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take up its substance into your being, and mould and model your whole life and conversation in accordance therewith? Have you a relish for this book of books? Is it no weariness to you to read it? Do you never go to it the last thing as to a disagreeable duty that must be discharged for the purpose of drugging a too-wakeful conscience, and sending it to sleep?

Do you go to the theatre-to any place of public | in seeking thoroughly to understand it, so that you may amusement of any kind, where there is merely amusement, without any solid instruction? Do you form one of the attendant crowd on those public buffoons who consent to hire themselves out to make people laugh at them and their small jokes? Do you go and pay money to a man, a brother man, that by his studied folly and feigned grimaces he may help to make you merry? Are you so utterly empty of resources in self, books, friends, that you have to flee to such refuges of the destitute as these? And are you ignorant enough to think that the unseen hand is beneath, and around you, holding you up so high that you may see this great sight and laugh? Alas! alas!

Do you go to more slippery places than these? Would you feel that you were disgraced for ever in your own eyes, if you put so much as a foot into one of those places where bloated men sell strong drink to madden and destroy body and soul of their bloated customers? Do you verge still further down? Do the sound of merry music, and the joyous beat of the dancers' feet, the glare of gas and glass, and the shout of the mad mirth, make your young blood boil fiercely, and your heart beat quick with earnest desire to join in with the wild revel, and tumultuate with the swiftly whirling throng? Do you trust yourself, even in thought, in places such as these? Do you go near them, hover round them? and do you yet think that you are safe, and that the holy hand is holding you up in these miry places?

Fourthly, What are your habits? How do you spend your evenings, and with whom? Are you a keeper at home, and do you find most enjoyment in the bosom of your own family? If, as is too likely, you are cut off from the parent stem, and planted out alone, how do you root in the new soil? If, like a full-grown fledgling, you have been thrust forth from the parent nest, what do you make of yourself? Are you seeking to improve your mind to the utmost, that so you may lay out all your strength, and fully occupy every talent for God? Do you read good, thorough solid books? and do you think as you read, and strive to attain to a true knowledge of what is, and what ought to be, that so you may be able to play the man's part in this present world?

Or do you waste your evenings amid the society of the trifling and the foolish; in pithless, fruitless, aimless conversation, simply trying to squeeze the most of lazy enjoyment out of the hour as it hurries past you to eternity?

Do you pray? Do you habitually, as a regular, and fixed, and fully formed habit of your heart, pray to God? Do you pray not only in the morning and evening, but all day long, do you keep looking up to that God who alone can keep you from falling?

Do you read the word of God? Do you habitually read it, so as to store it up in your memory and hide it in your heart? Do you put forth your full strength

Or is the Bible a book shut and sealed to you? Do you feel as if there were a stinging adder lurking within it that will spring out and seize you if it be so much as opened? Has the Bible become an enemy to you, because of its stern denunciations for neglect of duties which you have not discharged, because of its sharp rebukes for sins in which you are living? And because the Bible has thus been made by your own deed an enemy to you, have you, in retaliation for a wrong which you yourself have done, become an enemy to the Bible?

How do you spend your Sabbaths? Do they hang heavily on your hands? How are your thoughts employed on the Sabbath-day? Are they the habitual thoughts of the week, better or worse? Free from the pressure of business, how do your thoughts turn, up or down? Do you seek to instruct yourself in the law of your God? or do you labour in teaching some one still more ignorant than yourself? .

As a habit of your heart, with what feelings do you regard the spread of God's kingdom on the earth? What think you of these stirrings and strivings of God's Spirit, which are now shaking most parts of our land? Is there any stirring in you? Do you feel the power and presence of God the Holy Ghost strengthening your faith, quickening your zeal, animating your devotion? Is there more life in your prayers, more love in your labours? Are you sure that you have a heartdeep interest in this new movement of the good and gracious Spirit of our God?

Or are you careless of all these things, and look on them as simply so much news, ordinary intelligence? Do you rest satisfied with the seen and tangible? Is it enough joy for you to know that your labour is lightened, your salary increased, and that corn and wine are become more abundant? If God is holding you up, he will exalt you above the world; you will be in it, not of it; and you will see all the things of his kingdom in the light of his countenance; and for all that he does in the earth, in a way of grace and mercy, you will ever be ready to lift up your hands and bless his holy

name.

Consider now, finally, what a question, what an idea is involved in this word "Safe"-I shall be Safe. How often the question has been throbbed forth of anxious hearts, and breathed out of pallid lips, as the news of a bloody battle fought and won, or the tidings of a disastrous shipwreck, spread abroad-Is my husband. brother, son, safe?

