you will fix your last look upon earth; upon Him your first in heaven. When memory is oblivious of all other objects, when all that attracted the natural eye is lost in the midst of death, when the tongue is cleaving to the roof of the mouth, and speech is gone, and sight is gone, and hearing gone, and the right hand, lying powerless by our side, has lost its cunning-Jesus! then may we remember Thee. If the shadows of death are to be thrown in deepest darkness o'er the valley, when we are passing along it to glory, may it be ours to die like that saint, beside whose bed wife and children once stood, weeping over the wreck of faded faculties, and a blank, departed memory. One had asked him, "Father, do you remember me?" and received no answer; and another, and another, but still no answer. And then, all making way for the venerable companion of a long and loving pilgrimage-the tender partner of many a past joy and sorrow-his wife draws near. She bends over him, and, as her tears fall thick upon his face, she cries, "Do you not remember me?" A stare, but it is vacant. There is no soul in those filmy eyes, and the seal of death lies upon those lips. The sun is down, and life's brief twilight is darkening fast into a starless night. At this moment, one, calm enough to remember how the love of Christ's spouse is " strong as death"-a love that many ters cannot quench"-stooped to his ear, and said, "Do you remember Jesus Christ ?" The word was no sooner uttered than it seemed to recall the spirit, hovering for a moment, ere it took wing for heaven. Touched, as by an electric influence, the heart beats once more to the name of Jesus; the features, fixed in death, relax; the countenance, dark in death, lights up like the last gleam of day, and, with a smile, in which the soul passed away to

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glory, he replied, "Remember Jesus Christ ?-dear Jesus Christ! He is all my salvation, and all my desire." Dr. Guthrie.

IN the days of King David, the Bible was a scanty book; yet he loved it well, and found daily wonders in it. Genesis, with its sublime narration of how God made the worlds, with its glimpses of patriarchal piety, and dark disclosures of gigantic sin; Exodus, with its glorious marchings through that great wilderness, its thrilling memorials of Jehovah's outstretched arm, and the volume of the written law; Leviticus, through whose flickering vistas David's eye discovered the shadows of better things to come; Numbers, with its natural history of the heart of man; and Deuteronomy, with its vindication of the ways of God; Joshua and Judges, with their chapters of providence, their stirring incidents and peaceful episodes; the memoirs of Job, so fraught with spiritual experience; and the domestic annals of Ruth, which told to her grandson such a tale of Divine foreknowledge, and love, and care, all converging on himself, or rather on David's Son and David's Lord, these were David's Bible; and, brethren, whatever wealth you have, remember that David desired his Bible beyond all his riches. So thankful was he for such a priceless possession, that he praised God for its righteous judgments seven times a day. But you have got an ampler Bible -a Bible with Psalms and Prophets in it-a Bible with Gospels and Epistles. How do you love that law? How often have you found yourself clasping it to your bosom as the man of your counsel? How often have your eyes glistened over a brightening page as one who had found great spoil? How often have you dwelt on its precious promises, till they evolved a sweetness which made you marvel? How many

times have you praised the Lord for the clearness of its light, the sanctity of its truth, and the sureness of its immortality ?-Dr. J. Hamilton.

HOME! To be at home is the wish of the seaman on stormy seas and lonely watch. Home is the wish of the soldier, and tender visions mingle with the troubled dreams of trench and tented field. Where the palm-tree waves its graceful plumes, and birds of jewelled lustre flash and flicker among gorgeous flowers, the exile sits staring upon vacancy; a far-away home lies upon his heart; and borne upon the wings of fancy, over intervening seas and lands, he has swept away to home, and hears the lark singing above his father's fields, and sees his fair-haired boybrother, with light foot and childhood's glee, chasing the butterfly by his native stream. And in his best hours, home, his own sinless home, a home with his Father above that starry sky, will be the wish of every Christian man. He looks around him; the world is full of suffering; he is distressed by its sorrows, and vexed with its sins. He looks within him; he finds much in his own corruptions to grieve for. In the language of a heart repelled, grieved, vexed, he often turns his eye upwards, saying, "I would not live here always; no, not for all the gold of the world's mines; not for all the pearls of her seas; not for all the pleasures of her flashy, frothy cup; not for all the crowns of her kingdoms, would I live here always." Like a bird about to migrate to those sunny lands where no winter sheds her snows, or strips the grove, or binds the dancing streams, he will often in spirit be pluming his wing for the hour of his flight to glory.-Dr. Guthrie.

