their enlightened policy and stable administration, the largest and most thorough systems of improvement and amelioration would be carried to their great results. Under the present economy of human life, the most hopeful undertakings are blasted by change and revolution. The wisest and best rulers are, after a few years, succeeded by the weakest and the worst. Some proud and cruel Tarquin is ever at hand to subvert the handywork of an upright, paternal Numa; some bloody, savage Manasseh to spread desolation over the land, purged and blessed by the piety of Josiah. Without multiplying proofs and illustrations, it will be sufficiently apparent that the uncertainty and brevity of human life constitute the most common as well as the most powerful obstacle in the way of individual and national improvement and well-being. If these are, indeed, the great ends of our existence, then must it be confessed that they have hitherto been completely thwarted. No failure was ever more complete and universal. The anomalous influences have proved stronger than the system, and death, the destroyer, an overmatch for the creator and upholder of the doomed race.

Let us turn with our inOther theories of life are now interrogate the Chris

Our difficulties remain in their full force. Why is life so short? Why do the old die? Why are the young cut down in the midst of their preparation for life? Why are infancy and childhood blighted in the very dawn of their being, in their weakness, and in their innocency? We have seen that the wisdom of the world has no reply. This tremendous question has baffled all its sages. quiries to the Gospel of Jesus. silent and confounded. Let us tian theory. We will, for this time, refrain from making our appeal to the letter and dogmatic announcements of the Gospel, but rather seek the teachings of its comprehensive, underlying philosophy. We ask, what is the chief end of man? Why does he live, and why does he die? and we have the reply in the language of an old catechism, "to

glorify God and enjoy him forever." What is the true theory of life, with all its trials, sufferings, and catastrophes ? It is a state of probation; it is the first stage of endless being, the ante-chamber of eternity, where we stay a while for instruction, and discipline, and purification, preparatory to the higher pursuits and enjoyments to which, if found worthy, we are shortly to be promoted. Let us apply these axioms of the true philosophy, which are no other than the first principles of religion, to the solution of the difficulties. which have baffled all other hypotheses.

Life is a probation for eternity, to which its brevity and uncertainty constitute important means and conditions of

success.

Threescore years and ten constitute a period long enough for the purposes of religion. We know, as an historical fact, that the foundations of piety are almost always laid in early life, and that few are converted after sixty or seventy years of age. There is a physical reason for this, deeply implanted in the human constitution, not to speculate upon the moral reasons which the All-wise may have chosen to hide in his own bosom. In most instances the capacity to receive new impressions, and to enter successfully on new courses of thought or action, is completely exhausted before the age of threescore years and ten. For all practical purposes, the probation of an impenitent sinner has usually closed before extreme age robs his limbs and his intellect of their vigor. If, under these circumstances, his life were to be prolonged to the age of Methuselah, it would be utterly valueless in reference to the great end for which we live. It would be intrinsically worthless, and something worse, except as the postponement of the unutterable evils that follow an unfruitful probation. Could we see as God sees, we might now read, in the unwritten epitaph of many a hoary sinner, "Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone." To such a one, who in reality has already decided irrevocably his own destiny, of what use

is longer life? He has shamefully failed of securing life's only worthy object. The tide in his affairs which should have borne him on to celestial fortunes has passed forever. He is, to all practical purposes, a doomed spirit. More days he may see, but not better. He has a brief respite of merited, certain punishment, but pardon is no longer possible. Were it not as well for the sinner, when once the great question is settled against his soul, to be sent away at once to his place? What does he here in this world of probation any longer, but "fill up the measure of his iniquities, and heap up wrath against the day of wrath?" No; life is not too short. Death does not usually come too soon for those who have already sinned through threescore years. It were perhaps wise, in the long run, for such to choose the refuge of such an eternity as they are to have, in preference to a longer continuance in sin, in the circumstances of special aggravation under which sin is committed by them in this redeemed, enlightened probationary world.

I hardly need add, that life is long enough for those who have wisely used it in finding reconciliation with God, through the infinite sacrifice made upon the cross. We wrong ourselves, and the gracious economy under which we are called to work out our salvation, when we dread death as an evil. Our natural enemy he is, but conquered and captive since the day when Christ triumphed over the grave, and dragged the destroyer in the train of his glorious triumph. The Christian's dread of death is most unreasonable. It is ever condemned in anticipation by his own faith, and usually forgotten or contemned in the hour of its coming. It is then found to be but a bad habit of the imagination or the nerves, contracted in the days of feeble faith and dim spiritual vision. We are content to endure slight temporary inconveniences, that we may secure great and durable benefits. We make toilsome journeys to visit beloved relatives or friends. We gladly cross stormy seas, that we may see magnificent or

historical structures, or renowned cities, or beautiful landscapes, or celebrated statues and paintings. Often shorter and easier is the passage to heaven, "the city that hath foundations," where Jesus, in his glory, sits at the right hand of God, where is an innumerable company which no man can number, all having "washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb;" and where we ourselves, made pure and immortal, with palms in our hands and crowns on our heads, shall mingle our voices in their ceaseless chorus. Who would choose to spend a thousand years on earth, with wicked men, rather than in heaven in the society of God and his angels, and his glorified saints?

I only add that, as an existence on the earth protracted beyond the common age of man would be useless to the sinner, and the very reverse of a boon to the pious, so, in the actual moral condition of men, it could not fail of proving a grievous curse to human society. Think of a Voltaire, with five hundred or a thousand years to sow the seeds of corruption, and mature their harvests; and imagine the state of public morals at the end of such a millennium. Call to mind the ravages of some ancient or modern conqueror, and then allow him the years of an antediluvian patriarch to extend his conquests and consolidate his empire. The solar system could not afford him worlds enough to conquer, nor a hundred generations of men blood enough to shed. To reduce our illustration to a smaller scale, with the addition of one or two hundred years to the ordinary term of human life, and a guarantee of unimpaired faculties for calculation and management, there are, in each of our great commercial emporia, single capitalists who would be able, within the period supposed, to engross fortunes equal to the entire wealth of the cities, or even states, in which they reside. Every shrewd usurer would, in his sphere, become a Rothschild, with no limit to his means of aggrandizement and oppression but the absolute exhaustion of his victims. Inevitably the

world would be again as it was before the flood, when "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."

The arguments adduced will, I am sure, be thought sufficient to justify the shortness of human life-to vindicate the wisdom which has "made our days as an handbreadth." We must pursue another line of thought, in order to clear away the darkness that hangs over many particular instances of mortality. Death invades the circle of the intelligent, the virtuous, the young, when, on all human considerations, it seems most desirable, most proper, that they should continue to live. Aspiring, gifted, fresh for the race, consecrated, it may be, to the highest interests of religion and humanity, they are suddenly removed from the sphere in which they have as yet acted no important part, but were just prepared to engage in a career of eminent usefulness. How shall we dissipate the darkness that hangs over such dispensations ? Our first duty is submission to the sovereign Disposer of events. "It is the Lord. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." In this frame of faith and resignation we may, without presumption, appeal to any method of solution to clear away difficulties and justify the ways of God to man, not in conflict with the principles and teachings of the Gospel.

We must revert again to the fundamental idea of our Christian system, that life is a state of probation, divinely adapted in its permanent conditions to originate and nurture piety in men. To this one end the dispensations of Heaven, and the circumstances of human existence are accommodated, not always so to our imperfect apprehension, but always and infallibly so in God's designs. Now among the providential means for bringing men to a sense of religious things, death, with its sequences, is unquestionably the most powerful. Skeptics, who doubt every religious truth, and say in their