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they fly before us still, like the shadow which his light behind us casts, only lengthening as we go, till it stretches over the brink of time, and covers the abyss of eternity. Resign we then every high pretension, and stand with bended and uncovered head of self-renunciation; grateful for every blessing God may send; eager for all the work he may appoint; but saying, when all is done, "we are unprofitable servants; we have done that" alone, -and alas! far less, "which it was our duty to do."

XIV.

THE CHILD'S THOUGHT.

1 CORINTHIANS XIII. 11.

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I SPAKE AS A CHILD, I UNDERSTOOD AS A CHILD, I THOUGHT AS A CHILD; BUT WHEN I BECAME A MAN, I PUT AWAY CHILDISH THINGS.

THE noblest prophets and apostles have been children once; lisping the speech, laughing the laugh, thinking the thought of boyhood. Undistinguished as Paul then was amid the crowd, unless by more earnest and confiding eye, there was something passing within him of which, it would seem, he preserved, in the kindling moments of his manly soul, the memory and the trace. And there are few men, I suppose, who do not at times send back a gentle glance into their early days; not only looking upon faces vanished now, and listening to voices that have become as distant music to the mind; but remembering the throbbing pulse of their own hopes, the strain of

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heroic purpose, and the awful step of wonder unabated yet. Between ourselves and the apostle, however, there is an expressive difference here. We usually turn from the past with a sigh, and a secret sense of irrevocable loss: he, with hands clasped in thanksgiving, as in the glory of an infinite gain. We envy our own children; and would fain put back the shadow on our dial, to feel again the morning sun that shines so softly upon them he springs with glad escape out of hours too recent from the night, and welcomes the increasing glow of an eternal day. To us, the chief beauty, the only sanctities of life, are apt to appear in the shelter of our early years: they are like a home that we have deserted, a love that we have lost, a faith cheated from our hearts. As we ascend the mountain-chain of life, so long a towering mystery to our uplifted eye, they lie beneath as the green hollow of the Alpine valley; to whose native fields, return is cut off for ever; whence the incense of our faith went up straight to heaven, like the first smoke from the village hearths into the clear, calm air; whose sunny grass thaws the very heart of us, nipped by the glacier's keenest breath; whose stately trees, still dotting the ground with points of shade, seem to leave us more exposed amid the scant and stunted growths of this wintry height; and whose church

snow.

peal, floating faintly on the ear, makes us shudder all the more at the bleak winds near, booming in icy caverns, or whispering to the plains of silent But Paul, though not untouched perhaps by the poetry of childhood, regarded it without regret. With him, its inspiration had risen, not declined; its unconscious heaven had not retreated, but pressed closer on his heart, till it had mingled with his nature, and articulately spoken to itself. He was not going up into life to lose himself amid the relentless elements, and get buried by the avalanche of years in chasms of Fate; but, to conquer Nature and look down; to stand upon her higher and higher watch-towers, till he found a way clear into the climate of the skies; and, like Moses on Mount Nebo, with "his eye not dim," could discern, at the pointing of God, "the whole land” of life "unto the utmost sea;"—and then pass where no horizon bounds the view. We, too often, in putting away childish things, part with the wrong elements; losing the heavenly insight, keeping the earthly darkness. We put away the guileless mind, the pure vision, the simple trust, the tender conscience; and reserve the petty scale of thought, the hasty will, the love of toys and strife. Paul put away only the ignorance and littleness of childhood, bearing with him its freshness, its truth, its God, into the grand

work of his full age. And hence, while our religion lies somewhere near our cradle and is a kind of sacred memory, his lived on to speak for itself instead of being talked about. It fought all his conflicts: it took the weight out of his chains: it condensed the lightning of his pen; and kindled the whole furnace of his glorious nature.

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There is a natural difference between the religion of childhood, of youth, and of maturity, which appears to be very much overlooked in our expectations and practices with regard to each. The human mind is not the same in all periods of its history its wants, its faculties, its affections, shift their relative proportions, as that history proceeds and a power, which, like religion, is to hover over it continually, and to lift it by a constant attraction, must not always suspend itself over the same feelings, and offer one invariable representation. Its resources are infinite; its beauty inexhaustible; its truth dipped in every colour into which the light of heaven is broken by the prism of Thought: and it must adapt itself to the characteristics of every period which needs its sway. Nor is there the least art or cunning policy implied in this; but only a soul of natural sympathy, to take on it at will the burthens of the child, the youth, the man; to see their love, their fear, their admiration; to doubt their doubts, and pray

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