Lord God is praised. But if it falls every day, its coming is a matter of course; and men learn to contemplate it as a natural event; they behold the manna, but not the hand that sends it. Water is produced miraculously from the rock; and if it be succeeded by heat and drought, men learn to award to God the glory. But the smitten rock in the wilderness virtually follows the Israelitish host; its streams attend them in their daily course; they have no lack of water; and what is the consequence? They are ungrateful; and so are we. God is hourly performing miracles for his people; but in order to learn this, it is good for us sometimes to undergo privations.

HOLINESS AND HAPPINESS. IF what we are told concerning that glorious city obtain credit with us, we will cheerfully travel towards it; nor will we be at all deterred by the difficulties that may be in the way. But, however, as it is true, and more suitaable to the weakness of our minds, that are rather apt to be affected with things present and near than such as are at a great distance, we ought not to pass over in silence, that the way to the happiness reserved in heaven, which leads through this earth, is not only agreeable, because of the blessed prospect it opens, and the glorious end to which it conducts, but also for its own sake, and on account of the innate pleasure to be found in it, far preferable to any other way of life that can be made choice of, or, indeed, imagined. Nay, that we may not, by low expressions, derogate from a matter so grand and so conspicuous, that holiness and true religion, which leads directly to the highest felicity, is itself the only happiness, as far as it can be enjoyed, on this earth. Whatever naturally tends to the attainment of any other advantage, participates in some measure of the nature of that advantage. Now, this way to perfect felicity, if anything can be so, is a means that, in a very great measure, participates of the nature of its end; nay, it is the beginning of that happiness, it is also to be considered as a part of it, and differs from it in its completest state not so much in kind as in degree; so that in Scripture it has the same names; as, for instance, in that passage of the Evangelist, "This is life eternal, that

they might know thee, the only true God; that is, not only the way to eternal life, but also the beginning and first rudiments of it, seeing the same knowledge when completed, or the full beatific vision of God, is eternal life in its fulness and perfection. Nor does the Divine apostle make any distinction between these two: now, says he, we see darkly through a glass, but then we shall see openly, or, as he expresses it, face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know as I also am known. That celestial life is called an inheritance in light, and the heirs of it, even while they are sojourning in this earth, children of the light, and expressly light in the Lord. "You were," says the apostle, "sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord." They will be there perfectly holy and without spot; and even here they are called holy, and, in some respects, they are so. Hence it is, that those who are really and truly good and pious are in Scripture often called blessed, though they are not fully and perfectly so. "Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord; " and "Blessed are the undefiled in the way."

THE TRIUMPH OF THE GOSPEL. WHAT the Gospel has to do is not more than it has effected. No enemy remains to be conquered which has not already been vanquished. We hope, indeed, for nothing from the agency of men, but for everything from the omnipotence of God. When, at first, the whole Roman empire was confederated for its destruction, it rose triumphantly over all. When all the learning of Greece conspired to counteract it, it overthrew their boasted philosophy. The disputers of this world, with all their commanding eloquence, were unable to resist the authority of the Gospel. The marble effigies of their heroes and gods, together with the temples that contained them, have crumbled away, and left behind them little more than the memory of their names. What difficulties, then, can be presented to the spread of the Gospel? Rome, Imperial Rome, has passed away; and Greece, Corinth, and Athens, where are they? But the Gospel shall triumph. It is not espoused by a few fishermen merely; it has taken deep root in all nations, and not in nations only, but in minds also. And what

shall oppose it? We believe that there are vast masses of ignorance-that there is extensive desolation - that myriads are bound by the spell of an infernal agency; we remember the extent of Mahommedan superstition; we take all into the account; we confess that these things form a strong barrier to human efforts. But already the holy banners of the cross are seen waving on the citadels of Zion; even now we behold her pearly gates; already crowds inhabit her; and soon shall she be filled with all nations, and kindred, and people, and tongues. No sophistry can be employed against her greater than that of Porphyry and Julian; no opposition more fierce than that of Nero and Caligula; no barbarism more rude than that of Scythia and Britain; no darkness greater than that of Esquimaux and Hottentots. Nothing can be brought against it more formidable than has already been overcome. "The Lord of hosts is with us: the God of Jacob is our refuge."

