Bacon, and others, are feeble stars, faintly relieving the gloom of night; Jesus Christ is the Sun of Righteousness, shining in His strength, and filling the earth with light and joy. (2) Jesus Christ is the Great A toner. "Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin." Not the blood of an animal; for the death of an inferior creature could not expiate the sin of a superior creature. Not the blood of a man; for, death being the wages of sin, the death of one sinner could not redeem other sinners. What then? The blood of the Sinless One-our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; for the word was made flesh, "to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.” (3) Jesus Christ is the Great Exemplar. Precept, without example, is ineffective. The immorality of ancient sages led the multitude to disregard their maxims. But the life of Christ was in harmony with the doctrine of Christ. Like a stainless mirror, it reflected the purity and benevolence of His precepts. Hence we should walk in the way of uprightness, "looking unto Jesus."

II. THE DESIGN OF THE GOSPEL. Its design is twofold.

(1) To reveal the heavenly world. Philosophy and science explain temporal things, but they cannot find out eternal things. In the old time, the human intellect, unaided by revelation, strove in vain to pierce the darkness of the invisible state. It could not speak with certainty respecting the separate existence of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, and the destinies of eternity. Jesus Christ has settled these points. He has "brought life and immortality to light by the gospel." Beyond the grave, therefore, we see a beautiful, pure, and glorious world, inviting us to enter it. (2) To prepare us for the heavenly world. Enlightenment, forgiveness, and sanctity, are the antecedents of glorification. These things come to us through the doctrine, atonement, and example of Jesus Christ. Thus the gospel renders us meet for joyful fellowship with holy angels, before the throne of God and the Lamb.

P. J. WRIGHT.

THE RIGHT WARFARE.

"Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”—James iv. 7.

I. HERE YOU HAVE AMPLE SCOPE FOR YOUR FIGHTING IN

STINCTS. The great argument of those who are the advo

cates of war is founded on the fact that man has a fighting instinct. True, he has a fighting instinct, and he may thank God for it, so long as he has this tremendous antagonist. He has an enemy to contend with requiring far more skill, courage, and energy, than any human foe ;the devil. This great enemy is called "Serpent," "Dragon," "Roaring lion," "Sa+ tan," "Beelzebub," "Prince of the powers of the air;" -appellations expressive of a cunning, a passion, a might, and an influence, the most appalling.

First Resist him as you find him on the arena of your own soul. The saddest fact concerning this enemy is that he has invaded your nature, broken through the ramparts, and has taken possession. Would that his arena were altogether outside; but he is in. The highest courage is required to meet him there, to battle with him there, unobserved by any cheering eye. The most terrific battles are fought within, the most illustrious victories are won there.

Secondly Resist him as you find him in the arena of society. He is not only in the grosser habits of life, and the corrupter institutions of society, but in literature, friendships, and even religions.

II. HERE YOU HAVE GLORIOUS

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR

YOUR FIGHTING INSTINCTS.
"He will flee from
you." The
devil, great as he is, is a great
coward. Cowardice must ever
be associated with sin. A
guilty conscience may be as-
sociated with braggadocia, but
never with true bravery.
Moral goodness is essential to
heroism. "The wicked flee

when no man pursueth."

There are three facts which ensure the flight of the devil before you :

First: Because you are provided with armor before which he must flee. Eph. vi. 10-18. Error cannot stand before truth; darkness before the light; selfishness before benevolence; the wrong before the right. Flash moral light from your nature, and the prince of darkness will flee.

Secondly: Because you are associated with allies before whom he must flee. True, he is the leader of a mighty army. The legions of fallen angels, and the hosts of sinful men, he marshals. But what are they to the unnumbered millions of holy beings that tenant the universe of God? All the forces and influences of the material universe, and all the aspirations and endeavors of the unfallen portion of the moral, are with that one poor

"And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho."-Joshua iv. 19-21.

TAKING, as we are authorized to do, the history of the Jews in the wilderness as illustrative of the history of humanity in the world, we may conclude :—

end.

First: That human life in this world is a journey. There are three circumstances connected with a journey. (1) Change of scenery. The old scenes fade, and new ones fill the eye of the traveller. (2) Approach to an Step by step, &c. (3) Unsettledness of feeling. The traveller does not fix his heart on what is passing. There are two features in life's journey that mark it off from every other. It is unremitting. The traveller can halt; we cannot on our way to eter

traveller may return to scenes he has enjoyed. We cannot go back to the last hour or minute. The world is like a market; every twenty years a new race of buyers and sellers are there. Like a church; twenty years to come, another preacher and congregation.

Secondly: Human life in this world is a journey which will have an end. Forty years the Israelites had been rambling ;-still here is the end now. Our end is certain. "It is appointed unto all men, &c.

