A clear and definite work, and not a vague, dreamy, doubtful future, which

"Wastes down in feeling's empty strife,

And dies in dreaming's sickly mood."*

But where will you seek to find man's destiny? Will you seek for it in nature? What does nature teach you, who can

“The bird language rightly spell,

And what roses say so well?"+

The rose, the birds, the sea, the stars, the heavens, in tones of thunder tell you-"Mortal man, life's secret is not here."

แ Nature, our sweet mother,

Can no balm impart,

For she too is sick with all the self-same smart."‡

Nature is less than man. She cannot meet the inmost want of the soul; though in her bosom dwell truth, peace, and love.

"That type of perfect in his mind,

In nature can he nowhere find."§

* Sterling. + Emerson, + Milnes, § Tennyson,

You may, if oft you commune with nature, be led to exclaim with one of her votaries—“ Oh, this bright spring morning makes me feel as if I would clasp the whole world in one embrace of love;" but you would be forced to add with this fair soul, if truthful to yourself,

And yet it brings with it a longing for something, I do not know what it is; what is it? Nature, like a child, gives all she has, and yet she cannot satisfy the want of man's heart. Could you read her aright, she proclaims her own insufficiency. She says to man, "Yours is a higher destiny !”

Man has a destiny, and where will you seek it ? In the world? in the world's wealth ? in its praises? in its pleasures? in its honors? in its splendor? in its power? Having drunk to its dregs the cup which the world presents to your lips, you will find written at the bottom, "Fool, fool, thrice fool! You have sought in vain-your hands are empty--your life is bankrupt !"

"While in the bud it lay concealed,

The world appeared a boundless scene,

What have the opening leaves revealed?
How little! and that little mean.'

Man has a destiny, and will you seek it in man? In man's friendship, sympathy, or love? But man answers to man; heart answers to heart, "We, too, seek."

"Have I a lover

Who is noble and free?

I would he were nobler
Than to love me!"t

Man is more than man; and the love that man's heart can give only serves to make the heart's craving of love felt more intensely, and to increase its despair of love.

Nature, the world, and man, tell the soul: "Be not deceived-waste not your time. There is in man something which no created thing, no creature, not the whole universe of things can satisfy!"

The end and ground of all seeking is God, and the soul finds no rest till it finds God, and

reposes on that bosom, out of which its life was first breathed forth! What else is the heart's deep sigh after happiness,

"But the breath of God

Still moving in us? "*

* Lowell.

III.

Man's Dignity.

How in

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! finite in faculties! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!"-SHAKESPEARE.

YOME to it we must, if not before, at least

COME

at the moment of death, that God, and God alone, is all our best having, our repose, the complete and perfect answer to man's whole being.

Shall we ask the intelligence of man what it demands?

Its answer is:

Its answer is: "To know, to know the truth; to know the whole truth; the primal and infinite truth ;-to know God!"

Shall we ask the heart of man the end of