A building takes fire, and burns rapidly down to the

ground. The question that rises to the lips of every man who rushes to aid in casting water on the raging flame is, Are the inmates safe? What a question for each of us to put. Is my husband, son, brother, safe? Has he fled from the wrath to come, and taken refuge in the hiding-place? And what a question for each of us to put to himself-Am I safe? Have I made sure that my feet are on the rock, and my goings are established? Young man, are you safe? Reader, are you?

There is only one place of safety; there is salvation in none other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. If you are not in Christ, now is the time. Here is a glorious, a golden opportunity. God is near, very near. God is working in our midst, at the right hand and on the left of you. God is here now, in all the riches of his grace, in all the fulness of his matchless mercy. Here is a turning point of time. Here is a favourable opportunity and a flowing tide. The tide which has been flowing all day, so to speak, is now at the full flood. You are standing as a ship all ready for the water, finished and fit for her new element. The tide is at the full flood, I say; one effort, one hard push, and with a will, and you are fairly off the stocks, launched, floating joyously in this great sea of fathomless love and boundless mercy. This is a spring-tide, a high, high stream. The water is already at its height; soon, very soon, the ebb will begin. The tide will soon turn, and if you turn not with it, it will leave you alone, high and dry on the shore. Remember that if this tide does not float you off, the next will have less force, and the next again less than that. We may say, It is impossible that the next tide can float you off if this fails; for the next will not rise so high, nor float so far up the ways. If ever, in the kind providence and mercy of God, there come a tide as full and high as this, by that time you will have sunk and settled down, and the mud and miry clay will be firmer, faster around you. I urge you, therefore, each and all, with the urgency of a now or never. I say, take the tide at its flood, and float out on the great sea of God's unspeakable love and unfathomable mercy in Christ Jesus. Now is the very time. The waters have ceased to rise. See the ship sways to and fro! will no one help? Help each, help all; one push, one determined push, and the thing is done. The ship is off the stocks, and glides majestically down the ways into her fitting element.

Let us cry mightily to God to come and help us, to come and save us. And let us each feel that each is addressed. Soon will the still waters begin to flow slowly back, to sink gradually down. By midnight the backward eddy will have begun. It is now, therefore, or never. Behold now is the accepted time. It is the accepted time on the part of God; let it be the accepted time on your part also, and the thing is done, and you are safe.

SATAN AS AN EXECUTIONER.

In the remarkable history given in the Acts of St. Paul's stay at Ephesus, we are told of a discipline which has peculiar application at the present day. The word of God, as delivered by the apostle, had been marked by great power. Many were converted and blessed with spiritual gifts. Special miracles were wrought by the hand of Paul himself. The sick were healed, and evil spirits were driven out. So it was that all Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus.

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With genuine conversions, however, came impostures. These fell into two classes. The first consisted of "vagabond Jews, exorcists." If we follow the original more closely, we may conclude that these were men who looked upon the work as a sort of necromancy, into whose secrets they were desirous of penetrating, and of whose results of profiting. The second were the sons of Sceva, a Jew, and chief of the priests." These are separately enumerated by their official title, as if to show that it was from an ecclesiastical stand-point that they claimed these supernatural gifts. With both these classes, however, the result was the same. The retribution attached to their sacrilege was one specially connected with the offence. The evil spirit turned on them with the words, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?" "And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house, naked and wounded."

In the present day the gospel is also marked with peculiar power. Not only are conversions many, but these conversions have been attended, as all genuine conversions must be, with a casting out of unholy tempers, and an infusion into the heart of new purposes and energies for good. The work has been one of peculiar earnestness, and often when persons of demonstrative and unchecked temperaments have been brought to a sudden conviction of sin, the body has sometimes strongly sympathized with the motives of the mind. All this is calculated to make the office of a religious teacher one which should be peculiarly guarded, and to invest even the ordinary disciple with peculiar responsibility. At present we propose to consider the latter feature merely, and to notice in it but a single pointthe retribution which, in these days of great religious feeling, is attached to an insincere assumption of sacred duties.

There are very few, in our days, who assume the office of a religious teacher from the love of gain or the mere desire of distinction. But there are other influences equally dangerous in results. A young man is "trained for the ministry." A serious manner-early, though superficial religious affections-a desire to pass from less agreeable pursuits, to an office which has in it so much that is imposing to the young-lead friends to unite in smoothing the way to the ministerial office. Through these, and other influences, unconverted men often al

most mechanically find their way to the sacred desk. Others, whose heart entered at first earnestly in the work, afterwards find that these affections have chilled, and that the Holy Spirit has ceased to be their guide. To both these classes we would speak.

