“_For the law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins._” (Heb. x. 1–4.) The heavenly things themselves your minds were made to contemplate, your hearts to love, your spirits to commune with; and you are grovelling amid the ashes of the perishing, while the imperishable, the eternal, passes for ever beyond the range of your sight. Believe in humanity as the first step to a nobler life. Not the poor, weak, trembling humanity which your self-communings reveal to you; but the glorious, Divine humanity which God has set before you to help your infirmity, to recall the memory of the height from which you have fallen, and to kindle the hope of the royal dignity to which you may be restored. Look within; and man seems poor enough, and pitiful enough. But look above: “_We see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man._” Then “_lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset you, and run with patience the race that is set before you, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God_.” Behold in Him the perfect image of a man, in His life the beauty of a perfect human life. Believe in that image; gaze on it, meditate on it, till contemplation kindles sympathy, and sympathy grows into love. “_Consider the apostle and high-priest of your profession, Christ Jesus_”; and if you tread in His footsteps of present sorrow and humiliation, glory in it, and pray that you may go on to know it more perfectly, “_the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death_.” Believe that all that a man was meant to be, to do, to become, can only grow out of this vital fellowship with Jesus. Believe in Him rather than in the world’s ideas, maxims, and hopes. Leave them to the Pagans. You, sons of God, heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ, learn nobler lessons out of the book of His life, aim at loftier marks, thirst for purer and perennial joys. II. Poor belief about God—unbelief in the Incarnation, and all its blessed meanings to mankind.