But the words before us direct our attention to the awakening hour of conscience, and we infer from them

I. THAT IT IS AN "HOUR" THAT MUST DAWN ON THE MOST OBDURATE NATURES. There are two classes of dormant consciences those that have never been aroused-infants and savages; and those that have been partially quickened, but deadened again-seared. There is an "hour" for the awakening of each-even the most lethargic. It was so now with Belshazzar. Other consciences of the same class have had their awakening hour-Cain, Herod, Judas, Felix, &c.

II. THAT IT IS AN "HOUR" INTRODUCED BY A DIVINE MANIFESTATION. There " came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote." It was very quiet: no lightning flashed, no thunder pealed, but the gentle movements of a mystic hand. It was very unexpected: it was in the midst of the gladness, when the tide of festive joy ran high. It was very palpable: there was no way of unnoticing it. It moved against the light of the candlestick. It is in this quiet, unexpected, and palpable manner, that God frequently brings that idea of HIMSELF into the soul, which ever rouses the conscience.

III. THAT IT IS AN "HOUR" ASSOCIATED WITH GREAT MENTAL DISTRESS. "Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another." Two things are observable here:-1. The influence of an awakened conscience upon "thoughts." Our thoughts are governed by different principles. Sometimes intellect controls them, and we are ever in the region of investigation; sometimes imagination has the command, and then we sport in the realms of beauty; sometimes avarice, and then the market is our home, and good bargains the joy of our heart; sometimes "fleshly

lusts," and then the whole nature is brutalized.

But here the
A guilty

guilty conscience controls them, and this is HELL. conscience always throws the thoughts upon three subjects— the wrong of the past, the guilt of the present, and the retribution of the future. 2. The other thing observable is the influence of "troubled thoughts" upon the physical system. "The joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another." David felt thus when he said, “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long." The Roman ruffians felt thus when, in the garden of Gethsemane, they fell as dead men at the moral majesty of the mysterious Sufferer.

IV. IT IS AN "HOUR" WHICH IS SOMETIMES THE HARBINGER OF ETERNAL RETRIBUTION. Sometimes the hour of moral awakening ushers in the bright and propitious morning of conversion. It was so in the case of Zacchæus, the sinners on the day of Pentecost, the Philippian jailor, and others. Indeed, such an hour must always precede the dawn of true religion in the soul. But here, as with Judas, it was the harbinger of retribution. "In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain." What a night! Ah! what a night was that! "That night" separated him for ever from his pleasures, his friends, and his empire; "that night" terminated for ever his opportunities of spiritual improvement, and quenched every ray of hope within his breast; "that night" every star in the firmament of his being went down to rise no more, and left the whole of the immortal expanse overhung with clouds surcharged with the elements of inconceivable storms.

Sinner, the day of grace is waning fast: the hour of awakening steals on. That hour shall either issue in the dawn of a new and happy life, or the chaos of moral anguish and despair!

I

Analysis of Homily the Forty-fifth.

"He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names."Psa. cxlvii. 3, 4.

THE highest work of man is to praise God; and this praise, David tells us in this psalm, is "good," "pleasant," and "comely." In it man realizes the highest unfoldment of his faculties, and the highest gratification of his heart. It is happiness. Praise is not in sounds, however melodious, nor in words, however devout: it is in reverential thought, holy gratitude, and heavenly aspirations; in godly purposes, and in a pure, earnest, and manly life.

An ever vivid recognition of God's all-pervading presence and universal agency lies at the foundation of all true praise. In this psalm the hand of Deity is seen everywhere: building up Jerusalem, and gathering together the outcasts of Israel; administering relief to wounded souls, and guiding the revolutions of stars; exalting the meek, and casting down the wicked; covering the heavens with clouds; pouring the fructifying showers upon the earth, thus clothing the hills with verdure, and producing supplies for man and beast; blessing the country with protection, plenty, and peace, and sending his "words"-his moral influence-swiftly through the earth. In truth, his agency here is traced the universe through: in the bright sky and the green fields, in the showers and the hoar frosts, in the life of the lower creation, and in everything pertaining to the individual, social, and religious history of man. The birth of religion consists in the soul waking up, from the dream of common life, to the conviction that God works in all things. Its first words are, "Surely God is in this place, and I knew it not."

SUBJECT:-God's Relation to Sorrowing Souls and to

Starry Systems.

I. HIS RELATION TO SORROWING SOULS. "He healeth the broken in heart." There are broken hearts and wounded

souls in this world. The flowing tear, the pensive look, the deep-drawn sigh, are everywhere symptoms of sorrowing souls. The whole human creation is groaning: there are hearts broken by oppression, disappointment, calumny, bereavement, and moral conviction. All this sorrow is of human origination. It springs not as a necessity from the constitution of things-it comes not through the regular working, but through the positive infraction, of God's laws. Misery is the creation of the creature, not of the Creator. "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself," &c. God works here to remove all this misery-to heal and restore. CHRISTIANITY is the restorative element he applies: it is the balm of Gilead; it is the tree whose fruit is for the healing of nations.

"He telleth the

II. HIS RELATION TO STARRY SYSTEMS. number of the stars." Astronomy informs us that one hundred millions of stars may be seen through the telescope in our sky, and that each of them is the centre of a system, and has therefore a sky of its own, incalculably deeper and broader than these vast heavens that encircle us. In this supposition, there is involved a number of "stars" which no arithmetic can compute, and which baffles all imagination in the attempt to appreciate. But this, it would seem, after all, is as nothing compared with the immeasurable universe. Yet these stars, though they cover immensity thick as grass on earth's soil, or as sand on ocean's shore, are all known to God. "He telleth the number," &c. He knows the age, productions, size, velocity, influence, and tenants, of each. "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names." He marshals them as the general his battalions. He binds the sweet influences of Pleiades, and he looses the bands of Orion. He bringeth forth Mazzaroth in his season, and he guides Arcturus with his sons.

Looking at men in relation to this subject, they fall into three grand classes :

stars.

1. Those who deny God's active relation to both souls and These comprehend two distinct sections of theoretic infidels - those who deny the existence of God altogether, and those who admit his existence, but deny his superintendence in the universe; the latter regard all the phenomena and changes of nature as taking place not by the agency of God, but by the principles or laws which he impressed upon it at first. The universe is like a plant: all the vital forces of action are in itself, and it will go on until they exhaust and die.

2. Those who admit God's active relation to stars, but deny it to souls. They say that it is derogatory to Infinite Majesty to suppose his taking any notice of broken hearts. He has to do with the great, but not with the little. What is man to the world in which he lives? He is as nothing compared to its towering mountains, majestic oceans, and mighty continents. And, then, what is this globe to the system of which it is a part? A dew-drop to the ocean—a ray to the sun! It cannot be that the Infinite ONE would condescend to notice this man-atom! There are two or three thoughts which make this objection appear very childish. One is, that man's great and small are but notions. When I say that a thing is great, all I mean is that it is great to me. I call the tiny leaf on which I tread little, but to its insect population it is a vast universe. I call this globe great, but to the eye of an angel it may appear but a mere spark in the universe. To God there is nothing great or small. Another is, that what we consider small are influential parts of the whole. Science proves that the motion of an atom must propagate an influence to remotest orbs; that all created being is but one great chain, of which the corpuscle is a link, which, if touched, will send its vibration to the ultimate points. In the moral system, facts show that the solitary thought of an obscure man can shake empires, produce revolutions, and reform society. Analogy suggests, and Christianity favors, the supposition that man is influentially connected with the whole of the great spiritual universe, and that