he will manage somehow to find living water there. Banish him to the dreariest Patmos you can find, he will get a grand Apocalypse among its barren crags. Thrust him into an inner prison, and make his feet fast in the stocks; the doxology will reverberate through the dungeon, making such melody within its walls of stone that the gaoler shall relapse into a man, and the prisoners, hearing it, shall dream of freedom and of home.

Young men, you who have any piety at all, what sort is it? Is it a hot-house plant, which must be framed and glassed, lest March, that bold young fellow, should shake the life out of it in his rough play among the flowers?—or is it a hardy shrub, which rejoices when the wild winds course along the heather or howl above the crest of Lebanon? We need, believe me, the bravery of godliness to bear true witness for our Master now. There is opposed to us a manhood of insolence and error. The breath of the plague is carried on the wings of the wind. Ours must be a robust piety—which does not get sick soon in the tainted air. The forces of evil are marshalled in unwonted activity-and there are liers in wait to surprise and to betray. Ours must be a watchful piety, which is not frightened from its steadfastness by the "noise of the captains and the shouting." Through the heavy night, and beyond the embattled hosts, there glitters the victor's recompense. It must be ours to press towards it on our patient way, saying to all who differ from us, "Hinder me not, I mean to wear that crown."

One main cause of Daniel's consistency, which I would fain commend for your imitation, was this. He made the stand at once, and resisted on the earliest occasion of encroachment upon conscience and of requirement to sin. He purposed in his heart that he "would not defile himself with the king's

meat, nor with the portion of wine which he drank." Now, as a true Hebrew, bound by the rescripts of the Mosaic law, certain meats were forbidden to him, which other nations ate without scruple. Moreover, the chances are that the bread and the wine had been idolatrously consecrated, for those old Pagans were not ashamed, as we are, to pervade the common things of life with their religion. To Daniel, therefore, these things were forbidden, forbidden by their ceremonial uncleanness, forbidden equally by their idolatrous association, and it was his duty to refuse them.

I see that curl of the lip on the face of that unbeliever, and as it might hurt him, possibly, if his indignation had not vent, I will try to help it into words. "A small thing, a very insignificant occasion for a very supercilious and obstinate display! What worse would he have been if he had not been so offensively singular? He was not obliged to know that there had been any connection with idolatry about it. Why obtrude his old-world sanctimoniousness about such a trifle as this ?" A trifle ! Yes! but are not these trifles sometimes among the mightiest forces in the universe? A falling apple, a drifting log of wood, the singing and puffing of a tea-kettle! Trifles allbut set the royal mind to work upon them, and what comes of the trifles then? From the falling apple, the law of gravitation. From the drifting log of wood, the discovery of America. From the smoke and song of the tea-kettle, the hundred-fold appliances of steam. There are no trifles in the moral universe of God. Speak me a word to-day; it shall go ringing on through the ages. Sin in your heedless youth;-I will shew you the characters, long years afterwards, carven on the walls of "the temple of the body." Hence the good policy as well as

piety of Daniel. He made the stand at once, and God honoured it; and, the foremost champion of the enemy slain, it was easy to rout the rest. Do I address some one now over whom the critical moment impends? You are beset with difficulties so formidable that you shudder as you think of them. Does wealth allure, or beauty fascinate, or endearment woo, or authority command you to sin? Does the carnal reason gloss over the guiltiness, and the deprecating fancy whisper "Is it not a little one?" and the roused and vigorous passion strive with the reluctant will? Now is the moment, then, on your part for the most valorous resistance, on my part for the most affectionate and solemn warning. It is against this beginning of evil, this first breach upon the sacredness of conscience, that you must take your stand. It is the first careless drifting into the current of the rapids which speeds the frail bark into the whirlpool's wave. Yield to the temptation which now invites you, and it may be that you are lost for ever.

Go to that scene of dissipation, enter that hell of gambling, follow that "strange woman" to her house, make that fraudulent entry, engage in that doubtful speculation, make light of that Sabbath and its blessings what have you done? You have weakened your moral nature, you have sharpened the dagger for the assassin who waits to stab you, and you are accessory, in your measure, to the murder of your own soul. Brothers, with all a brother's tenderness, I warn you against a peril which is at once so threatening and so near. Now, while time and chance are given, while, in the thickly-peopled air there are spirits which wait your halting, and other spirits, which wait to give their ministry to the heirs of salvation-now, let the conflict be de cided. Break from the bonds which are already closing around

you. Frantic as a bondsman to escape the living hell of slavery, be it yours to hasten your escape from the pursuing evil of sin. There, close at your heels, is the vengeful and resolute enemy. Haste! Flee for your life! Look not behind you, lest you be overtaken and destroyed. On-though the feet bleed, and the veins swell, and the heart-strings quiver. On-spite of wearied jimbs, and shuddering memories, and the sobs and pants of labouring breath. Once get, within the gates of the city of refuge and you are safe, for neither God's love nor man's will ever, though all the world demand it, give up to his pursuers a poor fugitive slave.

Having mentioned the piety of Daniel, the Corinthian pillar of his character, we may glance at some of the acanthus leaves which twine so gracefully round it.

It will not be amiss if we learn to be as contented, under all change of circumstance, as Daniel's piety made him. He is supposed to have been about twenty years old when he was carried away to Babylon. He was then in the flower of his youth; at an age when the susceptibilities are the keenest, when the visions of the former time have not faded from the fancy, when the future stretches brightly before the view. His connexion with the royal family of Judah might, not unnaturally, have opened to him the prospect of a life of state and pleasure, haunted by no pangs of ungratified desire. It was a hard fate for him to be at once banished from his fatherland and robbed of his freedom. Every sensibility must have been rudely shocked, every temporal hope must have been cruelly blighted, by the transition from the courtly to the menial, and from Jerusalem to Babylon. How will Daniel act under these altered circumstances, which had come upon him from causes which he

But

could neither control nor remedy? There were three courses open to him, other than the one he took. He might have resigned himself to the dominion of sorrow, have suffered grief for his bereavement to have paralyzed every energy of his nature, and have moaned idly and uselessly, as, beneath the trailing willows, he "wept when" he "remembered Zion." He might have harboured some sullen purpose of revenge, and have glared out upon his captors with an eye whose meaning, being interpreted, was murder. Or he might have abandoned himself to listless dreaming, indolent in present duty, and taking no part at all for the fulfilment of his own dreams. Daniel was too true and brave a man, and had too reverent a recognition of the Providence of God to do either the one or the other. He knew that his duty was to make the best of the circumstances round him, to create the content, and to exhibit it, though the conditions which had formerly constrained it were at hand no longer. Hence, though he was by no means indifferent to his altered fortunes; though there would often rise upon his softened fancy the hills and temples of his native land, he was resigned and useful and happy in Babylon. It may be that some among yourselves may profitably learn this lesson. Wearied with hard work, done for the enrichment of other people, you are disposed to fret against your destiny, and to rebel against the fortune which has doomed you to be the toiler and the drudge. Ambition is, in some sort, natural to us all, and could we borrow for a night a spirit more potent than the lame demon of Le Sage, and could he unroof for us hearts as well as houses, there would perhaps be discovered a vast amount of lurking discontent, poisoning the springs both of usefulness and of happiness for many. Under the influence of this em