You may, if oft you commune with nature, be led to exclaim with one of her votaries—“ Oh, this bright spring morning makes me feel as if I would clasp the whole world in one embrace of love;" but you would be forced to add with this fair soul, if truthful to yourself, "And yet it brings with it a longing for something, I do not know what it is; what is it? Nature, like a child, gives all she has, and yet she cannot satisfy the want of man's heart. Could you read her aright, she proclaims her own insufficiency. She says to man, "Yours is a higher destiny!"

Man has a destiny, and where will you seek it ? In the world? in the world's wealth? in its praises? in its pleasures? in its honors? in its splendor? in its power? Having drunk to its dregs the cup which the world presents to your lips, you will find written at the bottom, "Fool, fool, thrice fool! You have sought in vain-your hands are empty--your life is bankrupt !"

"While in the bud it lay concealed,

The world appeared a boundless scene,

What have the opening leaves revealed?
How little! and that little mean.' 11*

Man has a destiny, and will you seek it in man ? In man's friendship, sympathy, or love? But man answers to man; heart answers to heart, “We, too, seek.”

"Have I a lover

Who is noble and free?

I would he were nobler
Than to love me! "t

Man is more than man; and the love that man's heart can give only serves to make the heart's craving of love felt more intensely, and to increase its despair of love.

Nature, the world, and man, tell the soul: "Be not deceived-waste not your time. There is in man something which no created thing, no creature, not the whole universe of things can satisfy!"

The end and ground of all seeking is God, and the soul finds no rest till it finds God, and

reposes on that bosom, out of which its life was first breathed forth! What else is the heart's deep sigh after happiness,

"But the breath of God

Still moving in us?” *

* Lowell.

III.

Man's Dignity.

How in

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! finite in faculties! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!"-SHAKESPEARE

YOME to it we must, if not before, at least

COME

at the moment of death, that God, and God alone, is all our best having, our repose, the complete and perfect answer to man's whole being.

Shall we ask the intelligence of man what it demands? Its answer is: "To know, to know the truth; to know the whole truth; the primal and infinite truth ;-to know God !"

Shall we ask the heart of man the end of

all its desires? It will answer: "To love, to love the good; to love the supreme and infinite good ;—to love God and all things else because of some reflect of God!" Shall we ask the will of man its purpose? It will reply: "To act; to act in accordance with the primal truth for the Supreme Good; to do God's will."

The head, the heart, the hand of man with one voice proclaim that the end of man is to know, to love, to live for God! This is God's own destiny. Man's destiny, therefore, is Godlike. For God created man in his " own image and likeness !"

The destiny of the soul, then, is to come to God; to be one with God. To live, is to think for God, to love for God, to act for God.

A truthful life is one in which all the thoughts of the mind, all the affections of the heart, all the acts of the will, are directed to God. A truthful life is one in which all the faculties and energies of the soul tend to God.

But God's happiness is one and the same with his life. Man, therefore, living the same life as God, participates in God's happiness,