passing from us which is invisible to all differs from the invisible aura of others, or how could the dog track his master through the crowded street? There are said to be from three to four thousand languages on the globe, from the harsh and guttural Esquimaux to the smooth and liquid Italian. Every individual has, in fact, peculiarities of speech that distinguish him from all others. The voice reveals the person when we have no other clue; and we say that is John, Mary, or Thomas, when the persons speaking

are unseen.

This variety that we thus notice in Nature is a continual blessing. Suppose it otherwise. Let all the heavenly bodies be alike in size and brightness, and placed at equal distances, and we should have a celestial checker-board, true to the line, and pretty for one look, but tame forever. Make all the flowers roses, and who would not miss the violet? The rose itself would lose half its beauty for want of contrast with its less fair floral sisters. If all leaves were alike, and all trees after the same pattern, how the dull landscape would fatigue the eye! Make all men like pins in a paper, mold candles in a box, or shot in a barrel, the fat thin, or the thin stout; elongate the short, or stunt the long; give all eyes the same expression; make all noses aquiline or Roman, - and what a desert of faces would surround us! Let it occur to-day, what terrible mistakes would take place before morning! There is not an ugly sinner but would pray for the return of his old face to rescue him from the dead level of humanity.

Minds differ more widely than faces. "Many men, many minds," is a proverb as true as it is old. More

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varied than flowers in the garden, leaves in the forest, or stars in the sky, are the minds of mankind. Look into our libraries and see the products of those minds, - books on every conceiv able subject, and no two alike even on the same subject.

This difference is seen in boys as soon as the intellect is awake, and manifests itself continually. Here is a little mechanic saving his cents and buying a jack-knife, with which he whittles mimic waterwheels. See him in the brook, his little pants tucked up to his brown knees, while he rejoices, as his wheel spins round, like an angel over a new world. Give him a chance to develop in his own peculiar line, and, like a Watt or a Fulton, he will yoke new steeds to the car of progress, and drive on the world at a diviner speed.

Another little fellow is drawing horses on the barndoor with chalk, or making little dogs out of dough in the kitchen. An artist is he in the germ; full blossomed and fruited, the business of his thinking soul and obedient hand shall be to embody the creations of his genius, that shall bless the world for long centuries after he has gone to more than realize his most glorious conceptions in a higher school of art.

Here is a born orator; mounted on a stump, he harangues the village boys. Proud ships may sail, they attract him not; wheels may spin, what cares he? Could he enchain an audience by his eloquence, earth has no greater blessing, heaven itself could grant no more. To this he devotes himself; his soul

leads, he obediently follows, till multitudes hang

breathless upon his words, while he talks as a spring leaps from the mountain-side.

This farmer cares more for his cattle than a monarch for his crown. Spring has driven winter from the land, the birds are singing, and he rejoices as he drives his "jocund team a-field." Nothing could induce him to leave these incense-breathing fields for the din and dust of the city; but the merchant despises the dull round of the farmer, and is never happy but in the crowded mart, - a busy man among busy men.

It is well that it should be so. Were all to become merchants, the stock would soon be spent; the river of commerce would dry up, for the rills of production would cease to flow. Were all producers, goods would accumulate as water does in lakes, and there would be no rivers to distribute the surplus to the needy lands. If all were poets, painters, or orators, bread and butter would be sadly deficient; and if all were plain, prosy farmers, how much that makes life joyous we should lose!

As men's intellectual endowments differ, so do their moral faculties and religious sentiments. One is a born sceptic; he must see, hear, feel, and is hardly satisfied without tasting and smelling, what is marvellous, in order to give it credence. He may de. sire to believe; but the arms of his faith are so short that they can not reach the distant object. Another believes at once: it is only necessary to present the statement, and he swallows it in a moment, though "gross as a mountain." He reads that the whale swallowed Jonah, and he lived three days in his belly; if he had read that Jonah swallowed the whale, he would swallow both, and make no bones about either. He has no need to pray,

"Stretch our faith's capacity wider and yet wider still.'

The door of his soul is wide enough to take in all company; no more to be reasonably praised for the width of his spiritual gullet, than the sceptic blamed for the narrowness of his.

One is firm as a mountain: he feels like Fitz James when he exclaimed,

"Come one, come all! This rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I."

Another is pliant as the wheat-stalk, that waves in the June breeze.

This man is spiritual; every breath that he draws is redolent of heaven; he mounts as naturally as the freed bird, and carols in the sky; that man gravitates to the earth like a thunder-cloud big with a shower.

The arms of the benevolent would all mankind embrace. If he were made of gold, his sympathy would lead him to give himself away for the benefit of man kind. Some such give away all that they have, and more than they have; while the economical man's purse-strings are twined around his heart, sometimes with a hard-to-be-loosed knot in them, and he thinks ten times before he gives once.

If all were credulous as some, the world would feed on lies, and dire would be the consequence. If all were sceptical as others, new truths and strange facts might stand knocking at the world's heart for centuries before they gained admission. If all were firm and unyielding, progress would either be impossible or very slow; and, if all were equally pliant, revolutions would be as plentiful as showers in spring, and peace and stability would be at an end. If all were spiritual as Swedenborg in his later days, corn and potatoes would be sadly deficient; and if all were "of the earth, earthy," we should be no better than the savage in the wild.

There may be too wide deviations from a normal standard morally, as there are intellectually; for some are born morally asquint, as others are physically, deviations that require careful culture and training to overcome. But men as naturally differ in their moral natures as they do in their physical constitutions, and the difference thus existing is of the greatest value to the race. One's religion is like the sun, fervid and intense; another's like the moon, calm and beautiful; and another's like the stars, bright and saint-like; yet all lovely as the varied flowers of the meadow, or the tints of the evening sky.

Hence the importance of the exhortation of my text, BE THYSELF. There is no originality, no complete manhood, without it. It is the highest pre. rogative of the animal kingdom, the crowning glory of humanity. Among the coral polyps, at the base of the animal kingdom, we have millions of animals united in one community; what is eaten by one is as if eaten by all; and the will of the individual is lost in that of the group, harmoniously forming their stony structures at the sea-bottom. Among the mollusks, countless multitudes lie in one oozy bed, with little scope, as there is little inclination, for individual

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