SIN.

To quote the most impressive words of John Howe, "Sin is the greatest and highest infelicity of the creature, depraves the soul within itself, vitiates

its powers, deforms its beauty, extinguishes its light, corrupts its purity, darkens its glory, disturbs its tranquillity and peace, violates its harmonious, joyful state and order, and destroys its very life. It disaffects it to God, severs it from him, engages his justice, and influences his wrath against it. What! to rejoice in sin, which despites the Creator, and hath wrought such tragedies in the creation; that turned angels out of heaven, and man out of Paradise; that hath made the blessed God so much a stranger in our world, broken off the intercourse in so great a part between heaven and earth, obstructed the pleasant commerce which had otherwise probably subsisted between angels and men, and provoked the displeasure of his Maker towards him! that once overwhelmed the earth with a deluge of water, and will again ruin it by a destructive fire! To rejoice in so hateful a thing as sin, is to do that mad part, to cast about firebrands, arrows, and death, and say, 'Am I not in sport?' It is to be glad that such an one is turning into a devil! -a reasonable immortal soul, capable of heaven, into a fiend of hell! To be glad that such a soul is tearing itself off from God, is blasting its own eternal hopes, and destroying all its possibility of a future well being."

PRAYER.

The spiritual life is quite a cognizably distinct thing from the worldly life; and the difference comes from prayer. When grace lovingly drives a man to give himself up to prayer, he gets into the power of prayer, and prayer makes a new man of him; and so completely does he find that his life is prayer, that at last he prays always. His life itself becomes one unbroken prayer. Unbroken, because it does not altogether nor so much reside in methods of mental or forms of vocal prayer, but it is an attitude of heart by which all his actions and sufferings become living prayers. The life of prayer, therefore, which is the badge of the supernatural man, is the praying always. But what is it to pray always? What did our Lord mean by it? To pray always, is always to feel the sweet urgency of prayer, and to hunger after it. Grace is palpably felt and touched in prayer; hence it strengthens our faith and inflames our love. The peculiar trial of hard work is, that it keeps us so much from prayer, and takes away the flower of our strength before

we have time for prayer, and physical strength is very needful for praying well. In consequence of this attraction, we acquire habits of prayer by having set times for it, whether mental or vocal; not that a mere habit of praying will make any one a man of prayer, but God will not send his fire if we do not first lay the sacrifice in order. We must also practise ejaculatory prayer, and have certain fixed ejaculations, as well as make frequent spontaneous aspirations to heaven during the day, at will, and out of the fervid abundance of our hearts. Besides this, there is a certain gravitation of the mind to God in a prayerful way, which comes from love, and which ranges from intercession to thanks. giving, from thanksgiving to praise, and from praise to petition, according as the moods of our minds change, and with hardly any trouble or any conscious process.

ONE DROP AT A TIME. "Life," says the late John Foster, "is expenditure; we have it, but as continually losing it; we have the use of it, but as continually wasting it. Suppose a man confined

in some fortress, under the doom to stay there till his death; and suppose there is there for his use a dark reservoir of water, to which it is certain none can ever be added. He knows, suppose, that the quantity is not very great; he cannot penetrate to ascertain how much, but it may be very little. He has drawn from it, by means of a fountain, a good while already, and draws from it every day. But how would he feel each time of drawing, and each time of thinking of it? Not as if he had a perennial spring to go to; not 'I have a reservoir, I may be at ease.' No! but 'I had water yesterday-I have water to-day; but my having had it, and my having it today, is the very cause that I shall not have it on some day that is approaching. And at the same time I am compelled to this fatal expenditure!' So of our mortal, transient life! And yet men are very indisposed to admit the plain truth, that life is a thing which they are in no other way possessing than as necessarily consuming; and that even in this imperfect sense of possession, it becomes every day less a possession!"

RUSSIAN GAMBLING.

