ties. Our religious impressions are worn away, the objects of faith are shut out from our minds by our constant contact and necessary intercourse with the world, by its engrossing cares and seducing pleasures. The convictions. produced by our meditations and devotions, of the trifling importance of the transcient and perishable interests of time and the body, compared with those of our higher or spiritual nature, which are eternal, are weakened and dissipated by the more powerful influences of present things, present enjoyments and pursuits, to which we are constantly exposed, and which impress and engage our minds without any efforts on our part, and which can be counteracted only by voluntary and strenuous efforts often exerted to this very end, so as to become a settled habit of the mind. It is by reflection only that we can successfully combat the influence and resist the dominion of the world. It is by reflection that we discover its deceitfulness; that we strip it of its false colors; that we learn to estimate its vanity, to calculate its short duration, and to feel that it is not the portion of an immortal being formed

in God's likeness and created to be an image of his own eternity. One of the most obvious characteristics of the world, that to which the text directs our attention, is its transitoriness. The world passeth away and the lust thereof.

Let us dwell a few moments at the threshhold of a new year, upon this truth; that the world, its objects and possessions, the cares, labors and pleasures of the present scene, are all transitory, like the vapor that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away. You will say, 66 we all admit this; no one questions a fact so evident." Very true; in language we all admit this undeniable truth; and the observation is repeated every day and is grown so familiar that it makes no more impression upon the mind, and has no more influence upon the conduct, than our daily observations about the weather.

In the following remarks then, it will be my object to set the truth home upon our minds with conviction and effect, if possible, by fixing the attention upon some of the innumerable proofs of the mutability and evanescence of the world and the things of it. These proofs meet us everywhere, whether we look to the past, the present, or the future.

I. Of the early ages of the world, what now remains but a few brief records, and a few uncertain ruins? Of the sixteen centuries before the flood, two or three chapters in the book of Genesis is the only memorial now existing. Of Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre, and other cities of celebrity, which were once crowded with an immense population, full of splendor and magnificence, ringing with the din of industry and toil, or