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SERMON XV.

THE MINE OF SPIRITUAL TREASURE.

PROVERBS ii. 3, 4, 5.

thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.

In this enlightened age, when human knowledge is making such rapid strides, it is still a question which might be profitably put to multitudes around us, What is the knowledge of God? We are born into a world, where our first instinctive propensities are directed to the continual acquisition of something new. The mind of the infant is soon at work; developing its busy

imaginings by the endeavour to grasp at every object within its reach, by the searching gaze with which it contemplates the features of a stranger, and the look of satisfaction with which it evinces the triumph of possession. From this first dawn of ambition after some unknown good, the same unabated activity of mind is discerned through the stages of youth and manhood; ever seeking, and yet unsatisfied, even though the depths of science be ransacked, and stores of human knowledge accumulated.

But, when we turn our view to the animal creation, we behold a very different proceeding. The brute is born with faculties adapted to his condition, neither capable of extension nor improvement. The sagacity of one, the fleetness of another, the cautious vigilance of a third, are all matured without an effort on their part, and constitute the unchangeable privilege of their nature. The advance of years gives no addition to their powers; nor do solitude and sloth deduct one atom from their implanted endowments. These are all uniform in their operation, limited in their compass, and confined to the simple requirements of their organized frame.

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Why then this manifest distinction? fore is the mind of man in a state of perpetual craving and dissatisfaction, while the ox that grazes the field, the lion that roams the forest, the eagle seated in its rocky recess, are all tranquilly fulfilling the order of their creation, untroubled and heedless of future results? In some degree they appear, indeed, to have suffered with us, in consequence of the fall. But as a race, they are exempted from much uneasiness to which we are exposed, subject to none of those fruitless pinings after distant good, which will find their way into the soul of man, even amid the fascinations of wealth, and the reckless habits of the drowsy sensualist. Could this have been the original formation of such a creature? or has it been the consequence of some great catastrophe extending itself to the whole species?

The volume of inspiration explains the whole matter. Man is a fallen creature; and it was the purpose of eternal wisdom that he should feel continually through the period of his mortal life, that he has within him energies without any

adequate earthly object for them to expatiate in,

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that he has wants which nothing around him can satisfy. He was made for the glory of God; the animal and vegetable world were made for him and the fulfilment of the purpose of their creation we may yet trace, even through the curse inflicted on them in the disastrous day of the fall. But, in the unrenewed heart of man, the end of his creation is absolutely extinct. He is like a planet that has wandered from its orbit, with the principle of attraction still inwardly existing, but existing in a state of dormancy and disuse; restlessly and unprofitably revolving round itself, without a light to lighten its darkness, with no seasons to beautify it, no fruits and flowers to grace it.

Man, then, in order to be happy, must commence a movement, to which, in his natural state, he has been unaccustomed. He cannot be idle, he cannot exist without some object to engage him; he is conscious that he is destined for higher things than surfeitings of meat and drink, and gregarious habits, and frivolous conversation -wretched employments for a being, within whom the germ of immortality has been implanted. Believing that there is a divinity, and

supposing that in himself he is unattainable, he commences curious researches into the works of his visible creation. The pride of intellect stimulates him. He is beginning to redeem himself from the grovelling desires of his animal machine; he beholds a God in every step of his scientific advances. But he is a God to be wondered at, to be admired, to be feared: the lustre of his perfections has not yet been mellowed by the sense of love. He remains a far-off, mysterious Being, faintly sketched out in the magnificence of visible creation. For all the knowledge attainable by the most indefatigable inquirer into natural things—what is it but the mere gathering together a few broken rays of the creature's original glory; and thus gaining some feeble streaks of that forfeited intelligence, which once sat in a blaze of reflected glory on the brow of the unfallen Adam? He is still but little removed from absolute darkness. It is something, indeed, to believe in a God, and something to soar above the sordid propensities of the corrupted body. But, in prosecuting this very work, a man may be rivetting about him the chains of infidelity, even while he is contem