tenets in whose support they lifted up their voices till the world rang with the message; and that districts, or countries, are so haunted by their memories, that the righteous seem to have them for companions, and to be cheered by their counsels? And who further will doubt that a reputation such as this, thus precious and profitable, might be lawfully desired by the most devoted of Christ's followers, and that it would be an ambition which the most pious might cherish, and the most humble avouch, that of transmitting to posterity a name which should serve as a watchword to the Churches of the earth? Would it have been a base longing after empty renown, had the martyrs and confessors, of whom we speak, ardently desired to be thus shrined in the thoughts of all after-ages? and might they have been denounced as indulging an unworthy wish, and stirred by a sordid motive, if, in the midst of their toil and their suffering, they had appealed to posterity for justice, and hoped and believed that they should be both remembered and reverenced? I hear one of these worthies, when half-consumed in the flames, bidding his fellow-sufferer be of good cheer; for there had been lit that day a candle in England which, by God's help, should never be extinguished. What was this but the indication of a consciousness that, in long after-times, the memory of martyrs should be gloriously powerful? what but the expression of a belief, that persecution, in destroying the man, would hand down his name as a venerated thing, and

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make it effectual to the maintenance of the doctrine which he died to defend? The expiring martyr knew himself imperishable, and exulted in the knowledge. He saw with prophetic gaze the land of his birth irradiated by flashings from his own funeral pile; and he died the happier for having beheld the noble illumination. And will you class him with the selfish seekers of mere human distinction, the worshippers of "the bubble reputation," because he could thus be cheered in his last struggle by the prospect of his own indestructible fame? Rather, if we admit that he found a present recompense in the certainty of being remembered, shall we not believe that what gladdened him was the feeling, that his usefulness would not terminate with death, but be propagated over all succeeding time? shall we not own, that, simply because it was the ruling desire of his heart to advance the cause of truth upon earth, he triumphed in the conviction that the words of our text should hold good of himself, and that, being dead, he yet should speak?

Or to take another case-what shall be said of authors who have written admirably on the doctrines and evidences of Christianity, and whose works are thus a storehouse whence thousands fetch material for the confirmation of faith, and the quickening of piety? I know not whether, as they strove to embody in words their own glorious views of redemption, they were cheered by the vision of the old and the young of every age poring over their volumes, and

strengthening themselves by their statements for the good fight of faith. But it shall not be said that they were only hirelings, if indeed they thus looked onward to posterity. They sought not, and they could not seek, the honours that are yielded to genius, to the master of song, or the magician of fiction. But they may have longed to live in writings which should alarm the careless, comfort the mourning, and establish the wavering; and I know not why it may not have been among their proofs of an entire resolve to promote the divine glory, that they cherished a desire of thus speaking when dead.

In this way we endeavour to show you in how holy a sense the reward of Abel may be amongst those on which Christians fasten their hopes. We wish to have it well understood that the desire for distinction is not necessarily incompatible with piety: if a Christian make the divine glory his end-and he ceases to be spiritually a Christian if he make any thing else he may enter into various competitions, and be struggling for the incorruptible crown in struggling for a corruptible. There is, for example, no better preparation for the work of a Christian preacher, than a diligent attention to the peculiar studies of this University. They who have not made trial may hold a different opinion; but those who have experience from which to judge, would fasten down a young man to the academic course, if they found him burning with desire to "do the work of an evangelist." It may be urged by ignorance, I aim

at being a theologian, why lose precious time in becoming a mathematician? It is replied by experience, Become the mathematician for the very purpose, and with the very hope, of becoming the theologian. Fatal error! into which many have fallen, who, because the thing learnt was not to be the thing preached, have concluded that the learning could not assist them in the preaching. Whereas the man who schools his mental faculties by abstract study is fitting himself for an office which specially requires that the judgment be in exercise, and the imagination in check: he may not be acquiring the truth which the preacher is to communicate, but he is doing much to secure that the preacher shall communicate only truth. I call it not therefore necessarily a carnal, an earthly longing, that which aspires after distinction in this seat of learning. Ambition for eminence here may be, and ought to be, ambition to be eminent as God's servants. Be this your ambition, and the most religious amongst you may be the most earnest in the struggle for honour. I ask no limits to this ambition: whilst the aim is to bring glory to God, by bringing sinners to Christ, I would not confine you to life; you may long to speak after death, and yet be removed, far as the east from the west, from those who pant for the praises of men.

There is something grand and ennobling about such ambition. It seems to me that the man who entertains and accomplishes the desire of witnessing

for truth after death, triumphs over death in the highest possible sense. I could almost dare to say of such a man, that he never dies. Can it be said of St. Paul, that he died? Not if you regard death as withdrawing a man from usefulness, and terminating the season in which he may serve the Redeemer. The Apostle has been preaching in every land, in every age. He could not die: he was to be the Apostle to the Gentiles to the end of time, the earth his diocese, the period of the Christian dispensation his life. It has been the same with martyrs and confessors. They have not died: he dies not, whose spirit is abroad, battling with error, and gathering in the harvest of the earth.

And men of less surpassing renown do not necessarily die, when the soul leaves the body, and the place which has known them knows them no more. There is many a private Christian-to say nothing of a pastor-who is long remembered and venerated, whose lessons operate when the tongue which delivered them has mouldered into dust. The memory of many a cottage patriarch is yet fresh in the valley where his days were spent: vice still seems rebuked by his frown, and virtue cheered by his smile. Such a man's life exceeds "the threescore years and ten" which may perhaps have bounded his visible residence on earth: he dies not till he ceases to be useful, and this may not be till he ceases to be remembered.

And we call it the destruction, the abolition of