The retribution attached to an insincere exercise of religious office is one of singular awfulness. Satan himself is made the engine by whom this retribution is worked. There is something very solemn in the chastisements even of a Father whom we love. Still, we then know, that it is for our own good, and that the light affliction will give way soon to exceeding joy. But it is otherwise with the retribution which is brought on us by the evil spirit, acting as an instrument of the divine wrath. Let us observe a single way in which this retribution works.

Take remorse. Observe the condition of him who awakes to the fact that, while he may have preached the gospel faithfully, he is himself a cast-away. Some time back, a lady in a stage-coach in England was singing, as night grew on, the lines of a sweet and earnest hymn. She heard, as she sang, the deep sobs of a man near her. She went on, and these deep sobs seemed only to deepen in their agony. At last he said, “Madam, I wrote that hymn. I believed I was sincere. But I have since fallen away, and now, though I may still believe, I cannot love. Let me only say, there is no misery like mine."

Such is one of the ways in which the heart is torn by that remorse which is the retribution of an insincere religious profession. It is but a low and unscriptural view to ascribe this to natural causes. Enmity between the serpent and the woman's seed is a part of the first prophecy delivered to our fallen race. The face of the enemy, it is true, we do not, in our blindness, see. We are like the warrior in the old battle, who finds himself transfixed by an unknown knight. But when we writhe in our death agonies, the visor drops, and then we discover who is the enemy. It is one whose assaults from our birth onwards have been constantly and ruthlessly directed against our soul's peace. It is Satan, whose blandishments we have often even invited. It is Satan, who in former days often appeared to us as a false friend. We were warned against him, it is true. God's Spirit admonished us of his real character. But we yielded to him-we lived with him as his own-we served him-and now, in the appointed time, he comes to punish. "The evil spirit leaped on them, and overcame them."

But there is another punishment attached to an insincere religious profession. He who makes it is not permitted to remain in that shelter, which he may still have looked forward to claim. Those who in Ephesus presumed without call to exercise sacred duties, were driven from the house. Alas! for such, for that house is one which our Saviour Christ went before us to prepare. It is the house of his saints-the house of peace and love. And it is a solemn thought to all of us, that

when we seem to stand on the very portals of that house, we are open, if insincere, and if the judgment be now spoken, to be driven from thence, naked and wounded to the abode of the lost.

Look to thy heart, then, thou who art engaged, in whatever capacity,-minister, Sabbath-school teacher, visitor,-in the service of the Lord Jesus. Dost thou acknowledge any other object than his glory? Art thou willing this moment to give up all schemes of personal choice, and to labour at the meanest work if it be his will? Art thou conscious of being moved by the Holy Ghost to thy work? Hast thou thyself experienced that baptism of the Holy Spirit, without which man cannot see God?

And yet there is still hope, even to those whose hearts must answer no to these solemn questions. Dr. Chalmers, for the first years of his ministry, was an unconverted man, and yet it pleased the Lord to turn him, and make him an instrument of eminent good. So it has been with many. But to this one thing is first necessary, and that the narrative before us mentions. The magical books of the pretenders were brought by them to be burned before they were received to repentance. So it must be with us. We must burn our magical books, our darling speculations, our human theories, our schemes of a worldly religion, all our earned wisdom and gifts must be sacrificed at this altar. But in return we will receive an inestimable gift. It is CHRIST JESUS, to HOLD and to PREACH.-Episcopal Recorder.

BARRY THE SOLDIER; OR, "TRY CHRIST."

ONE day a conversation arose in a ward of the hospital at Scutari on the subject of religion. A convalescent had crawled with his crutch to the bedside of a comrade, anxious to know how it fared with one who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in more than one affray.

"Well, Barry, how are you to-day?" inquired the visitor, in a cheerful tone.

"I cannot say, 'All's well,' indeed, Stanton, either outwardly or inwardly; but you are the man I was so wishing to see."

"And what can I do for you, my good fellow?"

"Well, the chaplain was here yesterday, and I told him that I was miserable. I told him that I had tried pleasure, drink, everything; and that now my wretched mind was harder to bear than my wounds. What do you think he said? In the most solemn and earnest manner he said, 'TRY CHRIST.' All night long those two words have been in my ears, 'Try Christ.' But what can they mean?"

