There are few people to whom these remarks are so applicable as to youths in a school, if to any such I speak. You are young, and youth is a burning and glorious time, full of hope and boundless expectation: you are, many of you, gifted with intellect, and powers of imagination, and memory; you are in a position singularly suited to cultivate these powers and make them effective; you are, many of you, learned to a certain degree in the literature of the Church; you too are exposed to the jest and the scoff of the libertine and the sceptic; many of you are possessed of high personal courage and daring, even to death. It is my object to show you that one of your first aims should be to ascertain the powers that have got,

you

and, having ascertained them, to see in what way you can use them, so as best to glorify GOD. They are all of them opportunities of showing whether you are religious or not, and become vast means for those who will use them aright, to offer to GoD a sacrifice as acceptable as the martyr and the confessor of old.

I will place before you the position in which we are to view Solomon the wise king and S. Stephen the eloquent martyr. To enforce this subject better, I will specially here dwell on S.

He was

Stephen. Stephen was a young man. possessed of theological learning to so high a degree, as to baffle altogether the efforts of the gainsayer or the sceptic. He appears to have had no ordinary share of eloquence. He was well instructed in the ecclesiastical history of the Jewish nation. His integrity, trustworthiness, and holiness, induced the Apostles to make selection of him for the Diaconate, in which he took a leading part; he displayed in no small degree alike moral and physical courage. The former quality he showed in his bold rebuke of the Pharisees and the Jewish nation generally; the latter he manifested in his violent and painful death; while his charity to his murderers in the hour of his martyrdom evinces a generous and forgiving heart. With all these attributes, radiating from the centre of extreme youth, S. Stephen presents a character of abounding interest to the young, and vindicates for ever, under the Gospel, as David and Solomon had done under the Law, the possibility of sanctifying personal courage and noble disposition by the grace of God. To you it speaks with great force. It seems to say that the young have a peculiar privilege in connection with the service of GOD; from your number the first martyr was

taken, and a Christian youth sentinels the open doorway which leads from Christmas through the coming year. His character seems to show you that you may exercise every manly and noble quality with which you are gifted, and not only make them subservient to, but an ornament of religion.

2. It will be well to take the separate features of S. Stephen's character and show their applicability to your position.

And, first, his masterly knowledge of philosophy and Scripture recommend him to notice in so great a degree, that he is described as being "full of power;" and more than that, of speaking with so much wisdom and spirit, that men of great learning could not withstand him. This at once leads us to see that it is possible to consecrate the highest powers of intellect to the cause of religion, and that it is by no means separable from courage. The journey of Cyrus, enlivened by his conversations on religious wisdom, serves as an illustration from ancient history of the union of the qualities.

a. There are many ways in which you may imitate these high examples. Try to realize to yourselves the fact that the cultivation

of your mind is due to GOD, and do not yield to the loose impression that the body and mind are to be cultivated only for this world, and the spirit only for the next. This idea, painfully common amongst many religious persons of a recent date, is borrowed to a great degree from the tenets, though scarcely from the practice, of the puritan school. It is a view which mutilates the integrity of the creature whom God has made in His own Image, and gives back to Him only a portion of that, the whole of which was to have been devoted to His service; "in everything you are enriched by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, so that you come behind in no gift." You are to love "the LORD your God with all your mind, with all your heart, and with all your souls." Your first aim then should be to get into the habit of feeling that mental cultivation is a religious duty, and that one of the noblest offerings you can make to God is that of a highly cultivated intellect.

With that view, take care never to underrate the value of practical philosophy or the knowledge of language; the former tends to illustrate GOD's Works, and the latter His Word. That mind is weak indeed which cannot bear

the knowledge that language with all its infirmities has been the medium of revealed truth, and that practical philosophy with all its discoveries may sometimes dissipate the mists of erroneous prejudice. Superstition is not religion, nor is mental ignorance a steppingstone to spiritual knowledge.

b. Again, read with the intention, as far as possible, of finding out truth. The contradictories to this will be, reading for the purpose of discovering error, of pandering to sin, or of mere entertainment. GOD may be discovered in His attributes and requirements in the classic, and in the history, as in the sermon. The Christian youth will scarcely rise from Eschylus without being strengthened in his views of the moral obligations of religion; from Sophocles, without having his impressions as to the beauty of virtue intensified; from Thucydides, without being convinced of the religious responsibility of politics; or from Herodotus, without perceiving that from the beginning GOD has been speaking through national character and passing circumstance. Of course, you may, if you will, read the old Greek chronicles with views far other than those that are intended, and linger with satisfaction