be great." The talent was never intended to be wrapped in a napkin, and buried in the earth. The jewel was not made to be concealed in the casket for ever. The child of rare intellectual endowments, should be the hero of rare intellectual achievements: and he who spends his blooming springtime in mental indolence and sloth, has nothing to anticipate but a fruitless summer, a dreary autumn, and a winter of despair.

Man is an embryo of immortality. We live and labor for the life to come. "Though the body," says Mrs. Lincoln, "is sister to the worm and the weed, the soul may aspire to the companionship of angels, and claim kindred with God." It is a flower destined to bloom in the empyreal Eden-a gem destined to gleam in Immanuel's coronal. Its preciousness drew Divinity down to earth, and its redemption cost the dying agonies of the Prince of Life. But salvation, though purely a gratuity of divine love, is conditioned on our faith and holiness. There is no deliverance from the thraldom of sin, and no qualification for the kingdom of Heaven, but through the earnest coöperation of the creature with the Creator. Therefore saith the apostle, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do, of his own good pleasure." Sin must be renounced; Christ must be apprehended by faith; the heart must be kept with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life; the rank growth of passion

must yield to the fruits of the Spirit; the rose and the myrtle must supplant the thistle and the thorn; and the strong man armed must surrender the citadel to a stronger. The evangelical subjugation of the heart is an achievement prouder than a thousand conquests, and shall wreathe the victor's brow with laurels of immortal verdure.

2. If we look around us, we shall discover many avenues opening to usefulness, some one of which is adapted to each person's peculiar talents and pecuniary condition in life. God has commissioned us with a ministration of benevolence and mercy— a work which surely brings its recompense, if not in this life, in that which is to come. "Cast thy bread upon the waters;" if it flow not back upon returning current, it shall come ere long in blessings to the bosom of the giver.

the

We are apt, as Hannah More says, to extenuate our inaction in reference to the various enterprises of philanthropy, by the plea that our sphere of operation is so circumscribed, and our influence so limited. As well might the planet pause in its orbit, and refuse to perform its revolution, because its circuit does not take in the circumference of the universe. Every one does not possess wealth to lavish upon the indigent, but every one may sometimes relieve his neighbor's necessities, and make glad the heart of the widow and the orphan. Shall he withhold his pittance, because he cannot fill up the coffers of charity with an ostentatious display of

gold? The poor widow's farthing was graciously recognized by our Savior, and he said, "She hath cast in more than they all." As Mr. Summerfield once remarked, God estimates the amount given by the amount withheld. The pauper's mite counts more in heaven than the miser's million, because the pauper has parted with all his living, while the miser has millions yet in store. What though I cannot do a deed which shall go down to posterity, tinged with the golden coloring of fame-what though my name may not be emblazoned, with that of a Howard or a Ross, on the records of philanthropy; nor my memory descend to other generations, linked with turret and tower? fore, do nothing? Shall I refuse to improve my one talent, because I have not ten?

Shall I, there

Did Napoleon because he could

abandon the passage of the Alps, not scale the eminence at a leap? Shall the stream linger at its fountain, because it does not burst forth an ocean ? That crystal drop, trickling from a crevice in the rock, shall blend with other drops, and form a rivulet; and the confluence of many rivulets shall constitute a river, which shall roll on, in swelling majesty, through the continent of a thousand miles. "There is nothing in the earth so small that it may not produce great things; neither is any thing vast, that is not compacted of atoms.” Our individual efforts may seem insignificant, but each is a link in the great chain that draws on the millenium. Our individual influence may appear inutile, but

each is a soldier in the great army of Christian philanthropists, who follow the Captain of their salvation to the conquest of universal evil, and the ultimate emancipation of the world. "This pebble which I cast from my hand," says Thomas Carlyle, "shall change the center of gravity of the globe!"

But there are claims upon our attention, other than those of alms-giving. "The streams of small pleasures fill the lake of happiness." The kind. word, the soft and gentle tone, even the friendly glance of the eye, may sweep with trembling felicity the chords of many a sorrowful heart. Sympathy is a thing of peculiar power. Its smile is like the sunshine, and its tears are like drops of pearly dew. It has won an entrance into hearts which gold could never penetrate. It has revived the withering flowers of virtue, arrested the career of desperate sensuality, and wheeled the bacchanal's chariot hard on the brink of the unsounded gulf. It has cheered a thousand desolate hearthstones, and sent a fresh tide of enjoyment through a thousand weeping circles. It has thwarted the pilgrim's rayless horizon with a beam of daylight, thrilled the bosom of the dying culprit with a new life-pulse, and dashed from the lip of misfortune the chalice of despair. It has fanned into a flame the dying embers of genius, and rolled superincumbent mountains from the struggling intellect, developing a Homer, a Milton, or a Goethe.

"What can I do?" I can do much-much to

gladden earth, and people heaven. There are woes which I cannot reach, and evils which I cannot cure; but let me break the blow which I cannot avert, and mitigate the sorrow which I cannot remove. If I may not shine with a Zinzendorf and an Elliot in the constellation of philanthropy, yet let me contribute what I can toward turning the wilderness into a fruitful field, and making the parched desert redolent of flowers. If I may not write my name with Newton's among the stars, or with Washington's upon the roll of military fame, at least let me record it in living characters upon the human heart, and win for myself a crown whose value is to be estimated only by the blood of Jesus, and whose radiance is unrivaled even by the orbs of heaven!

XIV.

"NEVER GIVE UP."
(1846.)

"Never give up!" What man of enterprise or adversity has not needed this motto? What mercantile or professional man, what scholar, what writer of good books, what straightened publisher, what editor of a newspaper, what Christian philanthropist, what missionary, what reformer of abuses in church or state, what projector of wise and benevolent schemes, what discoverer of new truths in science, what bold adventurer in savage lands, what