more delightful by the coincidence of judgment which will create a happy sympathy and harmony of the affections.

We have no time to apply these somewhat too vague and general ideas to special subjects. But they might be illustrated in application to our imperfect knowledge of even our own nature, as in the essential principle of life;—the mysterious connexion of the soul with the body;-the nature and operations of that soul itself. How striking to reflect, that we can as yet, just as much comprehend the whole universe as our own little selves, our own selves, who are thinking and talking on these subjects. These ideas might also be viewed in their application to the theory of the condition and destination of our race;-the system of Divine Providence ;-the doctrines of religion; the manner of our future existence ;—the inquiry, what rational beings, and under what economy, in other realms of the universe; and the universe itself.

After sucn views contemplated, think of the pride of present knowledge! with a little glimmering on their spirits there are men that walk the earth with an elation as if they should be gods;—and destitute too, as this very pride would show, of that which is the best of the knowledge attainable here!

Consider what a high advantage over us is now attained by our pious friends that are gone-even in that less perfect state which intervenes between the departure hence and the resurrection!

"Then that which is in part shall be done away." Imagine the emerging from this dark world into light! what a dismissal from our spirits, what a vanishing away of the whole systems of our little notions, our childish conceptions! If they will be sufficiently recollected to be compared with the grand manifestation of truth and reality then unveiled, what a contrast! And yet there will not be

an entire contempt thrown upon the retrospect; for it will be understood how those little notions, that feeble light, that partial revelation, were the right training for the infancy and childhood of the human soul.

Let us, then, be thankful that we do know, though but in part, and earnestly apply and improve what we are permitted to know. Let us be thankful, too, that one point of that very knowledge is, that its imperfection will at length be left behind.

Lastly, if there will be, as none can doubt, in the heavenly state, different degrees in the felicity of the redeemed spirits, and if knowledge will be one great mean of felicity there, who may be expected to possess the highest attainments of it? Not necessarily those, even good men, who possessed the most of it here, but rather those who have excelled the most in piety,-in devotion to God and Christ, and the cause of heaven in this world, God can, by one great act of his rewarding power, make them the highest in intelligence, and it is reasonable to believe he will.

LECTURE LXX.

THE RELIGIOUS USE OF MEMORIALS.

JOSHUA xxiv. 26, 27.

"And Joshua took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak, that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said unto all the people, Behold this stone shall be a witness unto us, for it hath heard all the words of the Lord which he spake unto us; it shall be therefore a witness unto you lest ye deny your God."

THIS action of Joshua seems a strange importance to be conferred on a piece of insensible matter, on a mere block of stone, unnoticed, perhaps, for a thousand years. "It hath heard" is an excessively strong figure; but it is quite in the eastern style to give things the attributes of persons. Such a circumstance may suggest to us the reflection, how little it can be foreseen or conjectured to what use numberless things in the creation, apparently insignificant, are destined by divine appointment to be applied. They may be entirely unnoticed while awaiting that use, with no marks upon them to distinguish them from the most ordinary things of the same kind. For example, the trees out of which the ark of Noah or the ark of the covenant was to be constructed; the rod of Moses; the stones which were to be the tables of the law, to be written on them by the Almighty; the rams' horns used at the siege of Jericho; we might add, the materials destined to the most awful use of all-THE CROSS. If these appear remote references, we may name a nearer and more pointed one. There is, as to

most of us-there is now existing, somewhere, the very wood which will form our coffins. Some of us may have passed near the very trees, or the wood no longer in the state of trees. The material bears no mark what it is for; but God has on it his secret mark of its destination. If it were visible, what a reading we should have of inscriptions! -tomb-inscriptions, seen beforehand!

It is striking to consider that the sovereign Lord has some appointed use for everything in his creation. The uses of an infinite number of things, we shall never know; but He can have made nothing but for an use to that it will come. What a view has He on all things as bearing his destination! What a stupendous prospective vision, if we may express it so, before his mind!

But, we proceed to observe, that wise and good men, can find for many things, many uses, for instruction and piety, which do not occur to other men: they have been trained in a better school. If such a man, towards the close of life, could make out an account of the things that have served him to such a purpose, how many things, seeming not in themselves qualified to instruct him, would he have to recount as having been the occasions of his receiving instruction, or salutary impressions. It may, in some instance, have happened, that a thing as unmeaning in itself as a mere stone, has been made the cause of some spiritual advantage to him. Indeed, in many instances, the greatest good has been from insignificant things; while we must mind proportion between means and ends, it is not so with God.

In the instance in our text, Joshua, and in a later instance, Samuel, fixed on such an object, and endeavoured. to render it, in a sense, a cause of religious admonition, thereafter, to the people, in the way of recalling to their minds the most important facts and considerations. The design was, that they might not be able to look at that

stone, without being reminded of "all the words of the Lord." Figuratively speaking, it would be the stone saying to them-"I have heard," &c. The great leaders of the Israelites, Moses and Joshua, were solicitous to employ every expedient to secure an eternal remembrance of God in the people's minds. They therefore marked the stations and stages in their progress with monumental circumstances and objects;-things which should have a meaning put on them which they had not in themselves;-a meaning which they were to have in consequence of being connected, in some express and memorable manner, with the providential interferences of God, or his declarations, or with the people's conduct. It was not enough that human and even angelic monitors should be speaking. They saw that all was little enough, and too little, to keep religious ideas and recollections alive in the people's minds; these were apt to fade and die away, like plants in a bad soil. They perceived how constantly the popular mind was withdrawing and escaping from under the impressive sense of an invisible Being; how easily the delusions of the surrounding idolatry stole on their senses and their imagination, to beguile their hearts, and their very reason away; how imperfectly the grand scene of Nature, of the Creation, preserved, in any active force, the thought of the Creator; how apt to grow feeble and faint was their memory of even the miraculous events which themselves had beheld! Therefore, these illustrious and pious leaders and teachers were desirous to avail themselves of every auxiliary means to prolong the remembrance, to renew and fix the impresions in the people's minds, of all that had taken place between God and them; to surround them with remembrances, turn which way they would, traverse the land in whatever direction they might. Accordingly, they marked places, and times, with monuments; built altars; raised heaps of stones, (as at the passage of