THERE are secrets in our Lord's procedure which He will not explain to us in this life, and which may not, perhaps, be explained in the life to

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come. We cannot tell how He makes evil the minister of good; how He combines physical and moral agencies of different kinds and orders in the production of blessings. We cannot so much as conjecture what bearings the system of redemption, in every part of its process, may have upon the relations of the universe; not even what may be all the connections of Providence in the occurrences of this moment, or of the last. "Such knowledge is too wonderful for us: it is high, we cannot attain it." Our Sovereign's way is in the sea, and His path in the deep waters: and His footsteps are not known." When, therefore, we are surrounded with difficulty; when we cannot unriddle His conduct in particular dispensations, we must remember that He is God; that we are to walk by faith, and to trust Him as implicitly when we are in "the valley of the shadow of death," as when His "candle shines upon our heads." We must remember that it is not for us to be admitted into the cabinet of the King of kings; that creatures constituted as we are could not sustain the view of his unveiled agency; that it would confound, and scatter, and annihilate our little intellects. As often, then, as He retires from our observation, blending goodness with majesty, let us lay our hands upon our mouths, and worship. This stateliness of our King can afford us no just ground of uncasiness.-Rev. John Mason.

EARTHLY suffering seems to come either as a vengeance or as a calamity upon men. It is always a surprise until they have been long wonted to it. But the heavenly side, as disclosed in the apocalyptic vision, shows that suffering comes neither as a vengeance nor as a calamity, in the ordinary course of nature. For although we may understand the liberty of God to employ suffering either as a vengeance or a calamity, yet such an employ

ment of it is special, and suffering | is intercalated upon the course of nature, and is part and parcel of a universal experience. Storms may be most destroying, overflowing the lands, tearing up foundations, sweeping away bridges, and submerging harvests; but their doing this is the exception. The fall of rain is a part of the economy of mercy. It is not for destruction, but for benefit. And so sufferings may, at times, in the hands of God, be vengeful; but ordinarily they are not. They are part of God's design for the education of men in this world, and may be called pangs of birth into higher states. For suffering is intended to make us let go of things that are lower, and rise a grade higher. The earthly seeming, and the heavenly reality, if you could contrast them, are in wonderful opposition. Here it seems as if God were angry; but in heaven as if He were dealing in mercy. Here it seems as if great disaster had overwhelmed us; but there as if the breaking of the cloud over us was but the closing of the waters of a bath from which we shall emerge purer, cleaner, and more manly.-H. W. Beecher.

IT is in the season of trial and sorrow Jesus lends most lovingly His ear to hear His people's voice. It is "songs in the night" He most delights to listen to. It is prayers, if we may so speak, saturated with tears, He loves best to put into His censer. It was the express Divine injunction, regarding the daily incense-offering in the temple-service, that on lighting of the lamps "at even," Aaron was to burn sweet incense on the golden altar. Afflicted

believers, it is so still.

"At even"

-when the bright world is shaded -when the flowers have closed their cups-when the song of birds has ceased, and the sun of your earthly bliss has gone down in the western sky-then it is the lamp of prayer is kindled in the soul's temple. Yes; just when other lamps that have lighted your pilgrimage pathway are quenched in darkness, prayer lights its lone lamp in the heart's deserted sanctuary. It was amid the darkness of the night, at the brook Jabbok, that Jacob wrestled of old with the angel and prevailed. It is in the soul's dark and lonely and solitary seasons still that the church's moral and spiritual wrestlers are crowned with victory, and as princes, "have power with God."-Macduff.

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GOOD deeds are very fruitful; out of one good action of ours God produces a thousand, the harvest whereof is perpetual. Even the faithful actions of the old patriarchs, the constant sufferings of ancient martyrs, live still, and do good to all successions of ages by their example. For public actions of virtue, besides that they are presently comfortable to the doer, are also exemplary to others; and as they are more beneficial to others are more crowned in us. If good deeds were utterly barren and incommodious, I would seek after them for the consciousness of their own goodness; how much more shall I now be encouraged to perform them for that they are so profitable to myself and others, and to myself in others.-Hall.

THE foundation-stone of a new Baptist College has been laid in Manchester, for the society of which the Rev. H. Dowson is the president,

and which has hitherto met in Chamber Hall, Bury.

The Baptist chapel at Widcombe,