The Russians continue to this day the most inveterately abandoned to the perils of play of any people in the world. We have ourselves turned for a few brief minutes in the Kur-Saal at Ems, to watch, on our way through that thoroughfare, the frenzy of Russian daring at the game of hazard. We have seen noblemen staking, as deputies for fair Muscovite princesses, who calmly won or lost sums that would have fed and clothed every destitute creature in the Duchy of Nassau. At one of these German tables, placed to catch those who would perhaps fain have passed on their way to innocent relaxation, we have seen a mother seated and playing "high;" on her knee sat her daughter, a fair child who had scarcely passed her second lustre; and this poor thing was playing too-flinging her little ventures into the abyss of chance, and awaiting with feverish anxiety and painful excitement the issue of her hazard. We have, moreover, beheld the whole Russian court, with the heir-apparent to the throne at their head, crowding round the green carpeted table, and losing or winning royal ransoms with the greatest equanimity; while behind the glittering crowd so occupied, towered the majestic figure of the father and the emperor, looking calmly on, save when a smile crossed his fine features as fate, perhaps, declared itself suddenly hostile to one whose boldness it had hitherto encouraged. No one could have been at Ems during the last imperial visit there, in 1840, without having these scenes forced upon his notice. They were enacted in a locality so public, that to be blind to them were impossible.

BIBLE AND NO BIBLE.

Tell me where the Bible is, and where it is not, and I will write a moral geography of the world. I will show what, in all particulars, is the physical condition of all people. One glance of your eye will inform you where the Bible is, and where it is not. Go to Italy; decay, degradation, suffering, meet

you on every side. Commerce droops, agriculture sickens, the useful arts languish. There is a heaviness in the air; you feel cramped by some invisible power; the people dare not speak aloud; they walk slowly; an armed soldiery is around their dwellings; the armed police take from the stranger his Bible, before he enters the territory. Ask for the Bible in the bookstores; it is not there, or in a form so large and expensive as to be beyond the reach of the common people. The preacher takes no text from the Bible. Enter the Vatican, and inquire for a Bible, and you will be pointed to some case, where it reposes among prohibited books, side by side with the works of Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire. But pass over the Alps to Switzerland, and down the Rhine into Holland, and over the Channel to England and Scotland, and what an amazing contrast meets the eye! Men look with an air of independence; there are industry, neatness, instruction for children. Why this difference? There is no brighter sky-there are no fairer scenes of nature; but they have the Bible; and happy are the people who are in such a case, for it is righteousness that exalteth a nation.

THE TIME TO AMEND.

Lord, I do discover a fallacy whereby I have long deceived myself, which is this: I have desired to begin my amendment from my birthday, or from some eminent festival, that so my repentance might bear some remarkable date. But when those days were come, I have adjourned my amendment to some other time. Thus, whilst I could not agree with myself when to start, I have almost lost the running of the race. I am resolved thus to befool myself no longer. I see no day but to-day; the instant time is always the fittest time. In Nebuchadnezzar's image, the lower the members, the coarser the metal; the farther off the time, the more unfit. To-day is the golden opportunity, tomorrow will be the silver season, next day but the brazen one, and so along, till at last I shall come to the toes of clay, and be turned to dust. Grant, therefore, that to-day I may hear thy voice. And if this day be obscure in the calendar, and remarkable in itself for nothing else, give me to make it memorable in my soul hereupon by thy assistance, beginning the reformation of my life.-Fuller.

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL.

We must exactly understand the difference between the law and the Gospel, whereof we often teach. The law draweth us to the judgment seat, requiring of us integrity of life, love out of a pure heart and a good conscience; it maketh us also to exercise ourselves therein, and must go no further. But when it shall come and accuse thee, and will reason with thee, and have those things to be performed which it requireth, then shalt thou be greatly troubled. For although thou hast done them, yet art thou not able to stand before God, before whose judgment-seat many things are yet found wanting in thee which should have been done of thee, and

thou hast left them undone; neither are they known unto thyself. Whither, then, wilt thou turn thee? Here the law urgeth thee by all means, and thine own conscience being witness accuseth thee, requiring the sentence of the judge against thee. Then must thou despair; there is no counsel or help to be had, except thou knowest to fly from the judgment-seat to the mercy-seat.-Luther.

THE REGISTER.

