THE CHRISTIAN CABINET.

EARNESTS OF THE INHERITANCE. CHRISTIANS have earnests of things spiritual and invisible. Ordinarily we are under the influence of the things which are seen. In our lower life we must be under the influence of sense. But now and then, we know not how, we rise into an atmosphere in which spirit-life, God, Christ, the ransomed throng in heaven, truth, faith, and love, become more significant to us, and seem to rest down upon us with more force than the very things which our physical senses recognise. There have been times in which, I declare to you, heaven was more real to me than earth; in which my children that were gone spoke more plainly to me than my children that were with me; in which the blessed estate of the spirits of just men made perfect in heaven seemed more real and near to me than the estate of any just man upon earth. These are experiences that link one with another and a higher life. They are generally not continuous but occasional, openings through which we look into the other world. I cannot explain how or why they come. They may have a natural cause, though we have not philosophy enough to find it out. But there are these hours of elevation in which the invisible world is more potent and real to us than the visible world; in which our mind-power predominates over our fleshpower; in which we see through the body, and discern the substance of eternal truths. Sometimes these hours last for a considerable period. Sometimes when the first fever of sickness has passed away, and left the brain in an excited state, it seems as though all heaven was standing before us in a quiet and abiding vision. Do you suppose these things mean nothing?

There is an atmosphere of the soul as well as an atmosphere of nature. I dwelt last summer on a spot which overlooks a great variety of scenery. Hills, mountains, valleys, and forests, may be seen from almost every part of it. There were times when a thick haze so prevailed that all the glory of hill, river, and mountain were hidden. At length would come up a storm,—a plunging rain, sweeping winds, and cleansing commotion. The storm brought light, and turmoil peace; for, that past, every tree stood forth in every lineament clear against the horizon, every line, and furrow, and scollop of hill was distinctly visible, and the mountains not only appeared in their proper shapes, but were out so plain that forty miles seemed scarcely four, and things before quite beyond the vision were advanced almost to the very gate of the senses.

And so, in the atmosphere of the soul, God sometimes brings down the divine landscape-heavenly truths-so clearly, that the soul rests upon them as upon a picture let down. These things are not insignificant. Let men call them fantasies and imagination who choose. As if imagination could not speak truth as well as fiction! I do not know the natural laws which

govern them, but I believe that they are hints, glimpses, foreshadowings, earnests, of a coming possession.—H. W. Beecher.

PRAYERS AT SEA.

O LORD, be this our vessel now
A worthy temple unto thee,
Though none may hear its bells but thou
And this our little company.

Our church's roof, yon mighty dome,
Shall ring with hymns we learnt at home.
Our floor the boundless tossing wave,
Our field, our path, perchance our grave.

Where shall we aid and comfort find

With toils and perils all around? Command, O mighty God, the wind

To bear us whither we are bound; Oh, bring us to our home once more From weary wanderings safe to shore; And those who follow us with prayer Keep thou in thy most tender care.

And as the needle while we rove,

To one point still is true and just, So let our hope, and faith, and love,

Be fixed in One in whom we trust; His word is mighty still to save, He still can walk the stormiest wave, And hold his followers with his hand, For his are heaven, and sea, and land. F. Winkelmann.

"SINNERS, EVEN THE CHIEF."

MANY have been saved who were as vile as thou art, and therefore there is salvation. "No," sayest thou, "none are so vile as I am." It is a mercy that thou thinkest so, but nevertheless it is quite certain that others have been saved, who have been as filthy as thyself. Have you been a persecutor? "Yes," you say. Ay, but you have not been more bloodthirsty than Saul! And yet that chief of sinners became the chief of saints. Have you been a swearer? Have you cursed the Almighty to his face? Ay, and such were some of us who now lift up our voices in prayer, and approach his throne with acceptance. Have you been a drunkard? Ay, and so have many of God's people been for many a day and many a year; but they have forsaken their filthiness, and they have turned unto the Lord with full purpose of heart. However great thy sin, I tell thee, man, there have been some saved as deep in sin as thou art. And if even none had been saved, who are such great sinners as thou art, so much the more reason why God should save thee, that he may go beyond all that he ever has done. The Lord always delights to be doing wonders; and if thou standest, the chief of sinners, a little ahead of all the rest, I

