the Lord's presence by seeing how far it is inapplicable to ourselves. When thus baldly placed before us, we shrink from recognising such a state of heart as belonging to us, and yet how many are in effect adopting it, by regarding the presence of God as a "troubling" thought, and His grace as a means to help them at the hour of death, rather than, as it should be, the spring of all their joy and blessedness; à presence to enrich their lives with comfort and peace; the very life-blood of the soul. life-blood of the soul. What a subversion of our relationship to God, and of His love to us as revealed in Christ, that one soul should try to comfort another by bidding it not think of God! And yet is it not practically true of a great portion of mankind that God is almost excluded from their thoughts. How frequently at the sick bed are we warned not to allude to subjects of deeper moment than those which relate to the poor worn-out tabernacle which exhausted nature is about to put off. I am not saying that this is wrong; but, that such an allusion should so agitate the mind of the invalid as to endanger health, is an evidence that he has not partaken of the joy which the thought of God should inspire. Let us now turn to the other picture. The lines from Faber correspond with the experience of the Psalmist, and still more with that of the Apostles, to whom the presence of Christ was not only a future anticipation, but a constant source of present joy and rejoicing. Study the 139th Psalm and see how the heart of David rejoices in the thought of the Omnipresence of God. To him it is fraught with blessedness and comfort, from the inwrought conviction that, go where he will, he cannot drift beyond His love and care. "If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me." And more wonderful still-"If I make my bed in hell, behold Thou art there!" There is a depth of trust in the Love of God in these expressions that we may well ponder over, and if our souls grasped its fulness we should no longer dread the all-searching eye of God, but should welcome it as the greatest joy of our lives, and say with David, "Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." The whole tenor of the law of God is changed when we view it as the message of His love, given to educate and train us into His likeness, rather than as a test of our obedience to be followed by condemnation if not fulfilled. The law of the Lord, says the Psalmist, is perfect, "converting the soul," its purpose being to make us "partakers of His holiness.' And if we join with this the declaration, "God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved," we see the meaning of that perfect law, the fulfilling of which is the highest aim and blessedness of the child of God. So with the Sermon on the Mount: if we regard its precepts as hard commands impossible to obey, they are chilling and disheartening, but viewed as the loving words of a Saviour who would have His followers perfect as their Father in Heaven is perfect, and would so lead them into fellowship with Himself that they might be able to fulfil the precepts in His strength, they are changed into bright promises of that state of holiness into which the redeemed shall enter. "All thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children." Let us learn, then, as the children of God, to love His law, and we shall realise the Apostle Paul's experience, "I delight in the law of God after the inward man." He so blended the human life with the Divine, the present with the future, realising the presence of God equally in each, that he could say "to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." of God. 66 So, to the true follower of Christ, there is no dread but rejoicing at the thought of the continual presence There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment." Living in the constant sense of the love of Him "who compasseth his path and his lying down, and is acquainted with all his ways," the thought of the Lord's presence is that which animates and consoles the Christian amid all the changes of life; and when physical decay sets in, he feels that although the outward man is perishing, the inward man is being renewed day by day, and that he can safely commit the keeping of his own soul, with those whom he is leaving, “unto a faithful Creator," assured that the survivors are only left for a brief space longer, "Amidst the shadows of this little while." Having lived in the presence of God here, he will equally die in His presence, and passing through death's shadow into the life beyond, will realise, without any apparent break, the blessed truth, "when I awake I am still with Thee"! To be ushered into His presence will be no new experience, but a carrying on, in a fuller tide of glory, the life hid with Christ in God," begun here, to be continued in its fuller manifestation in the bright hereafter. RICHARD WESTLAKE. ISAAC AND MARY PENINGTON. "His [Christ's] satisfaction is my peace."-ISAAC PENINGTON. "There is a sort of God's dear servants who walk in perfectness; who perfect holiness in the fear of God; and they have a degree of charity and divine knowledge more than we can discourse of, and more certain than the demonstrations of geometry. But I shall say no more of this at this time, and they who never touched it with their fingers may, secretly perhaps, laugh at it in their hearts and be never the wiser. All that I shall now say of it is, that a good man is united unto God. As a flame touches a flame and combines into splendour and glory, so is the spirit of a man united unto Christ by the spirit of God. These are the friends of God, and they best know God's mind; and they only that are so know how much such men do know." JEREMY TAYLOR. "BUT my soul was not satisfied with what I met with, nor indeed could be," writes Isaac Penington. And deep is the significance of these words when we consider those by which they are immediately preceded, and which plainly prove that he was already by no means unacquainted with Christ: for he says "The Lord was good unto me, did visit me, did teach me, did help me, did testify His acceptance of me many times, to the refreshing and joy of my heart before Him." But it was because Isaac Penington possessed life that his soul panted for "life more abundantly." "For ah! the Master is so fair, His smile so sweet to banished men, Can never rest on earth again." He writes of "further quickenings and pressings in his spirit “after a more full, certain and satisfactory knowledge; even after the sense, sight and enjoyment of God, as was testified in the Scriptures to have been felt and enjoyed in the former times: for I saw plainly there was a great falling short of the power, life and glory which they partook of." The eldest son of Alderman Penington (who was a noted member of the Long Parliament), the heir to "a fair inheritance," and endowed with good ability, every educational advantage that could be conferred by English schools and universities, was granted him. Had it been his desire to choose a portion in this world no mean one was within his reach. He was born about 1616, and during the earlier years of his manhood, a succession of important posts were filled by his father, as High Sheriff of London, Member of Parliament, Lord Mayor, and Lieutenant of the Tower; the honour of knighthood being also granted him. But it is evident that Isaac Penington too fully reciprocated his mother's longings for spiritual blessings for her children to seek either fame or wealth. Well aware, however, of the importance of the agitating political questions of his day he wrote on them, but in such a strain as was not fitted to bring him popularity with any party. In the preface to a pamphlet he writes :-" There are one sort of men who are wondrous eager after making the nation happy, whose spirits can be no ways satisfied till they see the attainment of that universal freedom, and the flowing forth of that universal, speedy justice which is easy to be desired but hard to be met with. . . . . It is a brave thing sometimes to oppose the yoke; but a braver, from judgment, to submit unto it.. . . . Groan, pant after, and in a just way pursue, the attainment of perfect freedom, yet not in such a violent and irrational manner, as to make your more noble parts far worse slaves to brutish passions within." But it was on religious themes that he chiefly wrote, |