Se

It is solemn as it is certain. The separations it involves make it solemn. paration from the scenes of daily occupation, worldly possessions, social friendships, means of spiritual improvement, the old body itself. They all make it solemn.

Thirdly: Human life in this world will have an end which may be glorious. (1) It may be glorious in the courage of the traveller. Priests stood firm, the people walked calmly through with mountains of water on either side. Though the laws of nature seemed against them, in the word of God they trusted. (2) It may be glorious in the destination reached. "They encamped in Gilgal on the east border of Jericho.' It was in the

promised land. It was a spot in that goodly land flowing with milk and honey, which had been held out to the hope of their distant ancestors, and to themselves from their earliest days. The land which they had toiled to enter. (1) What a glorious retrospect they would have. From heaven, our moral Gilgalwe may have the same. (2) What a glorious prospect they would have! Before

them were spread the beauties of the land, and the glorious spiritual immunities for which as a nation, they were to be distinguished through all time.

First: Human worship is to be rendered to ONE being; "the Lord;" the self-existent, absolutely perfect, infinitely benevolent, Maker and Proprietor of all things.

Secondly: Human worship involves the highest exercise of man. "Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name." Here is an everlasting exercise. "Due." How much is due? It involves reverence commensurate with His greatness, gratitude commensurate with His goodness, love commensurate with His excellene, adoration commensurate with His inconceivable glory.

Thirdly: Human worship is mediatory in its mode. "Bring an offering." The worship of innocent beings is not mediatory, it is direct. "Christ is our offering, &c.

PASCAL.

"The "Thoughts' of Pascal are to be ranked as a monument of his genius above the 'Provincial Letters,' though some have asserted the contrary. They burn with an intense light; condensed in expression, sublime, energetic, rapid-they hurry away the reader till he is scarcely able or willing to distinguish the sophisms from the truth they contain. For that many of them are in

capable of bearing a calm scrutiny, is very manifest to those who apply such a test. The notes of Voltaire, though always intended to detract, are sometimes unanswerable; but the splendor of Pascal's eloquence absolutely annihilates, in effect on the general reader, even this antagonist.

Pascal had probably not read very largely, which has given an ampler sweep to his genius. Except the Bible and the writ

ings of Augustine, the book that seems most to have attracted him was the Essays of Montaigne. Yet no men could be more unlike in personal dispositions and in the cast of their intellect. But Pascal, though abhorring the religious and moral carelessness of Montaigne, found much that fell in with his own reflections, in the contempt of human opinions, the perpetual humbling of human reason, which runs through the bold and original work of his predecessor. He quotes no book so frequently; and indeed, except Epictetus, and once or twice Descartes, he hardly quotes any other at all. Pascal was too acute a geometer, and too sincere a lover of truth, to countenance the sophisms of mere Pyrrhonism; but, like many theological writers, in exalting faith he does not always give reason her value, and furnishes weapons which the sceptic might employ against himself.

But the leading principle of Pascal's theology, that from which he deduces the necessary truth of revelation, is the fallen nature of mankind; dwelling less

upon scriptural proofs, which he takes for granted, than on the evidence which he supposes man himself to supply. Nothing however, can be more dissimilar than his beautiful visions to the vulgar Calvinism of the pulpit. It is not the sordid, grovelling, degraded, Caliban of that school, but the ruined archangel that he delights to paint. Man is so great that his greatness is manifest even in the knowledge of his own misery. A tree does not know itself to be "miserable." It is true, that to know we are miserable is misery; but still it is greatness to know it. All his misery proves his greatness; it is the misery of a great lord, of

a king, dispossessed of their own. Man is the feeblest branch of nature, but it is a branch that thinks. He requires not the universe to crush him. He may be killed by a vapor, by a drop of water. But if the whole universe should crush him, he would be nobler than that which causes his death, because he knows that he is dying, and the universe would not know its

power over him. This is very evidently sophistical and declamatory; but it is the sophistry of a fine imagination. It would be easy, however, to find better passages; the dominant idea recurs in almost every page of Pascal. His melancholy genius plays in wild and rapid flashes, like lightning round the scathed oak, about the fallen greatness of man. He perceives every characteristic quality of his nature under these conditions. They are the solution of every problem, the clearing up of every inconsistency that perplexes us. "Man," he says very finely, "has a secret instinct that leads him to seek diversion and employment from without; which springs from the sense of his continual misery. And he has another secret instinct, remaining from the greatness of his original nature, which teaches him that happiness can only exist in repose. And from these contrary instincts there arises in him an obscure propensity, concealed in his soul, which prompts him to seek repose through agitation, and even to fancy that the contentment he does not enjoy will be found, if, by struggling yet a little longer, he can open a door to rest." It can hardly be conceived that any one would think the worse of human nature or of himself, by reading these magnificent lamentations of Pascal.