believe he will delight to save thee, that the wonders of his love and his grace may be the more manifestly known. Do you still say that you are the chief of sinners? I tell you I do not think it. The chief of sinners was saved years ago, that was the Apostle Paul; but even if you should exceed him, still that word "uttermost" goes a little beyond you. "He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him." Recollect, sinner, if thou dost not find salvation in Christ, it will be because thou dost not look for it, for it certainly is there. If thou shalt perish without being saved through the blood of Christ, it will not be through a want of power in that blood to save thee, but entirely through a want of will on thy part-even that thou wilt not believe on him, but dost wantonly and wilfully reject his blood to thine own destruction. Take heed to thyself, for as surely as there is salvation in none other, so surely there is salvation in him.-C. H. Spurgeon.

COMMUNION WITH CHRIST.

SINCE Our Lord, in respect of his divine nature, is at all times present with his people, and, in respect of his human nature, is ever present with them, friendly intercourse with him will consist of a lively persuasion, excited in the mind, of his divine presence, and a lively imagination of his human presence, when the soul feels as if it were conveyed back to wander with him over the fields of Judea, or to sit with him in the cottage of Bethany; or as if it were transported to the heavenly regions, to behold him as he is.

When and where does the saint find him ?-when and where does he obtain these solemn and happy impressions and imaginations which make him present in the vision of the mind? I answer-primarily, in the reading of the word. Read especially the four Gospels thoughtfully, paus ing at times to realize the scenes, and you will experience as you proceed that he is present with you in your retirement. Then kneel down and pray; that will make the vision of him more distinct. In the night watches meditate, till, through the charm of a sanctified imagination, your bed shine as the top of mount Tabor, with a display of his glory. Read "Pilgrim's Progress" and "The Commentary;" Bunyan and Henry have a peculiarly divine art in conjuring with the name of Christ, to bring him down from above, and introduce him to men's minds. Seek him at the prayer-meeting; where is he more likely to be found than among his friends? and as you and they converse of him, and your hearts warm, he will enter and manifest himself in the midst of you, with his benediction of peace. Seek him at his own house, amid the ordinances of the Sabbath; in its fellowship with brethren; in its prayer and song of praise; in the instruction, counsel, and consolation of its pastor, who, when discoursing of his glory and love, will sometimes, by the divine blessing, succeed in disclosing him near, for the contemplation of the wor

shippers. Seek him at the church's baptisms; you may be certain of his presence there, interested as he is so much in the little ones, of whom his kingdom is principally constituted, and completing their inauguration with his blessing, as of old. And what shall I say of the ordinance of The Supper? Where shall he be found? where shall he manifest himself? where shall the mind of the saint gain impressions of him as a present friend, if not at his own table ?-Dr. William Anderson.

THE REWARD.

As a master, Christ rewards his servants with exuberant liberality. One who is just commencing the study of the system of salvation, might ask, with some surprise, Does he give any reward at all? Has he not purchased us as his bondsmen? In redeeming us by his death, has he not done for us already what entitles him to our life obedience, without there being room for any expectation for the future, further than his perpetuating our existence in a state of comfort? This is most true; but our master is "King of Grace," and does not treat us by measures of merit. As if he had done nothing for us as yet at all, he encourages us to diligence and activity by the assurance of a " great recompense of reward." There is not a good deed done, not a good word spoken, not a good feeling indulged, not a temptation resisted, not an affliction borne with patience, which he will not acknowledge with a degree of exaltation in his kingdom. Even a cup of cold water given to a wearied disciple shall be remembered for recompense. Yea, an approving, encouraging glance of your eye, when his saint is beleaguered by the mockeries of the profane, and you, a timorous woman, cannot perhaps speak in his defence, will in that day be rewarded with a ray of glory from his eye, to warm your heart with its love, and beautify you with its radiance.-Ibid.

DARKNESS.

A MINISTER was preaching from these words, "Behold, Satan shall cast some of you into prison, and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." A humble woman in great trouble was deeply impressed by the limit which the text seemed so absolutely to fix in that particular instance of Satan's power; and as she passed along the street, she was heard to say, "Blessed be His name it cannot be eleven." Our sufferings will be for so many days, and no more; "surely there shall be an end, and thy expectation shall not be cut off." However dark our condition and prospects may seem, no darkness can visit our souls like that which came upon the soul of Christ, and wrung from him amidst the darkness of the heavens that outcry on the tree. But in that moment the agonizing work of suffering for sin was finished, and light began to break over a ransomed world.

