AUBIN.

yes, two

O, I can do without the book. I will tell you a saying of Martin Luther's. He said, that God assembles to himself a Christian church out of little children; for that when a little child dies, of one year old, that always one thousand die with it, of that age or younger; but that when he himself, who was sixty-three, should die, there would not be a hundred of his age die with him; and that he believed that old people live so long in order that they may see the tail of the Devil, and be witnesses that he is such a wicked spirit.

MARHAM.

I would sooner believe that men live to be old so as to know for themselves the truth of the text, that even to our old age God is the same, and that even to hoar hairs he will carry us.

AUBIN.

Age does for the whole character what can be done for it in youth only by one adversity on one side, and by another on another. Even with the best man, rule is apt to run to self-will, and high health to self-reliance, and knowledge to pride, and unblemished morals to self-satisfaction. But when the man grows old, he finds age to be a corrective of all this. His sight and hearing fail, and so he has to rely on the eyes and ears of persons about him. His memory fails, and so he has to depend on other men's recollections. His body

leans,ay, and so would his soul, and be bowed quite down, only that, as he grows weaker, he feels more and more a divine arm about him upholding him. And upon that arm he leans, and the more lovingly the longer he lives.

MARHAM.

There is good, Oliver, there is great good, in old age; more and more I hope to know of it for myself.

AUBIN.

The ancients might call old age sad, but that is what we Christians ought not to do. And if about any old man there are things that might sadden nim a little, let him be a Christian, and his melancholy will be changed into what will be like a gentle prayer, always rising from within his soul. In a sermon which I once wrote

MARHAM.

A sermon, you said ?

AUBIN.

Yes, uncle; I thought once of writing and publishing some ten or twelve sermons on the religiousness of daily life, but I only wrote one.

MARHAM.

I should like to see it, Oliver.

AUBIN.

You shall have it, uncle, this evening.

CHAPTER XVI.

Where there is no vision, the people perish. - PROV. xxix. 18.

THIS text was a proverb once, and its meaning was accurately known a hundred generations ago; but now it is not, and it never will be known quite exactly; for this proverb is a something of the spirit, and the world of spirit is not to be scrutinized like that of matter.

From a few marks studied upon limestone, from a few rocky appearances, from a few fossils and bones, and other like proofs, will a man, after the manner of Baron Cuvier, rightly infer what this earth was before it became what it now is ; what its climate was and its plants, and what the aspect of its forests; how the mammoth looked and moved amid tall trees, and in and out of their shadow how there went creeping things innumerable and monstrous; at what swiftness the bird of prey flew upon its victims, and what its victims were; how it rained then as it rains now, and how the tide rippled on the sea-shore then as it ripples now, and how the shells were mostly then what are not to be found now. And the look of

what all this was, science will make out from a few vestiges.

And vestiges of ancient thought the book of Proverbs is. Our text is one of these spiritual remains, and for us it has a meaning plain enough, though perhaps not exactly what the author meant; because what his state of mind was in thinking it we do not know, for at that time the human mind was under another economy than the Christian.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish." There may be hidden meaning in these words, perhaps, but there is plain truth. Most of the Proverbs are easy to be understood, though some of them are of no use in our English circumstances, and some others are too shrewd for Christian simplicity. But all of them are interesting as spiritual remains. Vestiges they are of an era in the human mind, long, long back; words of caution, spiritual armour, fashioned for the use of the young in the anxious minds of experienced sages; proved advice for behaviour in the house, the city, and the field; and immortal truths which wise men coined out of their mortal sufferings.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish." Whence came this proverb among the Jews, for had not they their prophets always, and visions always? No, for the school of the prophets in Ramah was sometimes attended in vain; and as

in the latter days of Eli, the priest, often there was no open vision. And why was it, at any time, that the prophets could "find no vision from the Lord"? It was because the people had disabled themselves for such grace, and not because God was changeable, as some of them thought, and so withheld his free spirit from them. God never

withdrew from them who had Abraham to their father; but withdraw from Him they did, not over Jordan, but farther still, down the steeps of vice, into that thick air of sensualized thought, which hardly a ray of spiritual light can shine into.

Among the Jews, when there was no vision, they perished, and with ourselves spiritual ruin is very common, for want of spiritual insight. Spiritual insight into life is the subject of this sermon.

I. Let us think about life as activity. In God you live and move and have your being. That not a breath do you draw, nor a pulse do you feel, nor a step do you take, but in dependence on another will besides your own, - this do not doubt. Nor can you doubt that in God your spirits live, as far as they live at all; for like the church of Sardis, they may have a name that they live, and be dead.

you

Our human is no empty existence. The circumstances of our lives are not unmeaning, but infinitely otherwise; but this we very often do not see for want of vision. High as heaven and wide