for a splendid alliance, is only worldly wise, yet in that manoeuvring and worldly prudence there is the exercise of a self-control which raises her above the mere giddy pleasure-hunter of the hour; for want of self-control is the weakness of our nature—­to restrain, to wait, to control present feeling with a large foresight, is human strength.

Once more, instead of a faith like that of the child, which over-leaps a few hours, or that of the worldly man, which over-passes years, there may be a faith which transcends the whole span of life, and, instead of looking for temporal enjoyments, looks for rewards in a future beyond the grave, instead of a future limited to time.

This is again a step.  The child has sacrificed a day; the man has sacrificed a little more.  Faith has now reached a stage which deserves to be called religious; not that this however, is very grand; it does but prefer a happiness hereafter to a happiness enjoyed here—­an eternal well-being instead of a temporal well-being; it is but prudence on a grand scale—­another form of selfishness—­an anticipation of infinite rewards instead of finite, and not the more noble because of the infinitude of the gain:  and yet this is what is often taught as religion in books and sermons.  We are told that sin is wrong, because it will make us miserable hereafter.  Guilt is represented as the short-sightedness which barters for a home on earth—­a home in heaven.

In the text-book of ethics studied in one of our universities, virtue is defined as that which is done at the command of God for the sake of an eternal reward.  So then, religion is nothing more than a calculation of infinite and finite quantities; vice is nothing more than a grand imprudence; and heaven is nothing more than selfishness rewarded with eternal well-being!

Yet this you will observe, is a necessary step in the development of faith.  Faith is the conviction that God is a rewarder of them who diligently seek Him; and there is a moment in human progress when the anticipated rewards and punishments must be of a Mahometan character—­the happiness of the senses.  It was thus that the Jews were disciplined; out of a coarse, rude, infantine state, they were educated by rewards and punishments to abstain from present sinful gratification:  at first, the promise of the life which now is, afterwards the promise of that which is to come; but even then the rewards and punishments of a future state were spoken of, by inspiration itself, as of an arbitrary character; and some of the best of the Israelites, in looking to the recompense of reward, seemed to have anticipated, coarsely, recompense in exchange for duties performed.

The last step is that which alone deserves to be called Christian Faith—­“Who is he that overcometh but he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ?” The difference between the faith of the Christian and that of the man of the