end ia missed all is missed. If the column does not stand erect and nphold the building, it is nothing to me that yon decorate it when on the gr01J,nd. That is not its place, its uso; it is a pillar or nothing. So man was made in this bigl,est end to glorify God; and his lire is blighted-if it is rich in cultivation, elevated in taste, artistic in style, comprehensive in erudition, useful in applied mechanics-if be does not glorify God. Our Saviour said, "My meat and my drink is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work." 1. Lives are blighted, if certain seasons of spring and seed-time, which cannot return, pass idly by. Men may be saved; for thee precious blood of Christ can cleanse from all sin, even in old age. But they cannot bear the fruit of 11. spiritual manhood, or of a Christian childhood. 2. Lives are blighted, if not filled with the power of immortality. However noble and glorious they may appear, their fruits wither; there is no deep soil; the roots· do not strike into_the eternal life. 8. Lives are blighted, if not influential as good soil to be used for harvests. Man does not live for the mere enjoyment and admiration of spiritual beauty in hours of medita- tion. There must be fruit in the tree for others to gather. It is disappointing in the autumn to lift the leaves and find no rich bloom of purple fruit. "Abide in me." "So," says Christ, " shall ye bear mnch fruit." II. ALL WASTING OF LIFE IB TRACEABLE. What to? Well, you can trace the blight to something in the atmosphere, something at the root, or some confinement from the free breath of heaven. So you can trace human waste and moral waste. 1. Sometimes it comes from absence of faith. There bas been energy or heroic determination to conquer evil, to pursue the good, but this has been mere doing, not being; men need faith to win Christ; to have him in them, the Hope of glory. "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered." 2. Sometima it comes from absence of love. It is love that makes the other graces grow and bring forth fruit. Love is warmth and life when inspired by Christ. Let me say also that I wanted to speak of lives in a human sense blighted, and there are some such. Why? Because love is absent; they are treated coldly, contemptuously, cruelly; the fire of love, at first damped, has now died out in their hearts; they know, they feel it is. Mated to coarseness and rudeness, with the first thin superficial refinement and tenderness all worn away, they find life worse thnn a blank-it is a bitter, bitter bondage to the selfishness and tyranny of others. Poor heart! God help thee wherever thou art. Love can bear much and hope on. But when love's ashes a.re white, life is blighted indeed. 3. Sometimes it comesfrom indifference. Let it alone. That is enough. Leave religion to take care of itself. Then, like the best garden, it soon becomes desolate. ]I[, wASTED LIVES ARE REPARABLE ONLY BY REDEMPTION. In the body there is a kind of self-healing after sickness. Not so with the soul; that requires a Divine Physician. 1. O.~rist does 7nore than forgive. He renews and rest-0res. Perhaps you desire now that God should restore unto you the joy of salvation. You are sad about your own fruitlessness. So little peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Theo, just as spring-sweet ~pring-comes in time, and the tender herb appears, and Nature puts on her new ii;arment of beauty, rejoicing to have her incense-cup filled again by the hnnd of the Most High, so you desire that new graces should spring forth. Christ can make you abound with life through the abunclant grace which he is waiting to bestow. 2. Christ does more than teach. He will live in you. The fruit is not yours, Lut Christ's. He is the Vine, we are the branches. A closer union with him is wbat we need. ]f we seek to be grafted into the true Vine, then, and then only, shall we bring forth fruit in our season. Christ is sometimes called the great Teacher. So be is! All his t.eaching is that of the infinite mind. "In him are hid all the treasures of wisJom and knowledge." What, then, is his first teaching? Believe on me I Then we become one with him, and our character has life in it. 3. Christ does more even than commence this life. He completes it. He carries it on to perfection. So that we, sinful and weak as we are, are made perfect in every good work. Waste, then, is not to be mourned over only; it is to be restored. The SBtirist speaks scornfully of evil when seen and lived out. The optimist says all is the best possible in the best of worlds, could we but understand all. The Christian says, "No; evil is here, and evil is not of God." And then by the aid of the Holy Ghost he seeks to. have the old man crucified with Christ, and to live unto God. May renewal .come to us all I May blight and waste give place to life and fruit 1-W. M. 8. 424, THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET IS.AI.AH. [orr. LXI. 1-11.
Ver. 10.-Fulness of joy. "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shnll be joyful in my God." This does not certainly seem like the case with the anchorite and the ascet.ic and the hermit. .A religion that fails in the direction of felicity would seem to lose claim, at all e'°ents, to be considered a true ideal of the gospel. Medimvalism rejoiced in pictures of the saints, who could not fairly be said to have an aureole of gladness about their heads. I. THERE ARE GREAT REASONS FOR REJOICING. 1. God has forgiven and forgotten our sin. He has blotted it out of his book of remembrance. "He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation." 2. God has made us one with himself. The highest pleasures are those of fellowship with mind. To know the author is more than to read the book ; to know the heart of a beautiful nature is to discover a greater world than Columbus did. What, then, is it to walk as Enoch did with God, and to know him whom to know is life eternal I Here we have introduced the relation of bride and bridegroom-so condescending is the love of Christ. IL THEr.E ARE GREAT DEPTHS OF REJOIOING. "My soul." Joy may be superficial. It is idle to deny the fact that there are pleasures which have their root in the passions or in the imagination, or in the accumulative faculty. But all these joys have thei; reactions, their limitations, their exhaustions. But spiritual joy is connected with the eoul, and as snch it is (1) ever capable of increase; (2) never liable to exhaustion; (3) and immortal in its sphere of development. At God's right hand there are pleasures for everruore.-W. M. S.