Very fine. But I think another--not, however, a different--view might be taken respecting our Lord's intention in these words. The young noble, who came to him, had many praiseworthy traits of character; but he failed in the ultimate end and aim. What ought only to have been valued by him as means, was loved, and had a worth given to it, as an end in itself. Our Lord, who knew the hearts of men, instantly in the first words applies himself to this, and takes the occasion of an ordinary phrase of courtesy addressed to himself, to make the young man aware of the difference between a mere relative good and that which is absolutely good; that which may be called good, when regarded as a mean to good, but which must not be mistaken for, or confounded with, that which is good, and itself the end. Ib. B. C. D. All excellent, and D. most so. Thus, thus our old divines showed the depth of their love and appreciation of the Scriptures, and thus led their congregations to feel and see the same. Here is Donne's authority (_Deus non est ens_, &c.) for what I have so earnestly endeavored to show, that _Deus est ens super ens_, the ground of all being, but therein likewise absolute Being, in that he is the eternal self-affirmant, the I Am in that I Am; and that the key of this mystery is given to us in the pure idea of the will, as the alone _Causa Sui_. O! compare this manhood of our Church divinity with the feeble dotage of the Paleyan school, the 'natural' theology, or watchmaking scheme, that knows nothing of the maker but what can be proved out of the watch, the unknown nominative case of the verb impersonal _fit--et natura est_; the 'it,' in short, in 'it rains,' 'it snows,' 'it is cold,' and the like. When, after reading the biographies of Walton and his contemporaries, I reflect on the crowded congregations, on the thousands, who with intense interest came to their hour and two hour long sermons, I cannot but doubt the fact of any true progression, moral or intellectual, in the mind of the many. The tone, the matter, the anticipated sympathies in the sermons of an age form the best moral criterion of the character of that age. Ib. E. His name of Jehova we admire with a reverence. Say, rather, Jehova, his name. It is not so properly a name of God, as God the Name,--God's name and God. Ib. p. 169. A. Land, and money, and honour must be called goods, though but of fortune, &c. We should distinguish between the conditions of our possessing goods and the goods themselves. Health, for instance, is ordinarily a condition of that working and rejoicing for and in God, which are goods in the end, and of themselves. Health, competent fortune, and the like are good as the negations of the preventives of good; as clear glass is good in relation to the light, which it does not exclude. Health and ease without the love of God are plate glass in the darkness. Ib. p. 170.