"A glorious meaning they have, Barry. The Son of God is willing to save you, if you are willing to believe on him and be saved. Be in earnest; he will save you from sin and hell. Trust in him; and he will not let you perish. Ask him to forgive your sins. Come to him, and you shall not be cast out."

"But, Stanton, are you certain all this is true? You know the life I led-too bad almost to be forgiven."

"As true as God himself,” answered the pious soldier reverently; and taking a Bible, he read the words, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John iii. 16). "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts xvi. 31). "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. xi. 28).

This good news was eagerly listened to by Barry, and the words came as cool water to his thirsty soul. He was induced to seek with earnestness and perseverance an interest in that salvation which Christ purchased by the shedding of his own precious blood, and which he so freely bestows on all those who believe on him. And he did not seek in vain; for by the teaching of the Holy Spirit he found, to the peace and joy of his soul, that Christ "is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him" (Heb. vii. 25).

Reader, will you follow the example of the poor, wounded soldier? Will you "try Christ?" Does your heart secretly reply, "Yes, when I have tried all the pleasures the world can supply, and when I am on the eve of bidding a last and long farewell to all its delights, then, and not till then, I will 'try Christ.'" Let no such infatuation hold possession of your spirit. You know not how or when you will be summoned hence. In a moment, while in the midst of the gaieties and frivolities of the world, the hand of death may be laid upon you; or if sickness should be permitted to terminate your existence on earth, delirium may seize your fevered brain, and you may pass out of time into eternity before you have sought and found pardon and salvation through Jesus Christ. Then what a dreadful position will yours be!-lost for ever, because you refused to seek Christ, the only Saviour; and now he whom you refused as a Saviour will become your Judge.

But you are not yet lost for ever, neither are you standing at the judgment seat of Christ. Then, while life is yours, and your reasoning faculties are continued to you, "Try Christ;" try him at once.

This may be the last time you will be asked to "try Christ." Delay not, but hasten to his cross, and "behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." May the Spirit of God give you a broken and a contrite heart, and may your ears be opened to hear those words intended for a mourning sinner: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. xi. 28-30).

May the Holy Spirit help you to accept without delay this loving invitation, and induce you at once to make the trial of Him who has said, "Him that cometh to me I will in nowise cast out" (John vi. 37).-From a new Tract issued by the Religious Tract Society.

THE SEARCH FOR THE DEPARTED.

To fall asleep in Jesus is to awake in heaven; to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Yet how little power has this belief and hope upon our feelings and conduct! for our Christian graces partake of the same imperfection which characterizes our whole nature; the soil is poor in which they grow; the seasons are short, the climate cold; they do not reach maturity. It is instructive to notice how men who have had the very best advantages, and the greatest knowledge, are nevertheless prone to unbelief. Christ appeared to his disciples, and upbraided them because they believed not them which said he was risen. Their unbelief strikes us as marvellous. They were not the first, nor the last, whose want of faith is a marvel. These sons of the prophets in Elisha's day were equally slow to believe. They themselves had said to him, "Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day?" Elisha came back to them from the scene of the translation. Of course he told them what had happened, describing minutely the whole of that preternatural scene; he probably related the conversation which Elijah had with him as they walked; and this inspired companion of the departed prophet, having himself no doubt that Elijah had gone to heaven, so instructed these sons of the prophets. But how hard it is for the things which are unseen and eternal to seize and hold our minds! how readily we yield to surmises, rather than admit the clear disclosures of spiritual things! Straightway these sons of the prophets, who should have retired each to his secret place for contemplation and prayer, and, in the solemn assembly, should have directed the thoughts of each other and of the people to the instructive lessons suggested by the departure of Elijah to heaven, were making up an exploring party, to prove that their illustrious chief had met with some disaster in being left forlorn upon some mountain, or in a valley; that the Spirit of God had entranced him, and that his weary feet, instead of treading the pavement of heaven, were ensnared in some dark place; and so, in pity for him, and with filial love, they would seek him, and bring him back to Jericho!

If we had clear and strong faith, our joy at the thought of a glorified spirit, however necessary its presence to us here, would transcend all our sorrows; the streaming beams of sunshine would irradiate our weeping; we should think more of his happiness than of our discomfort. Instead of departed spirits falling asleep, it is we who have a spirit of slumber. Oh, that we might walk by faith with glorified spirits before the throne, instead of remanding them, as it seems we sometimes would do if we could,-to the ignorance and infirmity of our condition.

