Men generally moralize on the shortness of time and the uncertain duration of our earthly life, with the consequences that depend on the right or wrong use that we make of our probationary existence. No doubt all require to be reminded that time is short and eternity is long, and that our present life has the most momentous issues. The Word itself leads us to such reflections. "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more." "Behold thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before Thee: verily, every man at his best state is altogether vanity." "We spend our years as a tale that is told." As days and years pass away, we are reminded that we are passing with them to that world where we shall know nothing of time but in the use we have made of it.

While such reflections as these are suitable to our present state, and are suggested to us by the recurring seasons that mark the progress of our natural life, as measured distances in the journey through this to the eternal world, there are other reflections which returning times and seasons were designed to call up, and special uses which they were intended to serve. To dwell much on the shortness of time and the uncertainty of human life is likely to produce a morbid state of feeling, which tends to enfeeble the mind, and leave it a prey to fear and melancholy when it should be inspired by hope and love. Some Christian writers and preachers seem to think that they can produce the best and deepest impression on the minds of the people by making death not only solemn but awful. It springs from the same root as the monkish notion that life should be a sort of living death, that death may be a passage into life. All Christians will no doubt admit that the only way to die well is to live well. But when we come to the question, What is good or holy living? we discover the ground of the mistaken teaching and practice on this momentous subject. In the Romish Church piety, in the Protestant Church faith, has taken the place of charity, by which we mean active love to the neighbour in all the relations and duties of life. One, if not the one, great object of the Christian life is held to be to propitiate the Deity, and obtain His pardon and favour; and this one class seeks to effect by piety, and another by faith. Religion, as the means of the soul's salvation, is thus supposed to consist essentially in what is beyond the ordinary course and duties of life. In the New Church the true doctrine of the Word on this all-important subject is restored.

Religion, or a life charity, consists essentially in doing our duty faithfully in our station and calling. How commonplace and unspiritual a thing will religion, according to this doctrine, appear! Does not morality teach this? Are not our temporal interests sufficient to stimulate us to exertion in the business of life? and does not policy itself urge us to the practice of integrity? All this may be true to a certain extent. There may be little outward difference between a strictly moral and a religious life; but there is an immense inward difference. The end is different, as different as the world is from heaven. And it is the end which actuates us, that gives a character to our actions. This is entirely the case as regards ourselves, and very much the case as regards others. Our ends are all that we carry with us into the other world. If our ends are in heaven while our deeds are on earth, heaven will be our portion hereafter, and will even be our secret dwelling-place while here, because where our ends are we are. Religious ends have respect to God. What is done from them is done in conformity with the Divine will, which thus enters into and forms the human will. And this conformity makes us members of the Lord's body, so that He is in us and we are in Him, But when our ends are earthly our works are earthly. However correct our morals may be, they have no inward quality that connects them with heaven. When our ends are earthly they are not merely unspiritual in their character, but they are more or less tainted with the corruptions of our unrenewed nature; for self-love must influence us when the love of God does not inspire us. A life that is the result of natural ends must also be limited in extent as well as impure in principle. But this is a charge that may be made against the Church as well as against the world. Religion takes in the whole duties and relations of life, but the Church has placed superior efficacy in some to the exclusion of others. She has made an unworldly life to consist eminently in a life of seclusion, in which all connection with the world is cut off, and from which even the knowledge of it is excluded, and in which the holiest and most beneficent relation of life is prohibited, as too gross and earthly for those who aim themselves, or direct others, to attain the kingdom of heaven. It is no adequate correction of this grave error to protest against it and yet leave those whom that protest has restored to the world without the highest sanction of religion to protect and guide them in it. For if faith alone saves, and life is only a witness to the reality of faith, the primary becomes the secondary element of religion and condition of future