The following anecdote is related of the late Rev. John Fletcher, by one of his parishioners, as characteristic of the man:

"When a young man he was married by Mr. Fletcher, who said to him as soon as the service was concluded, and he was about to make the accustomed entry, Well, William, you have had your name entered in our register once before this.' 'Yes, sir, at my baptism.' 'And now your name will be entered a second time. You have, no doubt, thought much about your present step, and made proper preparations for it in many different ways.' Yes, sir.' 'Recollect that a third entry of your name-the register of your burial-will, sooner or later, take place. Think, then, about death, and make proper preparations for that also, lest it overtake you as a thief in the night.' This person is now walking in the ways of the Lord, and states that he often adverts to this and other things which his serious and affectionate pastor found frequent occasion to say to him."

WILL IT WORK WELL?

A good man, who was liberal in life, and who had not withheld more than was meet, when dying, called his nephew to his bedside, and said, "David, I have little to give you. I hope, however, that what I have left is my own. I have not taken improperly from any one. I have not kept back from others. I do not leave you much, but the little you will receive will work well." The principle of the dying man was right; when a testator gives to relatives or friends that which he ought to have devoted to God, there is reason to fear that the Almighty will frown upon the gold which should have been placed on his altar. He will not bless the sacrilegious gift. It will not work well. God can give the command, and riches shall take to themselves wings and fly away. There can be no doubt that when the secrets of all hearts are revealed at the judgment day, the great cause of many failures and misfortunes will be ascertained. Large fortunes were. given to friends to the exclusion of Christ's holy cause, and the money therefore, did not work well.

ANECDOTE OF JOHN NEWTON.

Two or three years before the death of that eminent servant of Christ, John Newton of London, when his sight was become so dim, that he was no longer able to read, an aged friend and brother in the ministry called on him to breakfast. Family prayer followed, and the portion of Scripture for the day was read to him. In it occurred the

verse, "By the grace of God I am what I am." It was the pious man's custom on these occasions to make a short familiar exposition on the passage read. After the

reading of this text he paused for some moments, and then uttered this affecting soliloquy: "I am not what I ought to be. Ah, how imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be. I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good! I am not what I hope to be. Soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be; nor what I wish to be; nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge By the grace of God I am what I am.' Let us pray."

HOW TO GET FED.

Count Rumford once proposed to the elector of Bavaria a scheme for feeding his army at a much cheaper rate than formerly. His plan was simply to compel them to masticate their food thoroughly. A small quantity thus eaten would, he supposed, afford more substance than the largest meals hastily devoured. How the proposition was received we do not remember, but we are pretty sure that a hint may be taken from it in regard to the best method of feeding our souls. The prevalent method is to multiply the seasons for taking spiritual food in the shape of sermons, exhortations, &c., and to increase the quantity. We suspect it will be found more nourishing to take the hint of Rumford and digest our food better. A single sermon well digested will do us more good than a dozen devoured without rumination. We are aware that it is extremely difficult to induce frivolous and light-minded people to adopt this method; but it is nevertheless the true and only one.

CONTRIVING TO DO GOOD.

When Jonathan Edwards was a young man, he formed a series of resolutions embodying the principles upon which he intended to act and govern his future conduct and course of life. One of these resolutions was, to be continually endeavouring to find out some new contrivance to promote the glory of God, and the great end of his own existence and that of his fellow-men. Should not such a determination as this exist in the heart of every Christian, and particularly every minister of the Gospel? If the men of the world exercise their powers of invention in devising new and efficient methods of advancing their temporal interests, should not those who belong to the kingdom of heaven do the same thing in reference to the spiritual welfare of mankind? For what purpose are the faculties of skill and contrivance given us, but to use them to the best advantage in doing the work of the Lord, "whose we are, and whom we serve?"

LIFE'S LAST HOURS.

Life's last hours are grand testing hours. Death tries all our principles, and lays bare all our foundations. Vast numbers have been found to act the hypocrite in life, who

were forced to be honest in the hour of death. What atheists have owned their madness, what infidels have denounced their principles, what worldlings have bewailed their folly, when death approached! Misgivings of heart that have been kept secret through life, have come out in death; and many who seemed all fair and right for glory, have had to declare that they had only been selfdeceived. It has been said, "Men may dissemble through life, but none ever dissembled in death; hence the value of dying testimonies. We gather the last words, the last acts, the last experience; and we treasure them up as the indubitable evidences in favour of, or against the character of those that were their subjects. None have ever impugned their value as tests of character, and all have felt their force."