Our search for lost joys, or for those which God is not prepared, or not disposed, to give us, and the happiness which he desires rather to give us, and to have us seek,—are severally represented to us by this search for

Elijah, and by Elijah himself, who is, meanwhile, at God's right hand. At his right hand are pleasures for evermore; but some, in the ardour and strength of their affections, are seeking for that which they will never obtain, and that is, happiness independent of God.Catharine.

THE DEAD SILENT TO US, BUT NOT TO EACH OTHER.

THE modes of communication in heaven between people of strange languages, whether by a common speech, or by the power given to the disciples at the day of Pentecost, or by intuition, are not made known to us; but this wonderful faculty of language, holding an intermediate place between spirit and matter, has, of course, a corresponding faculty in the world of spirits. It is, no doubt, an inconceivably pleasurable source of enjoyment. This increases the sublimity which there is in the silence of the dead, and its impressiveness. For what fancy can conceive of the communications, from heart to heart, in that multitude where every new acquaintance is the occasion of some new joy, or wakes some thrilling recollection, or leads to some interesting discovery, and gives some fresh subjects of love and praise!

The land of silence surely extends no further than to the gates of that heavenly city. All is life and activity within; but from that world, so populous with thoughts, and words, and songs, no revelation penetrates through the dark, silent land which lies between us and them. Our friends are there. Stars, so distant from us that their light, which began its travel ages since, has not reached us, are none the less worlds, performing their revolutions, and occupied by their busy population of intelligent spirits, whose history is full of wonders. Yet the first ray denoting the existence of those worlds has never met the eye of the astronomer in his incessant vigils. The silence of the departed will, for each of us, soon, very soon, be interrupted. Entering, among breaking shadows and softly unfolding light, the border land, we shall gradually awake to the opening vision of things unseen and eternal, all so kindly revealing themselves to our unaccustomed senses as to make us say, "How beautiful!" and instead of exciting fear, leading us almost to hasten the hand which is removing the veil. Some well-known voice, so long silent, may be the first to utter our name; we are recognised, we are safe. A face, a dear, dear face,-breaks forth amidst the crayoned lines of the dissolving night; a form-an embrace-assures us that faith has not deceived us, but has delivered us up to the objects hoped for, the things not seen. Oh, beatific moment! awaiting every follower of them who, by faith and patience, inherit the promises-dwellers there "whither the Forerunner is for us entered."-Ibid.

MISAPPLIED TEXTS.

"A peculiar people."-TIT. ii. 14; 1 PET. ii. 9. WORCESTER defines the word "peculiar" as meaning1. "Belonging to one, not common to many;" 2. Unlike anything else, singular." The second sense is perhaps the most frequent in common discourse, and the word in the above passage is understood in this way by many persons. They suppose Paul and Peter to affirm that the disciples of Christ are singular in their character, that is, that they are altogether unlike the children of this world. But although this is a sound and Scriptural doctrine, the word "peculiar" never bears this sense in the Scriptures. It is always used in the sense given in the first of the above definitions, to denote that which is, as we say, peculiarly one's own in opposition to all other claims to ownership.

This sense of the word is very plain in all the passages where it is used in the Old Testament. "If ye will obey my voice, and keep my covenant, ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people” (Exod. xix. 5). "The Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth" (Deut. xiv. 2). "The Lord hath chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for his peculiar treasure” (Ps. cxxxv. 4).

These, with Deut. xxvi. 18, and Eccles. ii. 8, are the only places in Scripture where the word "peculiar" is used, besides the two passages which we are considering In these places it is manifest that the word denotes that which one chooses, claims, reserves, and takes to himself, to be his own, exclusively and emphatically. And it is plain, moreover, that the passages in the apostolic epistles allude to these expressions in the Old Testament. They are taken almost word for word from Exodus and Deuteronomy. The meaning of them evidently is, that the disciples of Christ are his peculiar people, chosen, purchased, prized, and protected by him. They are indeed a people of a marked and singular | character, distinguished in this respect from the unconverted world; and this is the consequence of their being Christ's people; but this is not what is directly expressed by their being called "a peculiar people." They are such because they belong to Christ; because he has chosen and purchased them; because he loves and protects them; because they are precious in his sight, and dear to his heart.

How careful they ought to be not to defraud him of his dearly bought right in them, not to grieve his love, not to fail in showing a proper sense, and rendering a practical acknowledgment of his kindness towards them. "Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."

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