IT

T is with sins as with men or families-some have pedigree and some have not; for there are kinds and modes of sin that have, in all ages, been held in respect and embalmed with all the honours of history, and there are others that never were and never can be raised above the level even of disgust. The noble sins will, of course, be judged in a very different manner from the humble, base-born sins. The sins of fame, honour, place, power, bravery, genius, always in good repute, will not seldom be admired and applauded. But the low-blooded sins of felony, and vice, and base depravity are associated with brutality, and are universally held in contempt. Whether the real demerit of the two classes of sin is measured by such distinctions is more questionable. Such distinctions certainly had little weight with Christ. He was even more severe upon the sins of learning, wealth, station, and religious sanctimony, than upon the more plebeian, or more despised class of sins. The hypocrisies of religion, the impostures of learning, the gilded shows of wealth gotten by extortion, the proud airs of authority and power employed in acts of oppression, provoke his indignation, and he deals with them in such terms of emphasis as indicate the profoundest possible abhorrence.

Hence the jealousy with which he was watched by the elders, and priests, and rulers; for every few days some rabbi, scribe, lawyer, or committee of such, was sent out to observe him, or question him, or draw him, if possible, into some kind of treason in his doctrine; because they feared his influence with the people, lest he might put himself at their head and raise a great revolution that would even subvert the present social order.

The cunning plot his enemies are working, in my text, is instigated by this kind of fear. He is teaching, it appears, a great multitude of people in the temple, when suddenly a company of Scribes and Pharisees are seen hustling in through the crowd, leading up a woman to set her before him. She has been guilty, they say, of a base crime which the law of Moses punishes with public stoning and death, and they demand of him, what shall be done with her? hoping that, out of the same perverse favour he is wont to show to low people, he will take the woman's part, and so give them the desired opportunity to throw contempt on his character, and exasperate the popular superstition against him. Christ, perceiving apparently their design, determines to put them to confusion. He remains a long time

silent, making no

answer, and of course none that can be taken hold of. They press him for a reply; still no reply is given. They wait, and still it is not given. There they stand in the centre of the great concourse, all looking at them, and, as they soon begin to fancy, looking directly into them. It is a most uncomfortable position for them. To give still greater pungency to their thoughts, Christ withdraws his eyes from them, and, as if waiting for their complete confusion, writes abstractedly on the pavement. At length they grow perplexed, and begin to ask themselves how they shall get out of their very awkward predicament. They press him still more vehemently, but he refuses to speak, save simply to say,-Let the man of you that is without sin throw the first stone at the woman, if she is guilty; and immediately falls to writing abstractedly on the ground again. The arrow sticks, and the suspense of silence makes them more and more conscious of the pain, till finally they can bear it no longer. Convicted thus by their own conscience, they "went out," as the text has it, "one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last, and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst."

Look upon them now as they withdraw, and follow them with your eye, as probably Christ and the whole assembly did. Observe the mannerly order of their shame,-" beginning at the eldest, even unto the last!" See how carefully they keep the sacred rules of good breeding and deference to age, even in their snivelling defeat and the chagrin of their baffled conspiracy, and you will begin to find how base a thing may take on airs of dignity, and how contemptible, in fact, these airs of dignity may be.

The subject thus presented is respectable sin,—sin that takes on the semblance of goodness, and judges itself by the dignity of its manner and appearance. I shall undertake to show that this more respectable type of sin is often, if not generally, deepest in the spirit of sin, and, in the sight of God, most guilty.

In pursuing now this very serious subject, we need,— First of all, to clear the influence of a false or defective impression, growing out of the fact, that we ourselves are persons that live so entirely in the atmosphere of character and decency. Our range of life is so walled in by the respectability of our associations, that what is on the other side of the wall is very much a world unknown. Hence we have no such opinion or