SOLEMN THOUGHT AWAKENED.

An irreligious young man once went to hear Mr. Whitefield preach: he took for his text, Matthew iii. 7, 8. "Mr. Whitefield," said the young man, " described the Sadducean character: this did not touch me; I thought myself as good a Christian as any man in England. From this he went to that of the Pharisees. He described their exterior decency, but observed that the poison of the viper rankled in their hearts. This rather shook me. At length, in the course of his sermon, he abruptly broke off, paused for a few moments, then burst into a flood of tears; lifted up his hands and eyes and exclaimed, 'O, my hearers, the wrath to come! the wrath to come!" These words sunk deep into my heart, like lead in the waters. I wept, and when the sermon was ended, retired alone. For days and weeks I could think of little else. Those awful words would follow me wherever I went: The wrath to come! the wrath to come!" The result was, that the young man soon after made a public profession of religion, and in a short time became himself a preacher of the Gospel.

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PERSECUTION.

In one of those moods of philosophical pleasantry and erudite whimsicality in which the Archbishop of Dublin sometimes relaxes from weighty affairs, he is reported, says the Household Words, to have made the following quotation and comment:

"Old Father Long-legs wouldn't say his prayers:
Take him by the right leg-
Take him by the left leg-
Take him fast by both legs,
And throw him down stairs."

"There!" said his Grace, "in that nursery verse you may see an epitome of the history of all religious persecution. Father Longlegs, refusing to say the prayers that were dictated and ordered by his little tyrants, is regarded as a heretic, and suffers martyrdom."

ONLY LENT, AND NOT GIVEN. "Children, relations, friends, honours, houses, lands, and endowments, the goods of nature and fortune, nay, even of grace itself,

are only lent. It is our misfortune to fancy they are given. We start, therefore, and are angry when the loan is called in; we think ourselves masters, when we are only stewards, and forget that to each of us will it one day be said, Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou must be no longer steward." Thus writes the venerable Bishop Horne. His words deserve to be written in letters of gold. Were the truth they express to be constantly realized, we would often be saved much pain and troublesome anxiety. And not only this. It would also enable us to form a proper estimate of the relations we sustain to the several things lent us of God, and thus prompt us to make a proper improvement of them so long as they remain in our possession, and cheerfully to resign them all, whenever it may please God to call for them again. AN EXAMPLE TO THE OPULENT.

R. Bradford, member of the Methodist New Connexion, who recently died, has left behind him an excellent example for opulent men. He attended the Methodist New Connexion Conference, recently held in Sheffield, in his usual health. As though anticipating his decease, he had resigned his offices in the Connexion, was immediately taken ill, and expired in a few hours after the Conference closed. He had just given the sum of £900 for chapel building purposes. He bequeaths £1,000 to the fund for the support of aged ministers, £1,000 for the support of ministers' children, and £700 to the chapel fund. His loss is deeply deplored in the community to which he belonged.

AN ARTLESS ARGUMENT.

Naimbanna, a black prince, arrived in England from the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone. The gentleman to whose care he was entrusted took great pains to convince him that the Bible is the word of God, and he received it as such with great reverence and simplicity. When he was asked what it was that satisfied him on this subject, he replied: "When I found all good men minding the Bible, and calling it the word of God, and all bad men disregarding it, I then was sure that the Bible must be what good men call it, the word of God."

A WISE ANSWER.

A teacher once asked a child, "If you had a golden crown, what would you do with it?" The child replied, "I would give it to my father to keep till I was a man." He asked another: "I would buy a coach and horses with it," was the reply. He asked a third: "Oh," said the little girl to whom he spoke, "I would do with it the same as the people in heaven do with their crowns; I would cast it at the Saviour's feet!"

ECONOMY.

It is no small commendation to manage a little well. He is a good,waggoner that can turn in a little room. I will study more how to give a good account of my little than how to make it more.-Bishop Hall.