reverential joy? Do not think all this strange, fanatical, impossible. If it do seem so, it can only be because your heart is in the earthly hopes, but not in the higher and holier hopes—because love to Christ is still to you but a name—because you can give more ardor of thought to the anticipation of a coming holiday than to the hope of heaven and glory everlasting. No, my friends! the strange thing is, not that amid the world’s work we should be able to think of our home, but that we should ever be able to forget it; and the stranger, sadder still, that while the little day of life is passing—morning, noontide, evening—each stage more rapid than the last, while to many the shadows are already fast lengthening, and the declining sun warns them that “the night is at hand, wherein no man can work,” there should be those among us whose whole thoughts are absorbed in the business of the world, and to whom the reflection never occurs that soon they must go out into eternity—without a friend—without a home! [_June 17._] RELIGION IN COMMON LIFE. PART III. Such, then, is the true idea of the Christian life—a life not of periodic observances, or of occasional fervors, or even of splendid acts of heroism and self devotion, but of quiet, constant, unobtrusive earnestness, amid the common-place work of the world. This is the life to which Christ calls us. Is it yours? Have you entered upon it, or are you now willing to enter upon it? It is not, I admit, an imposing or an easy one. There is nothing in it to dazzle, much in its hardness and plainness to deter the irresolute. The life of a follower of Christ demands not, indeed, in our day, the courage of the hero or the martyr, the fortitude that braves outward dangers and sufferings, and flinches not from persecution and death. But with the age of persecution the difficulties of the Christian life have not passed away. In maintaining a spirit of Christian cheerfulness and contentment—in the unambitious routine of humble duties—in preserving the fervor of piety amid the unexciting cares and wearing anxieties—in the perpetual reference to lofty ends amid lowly toils—there may be evinced a faith as strong as that of the man who dies with the song of martyrdom on his lips. It is a great thing to love Christ so dearly as to be “ready to be bound and to _die_” for him; but it is often a thing not less great to be ready to take up our daily cross, and to _live_ for him. But be the difficulties of a Christian life in the world what they may, they need not discourage us. Whatever the work to which our Master calls us, he offers us a strength commensurate with our needs. No man who wishes to serve Christ will ever fail for lack of heavenly aid. And it will be no valid excuse for an ungodly life that it is difficult to keep alive the flame of piety in the world, if Christ be ready to supply the fuel.