before them in glad reverence, as tokens of the spirit's victory over the flesh. But this, though undoubtedly from a moral point of view not inferior, is not the same thing as the easy swing of mind and body which is not only always equal to its work, but finds its keenest delight in strenuous efforts and long-drawn toils, which would hopelessly overtax weaker men. And there is an obvious connection between this kind of vitality and that which shows itself in life prolonged far beyond the usual limits. Men and women do not live the longer for sparing themselves, even were long life under such conditions worth having. I admit the wearing power of fretting anxiety, of sorrow that saps the springs of life, of labour pushed to contempt of the physical and moral conditions of existence; but honest work for an honest purpose, the full exercise of all the powers from day to day, the steady strain of faculties that were meant for strain and which rust in disuse, never hurt any one yet. But the temptations of exuberant vitality are all, if not to over-strain, yet to a certain hardness, and arrogance, and disregard of eternal law. It is not complimentary to human nature to note that perfectly healthy people, whom nothing tries and who are ignorant of pain, are seldom tolerant, tender, sympathetic, with lives that in one important constituent of happiness are far beneath their own. Upon such the shadow of the infinite seems to fall but seldom. They succeed in so many things that they undertake, as to escape the sense of the impassable barriers that hem in all human existence. The very fact of living is so much to them, that they fail to see the meaning of the limitations, the shortcomings, the disappointments of life. They feel no abiding smart of a thorn in the flesh, and so are never forced back upon a higher strength than their own. And yet it is when a nature richly endowed with all the elements of vitality, and living from the first, living to the last, devotes itself to the highest aims and is supported by the highest helps, that we see what I will venture to call the finest triumph of grace. Or if the word triumph seem to imply a struggle, which is not always necessary, and difficulties which may never have vexed the development of a vigorous life, I will describe the result as the richest and sweetest harvest of the Spirit's husbandry. Great things can be accomplished only by great natures, and even then by the help and under the eye of God.

"I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." Life is the characteristic word of the great spiritual Gospel from which my text is taken. And no word can penetrate more deeply into the secret of Christ than this does. He was the sweetest, the most persuasive of moral teachers; but ethical principles and precepts are the common possession of humanity; and that in which Christ is pre-eminent over all sages is not so much that he gives us new matter of obedience, as that he infuses into us a fresh power to obey. I fail to see that he anywhere presents to us a dogmatic theological system: I do not believe that his apostles succeed in throwing his teaching into this shape. But supposing that it were so, as so many men believe, life is still the ultimate object, the life of God in man, the life which quickens all faculties, and casts off all impurities, and rises into a higher stage of vitality from year to year. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." "The bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world." "I am the bread of life." So, too, the author of this Gospel, speaking in his own person: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." So Paul: "The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." "Your life is hid with Christ in