impression of sin, anywhere, as we ought to have. It is with us all our life long, and in all our associations, much as it is with us here in our assembly for worship. The offensive and repulsive forms of sin are almost never here, by so much as any one sign or symptom. The sin is here, and sin that wants salvation; but it is sin so thoroughly respectable as to make it very nearly impossible to produce any just impression of its deformity. Sitting here in this atmosphere of decency and order, how can you suffer any just impression of the dreadful nature of that evil which, after all, wears a look so plausible? If there came in with you, to mingle in your audience, a fair representation only of the town; if you heard in the porch the profane oaths of the cellars and hells of gambling; if you looked about with a cautious feeling, right and left, in the seat, lest some one might rifle your dress or pick your pocket; if the victims of drink were seen reeling into the seats, here and there, and their hungry, shivering children were crying at the door for bread; if the diseased and loathsome relics of vice, recognised sometimes as the sons and daughters of families once living in respect and affluence, were sprinkled about you, tainting the air you breathe; in a word, if actual life were here in correct representation, how different a matter would it be for me to speak of sin, how different for you to hear! And the same holds true of the associations of your life generally. Sin, in its really revolting, shocking forms, seldom gets near enough you to meet your eye. What you know of it is mostly gotten from the newspapers, and is scarcely more of a reality to you, many times, than the volcanoes you hear of, in the moon.

Secondly, we need also to clear another false or defective impression, growing out of the general tendency in mankind to identify sin with vice, and, of course, to judge that whatever is clear of vice is clear also of sin,which, in fact, is the same as to judge that whatever sin is respectable is no sin at all. Or, sometimes, we identify sin with acts of wrong, or personal injury, such as deeds of robbery, fraud, seduction, slander, and the like. In this view, again, whatever sin is respectable enough to be clear of all such deeds of wrong is, of course, no sin. Anything is sin, as God judges, which is not in the positive, all-dominating power of universal love. Anything called virtue, therefore, which consists in barely not doing, is sin, of course; because it is not in any positive principle of love, or duty to God. Half the sin of mankind, therefore, consists or is made up of virtue, that is, of what is generally called virtue, and passes for a virtuous character in the common speech of men. It is, in fact, respectable sin-nothing more and has exactly the same root with all sin, even the worst, namely, the not being in God's love and a state of positive allegiance to God.

Consider now, thirdly, and make due account of the fact, that respectable sin is not less guilty because it has a less revolting aspect. A feeling is very generally indulged, even by such as are confessedly blamable for

not being in the Christian life, that their blame or guilt is a thing of higher and finer quality than it would be under the excesses and degrading vices many practise. They measure their sin by their outward standing and conduct, whereas all sin is of the same principle. The sin of one class is, in fact, the sin of the other, as respects everything but manner and degree. There are different kinds of vice, but only one kind of sin, namely, the state of being without God, or out of allegiance to God. All evil and sin, as we just now saw, are of this same negative root; the want of any holy principle; the state set off from God, and disempowered and degraded by the separation. The respectable sin, therefore, shades into the unrespectable -not as being different in kind, but only as twilight shades into the night. The evil spirit, called sin, may be trained up to politeness, and made to be genteel sin; it may be elegant, cultivated sin; it may be very exclusive and fashionable sin; it may be industrious, thrifty sin; it may be a great political manager, a great commercial operator, a great inventor; it may be learned, scientific, eloquent, highly poetic sin; still it is sin, and, being that, has in fact the same radical or fundamental quality that, in its ranker and less restrained conditions, produce all the most hideous and revolting crimes of the world.

There is a very great difference, I admit, oetween a courteous man and one who is ill-natured and insulting, between a generous man and a niggard, a pure and a lewd, a man who lives in thought and a man who lives in appetite, a great and wise operator in the market and a thief; and yet, taken as apart from all accidental modifications, or degrees, the sin quality or principle is exactly the same in all. As in water face answereth to face, so one class of hearts to the other. The respectable and the disgusting are twin-brothers; only you see in one how well he can be made to look, and in the other how both would look, if that which is in both were allowed to have its bent and work its own results unrestrained.

Again, fourthly, it is often true that what is looked upon as respectable sin is really more base in spirit, or internal quality, than that which is more and more universally despised. And yet this is not the judgment of those who are most apt to rule the judgments of the world. The lies of high life, for example, are the liberties asserted by power and respectable audacity. The lies of commoners and humble persons are a fatal, irredeemable dishonour. The fashionable, who spurns the obligation of an honest debt, is only asserting the right and title of fashion; but the merchant, or the tradesman, who avoids the payment of his bond, loses his honour and becomes a knave. The conqueror, who overruns and desolates a kingdom, will be named with respect or admiration by history, when, probably enough, God will look upon him with as much greater abhorrence, than if he had robbed a hen-roost, as his crime is bloodier and more afflictive to the good of the world.