happiness, and therefore ceases to be a matter of the first and most vital importance. One of the causes of these religious errors is the notion that life in this world is so entirely unlike life in heaven that life here is regarded rather as a discipline than a preparation for heaven. Here life is labour, there it is rest. Here men eat and drink, marry and are given in marriage; there they neither marry nor are given in marriage, neither do they hunger any more nor thirst any more. No wonder that religious fanaticism should think the most perfect life on earth to be that which most resembles what life was supposed to be in heaven, a life with no wants or desires, and with but one occupation; such a life on earth having, besides, the merit and benefit of crucifying the lusts of the flesh, which means denying, as much as possible, the craving of every appetite and passion, and even every natural affection. Reaction from this led, perhaps, to the opposite extreme of self-indulgence and the decay of piety. Between them true and vital religion has suffered so seriously that new light and influence from on high have become a necessity; for without this no flesh could be saved. The Church has passed through her times and seasons of progress and decay. Her day has passed from morning, mid-day, and evening into night; her year from spring, summer, and autumn into winter. But a new day has dawned, a new year has commenced. "The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." The light shines both upon the doctrines of Christian faith and upon the path of Christian duty. It shows us that all religion has relation to life, and that the life which we are required to lead in this world is the best adapted for initiating us into the life of heaven. For that life is but a higher and more perfect form of life on earth. It is a life of love and sympathy and usefulness. There is no difference but that which exists between natural and spiritual. All that exists on earth naturally exists in heaven spiritually. Marriage, that union of kindred souls and source of all earthly endearments, exists there in its perfection; and the fruits of that marriage are an ever-new and endless succession of heavenly thoughts and affections. These are the generations that spring from the heavenly union. There also God setteth the solitary in families. And the righteous are so connected by the gradations of mutual love and sympathy that they live in houses as the members of one family in which no link in the chain of relationship is wanting; while all the social affections are gratified by the families that combine, under one common good, to form one distinct society. Such a life is not one of mere contemplation and

worship, but of active and ever-varying usefulness. For the same economy exists there as here, that the Lord makes His people happy by their making each other happy. There, as here, love to the Lord finds its exercise and its delight in mutual love. Mutual love is the love of the Lord in each other. All that is good and true in man and angel is not only from the Lord, but is the Lord in them. The Lord dwells in them by the goodness and truth that they receive from Him. And as true mutual love is the love of what is good and true in each other, it is therefore the love of the Lord in each other. But love is an active principle. It does not consist in feeling only, but in doing. Those who love the Lord serve Him; those who mutually love serve each other. Love could not exist without being embodied in some active use. If there was no field of active usefulness in heaven there could be no real love in heaven; neither love to the Lord nor love to each other could be sustained by a mere life of devotion. It is of the Divine love and wisdom, therefore, that He has made life both on earth and in heaven a life of mutual dependence and thence of mutual service. The mind, like the body, is so constituted that it cannot live alone; and this law of existence is as inexorable in the other world as in this. But the Divine goodness is manifested in this, that that which is a necessity of our being is a means of our happiness.

What in this respect has been our experience in the past year? Have we found that our labours have had their reward, not only in providing for the necessities and enjoyments of this life, but in laying up treasures in heaven, by making us more heavenly-minded, and giving us a growing sense of happiness in making others happy? And have we realized the truth of the doctrine that a life of love and charity consists in the faithful discharge of the duties that belong to us in our station and calling? Were all these duties faithfully performed, which they can only be from a religious principle, the Lord's will would be done on earth as it is done in heaven. "For what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" "Justice and judgment are the habitation of His throne" in the individual mind, as it is in the Church on earth and in the angelic heaven; for the kingdom of God is within us as well as among us, and indeed must be within us that it may be among us.

If times and seasons have any lesson for us, it is to teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. True wisdom transforms times into states. Time employed wisely effects

the transformation. As times and seasons had their origin in states, they are designed to return into states again. Times and seasons are not merely suggestive of states; but states as causes are still in times and seasons as their effects; and the cause works through the effect to accomplish its own purpose by it. Hence the influence which the seasons have upon us, disposing us to certain thoughts and feelings in harmony with them, and leading us, if we will but follow, to the higher states of thought and affection corresponding to them. All these states and times are from the Creator, and He, as their first cause, is in them, ever working out by them His Divine purpose in creation, to perfect His children in righteousness, and thence in happiness. Let us strive to become "workers together with God, to will and to do of His good pleasure." Thus will the year that is before us find us, not only as it will, nearer to eternity, but, as it ought, nearer to eternal life. EDITOR.

THE NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE.

THE year has fled !

Man calls it dead,

And, to his seeming, in its grave
Time buries all its motley deeds
Of right and wrong,--its conflicts brave,
And all its bitter strife of creeds.

And yet, not so:

For, as the snow

Throws o'er the earth its mantle light,
And shields the vegetative mould
From winter's chill and piercing blight,
Till timid germs grow strong and bold,
The silent pall

Of Time must fall

On germs of thought too frail to thrive,
Until, from selfish passions freed,
The good and true may each revive,
Each spring to life as from the seed.

Yet round them rise
In varied guise

Those weeds of evil, dark and dank,
Man's husbandry alone must kill,
Lest poisons subtle grow more rank,
And baffle all his later skill.