FEBRUARY 15.

MATTHEW XI. 27.

All things. He had just addressed the Father as Lord of heaven and earth, and as having sovereign control over all men. Now, He presents His Own mediatorial relations. Though God is a Sovereign, yet God in Christ is a Saviour. Though these differences among men are predestinated, yet Christ is the way, and the truth, and the life. So He at once goes on to state the plan of salvation by a Redeemer. The only way that we can know anything of God's secret purposes of grace, is to come to Christ and embrace eternal life for ourselves. Thus, as elsewhere, He connects faith with the concealed purposes of God. "All that the Father giveth me, shall come to me," &c. We are of the elect, unless we neglect and reject the great salvation. Let God have all the glory of the sinner's salvation. He maketh men to differ. Christians must trace their conversion to distinguishing grace. Let all men hear the Gospel. Behold the only plan! It is proclaimed to all. This is the truth, not concealed or secret, but revealed to us. It is for Christ, and not for us, to know the Father-'no man hath seen God,' &c. He has control of all things as Mediator; ch. xxviii. 18. All power is given to Him. But the Father is brought down to us in Christ, who is the revealer of the Godhead; Col. ii. 9. We must learn of Him. He is Head over all things to the church. Yet no being knows the Son but the Father. He had just shown how the Father reveals the Son to some, and not to others, v. 25. From Him only who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, can we get the discovery of Christ. Observe, Christ is one with the Father. Our condition is hopeless unless Christ reveal to us the Father, and we see God in Christ reconciled. We are blessed, as having such things revealed to us in Christ, beyond kings and pro

phets of old; and this favour is inestimable; and all from distinguishing grace.

FEBRUARY 22.

ISAIAH XLVI. 4.

And even to your old age I am He. Or rather, I am the same. I do not change. I remain unchangeable, with the same tenderness, the same affection, the same care. Herein the care of God for His people surpasses that of the most tender parent, and the most kind nourisher of the young. The care and solicitude of the parent naturally dies away as the child reaches manhood, and the parent is usually removed by death before the son or daughter that

excited so much care and solicitude in infancy and childhood, reaches old age. But not so with God. His people always need His care, and are always the objects of His tender solicitude. Age does not make them less dependent, and experience only teaches them more and more their need of His gracious direction, and His sustaining grace. The argument here is, that He who had watched over the infancy of His people with so much solicitude, who had guarded them in their beginning as a nation, would not leave them in the exposures, and infirmities, and trials of the advanced years of their history. The doctrine is, (1.) that His people always need His protection and care; (2.) that He will never leave nor forsake them; (3.) that He who is the God of infancy and childhood will be the God of the aged, and that He will not leave nor forsake His people, who have been the objects of His care and affection in childhood, when they become old. And though this passage refers primarily to a people or a community as such, yet I see no reason why the principle should not be regarded as applicable to those who are literally aged. They need the care of God no less than childhood does; and if they have walked in His ways in the vigour and strength of their life, He will not

YOUNG MEN! I could greatly have wished, that you had heard Mr. Hugh Stowell Brown's lecture to in Exeter Hall, on young men, "Defaulters." I beseech you to procure it. It occupied nearly two hours in the delivery, and sells for only threepence. The following are a sample of its facts:

THE LOAN OFFICE.

A very short time ago there was, in a Loan Office in the town of Liverpool, a boy whose duty it was, amongst other things, to attend to the office while the clerk was away at his dinner. One day, while the boy was thus engaged, a young man entered the office, struck the boy a tremendous blow on the head, and felled him to the floor; and then, putting his hand into a drawer, took out a considerable sum of money, and decamped. The poor lad was conveyed bleeding and almost insensible to his home. The outrage called forth the indignation of all who heard of it, until it was discovered that the thief was the boy's cousin; that there was a compact between them to the effect that in the dinner hour the cousin should enter the office, inflict upon the boy a blow sufficient to prove that he had been assaulted, and that afterwards the plunder should be divided between them. The cousin, however, hit him very much harder than he had bargained for, and the lad saw

no more either of him or of the stipulated share of the stolen money.

TEN POUNDS.

Here is a case of very mean and heartless rascality, which has been communicated by a gentleman long acquainted with the man of whom he speaks. He says, "In 1843, he told me, as a capital joke, how, having spent his money, and being deeply in debt to his tailor, he was threatened with an arrest; how he wrote to his mother to help him, and she hurried breathless to London to release him by paying his debts; how he got the tailor to add a fictitious £10 to his bill, which he received afterwards, and spent in dissipation." You will be neither surprised nor sorry to learn that this fine specimen was seen a few months ago "dressed in a bundle of greasy rags, a hat worth less than three pence, a coat with a deep gash under each arm, and boots, the heels of which were the thinness of a wafer on one side and two inches thick on the other."

THE CLERK.

As a lad he was engaged in the office of a law-writer in Chancerylane, by which occupation he obtained some fifteen or eighteen shillings a week; then he held a humble position under the Great Northern Railway Company, entering the service at the salary of £1 per week; and afterwards he obtained a situation at the Crystal Palace Company's offices, his emolument amounting to

£150 per annum. But Robson had contracted vicious and expensive habits. His amusements were the theatre, the casino, and the gamingtable. He took a fashionable villa in one of the suburbs, and lived in grand style. He was passionately fond of the turf, and used to go to the Derby in a drag that was by no means the dullest or slowest on the road. In personal dress and adornment he was quite luxurious. All this, however, could not be kept up on £150 a-year, nor on ten times that amount. The fact is, that in little more than three years he swindled his employers to the extent of £27,000. But he knew that he was driving on the brink of a precipice, and that sooner or later he must be hurled to destruction; and, when in the very zenith of his luxury, he wore a ring so contrived that it held poison enough to take away his life when the moment of detection came. That awful moment did come, but Robson, restrained perhaps by cowardice, perhaps by conscience, did not swallow the poison. He absconded, and, under the much abused name of Smith, managed to escape to Sweden. There he was found, enjoying himself at an hotel; he stoutly denied his real name; but the officer seeing on a chair a shirt with the initials "J. W. R.,” felt sure of his man, and apprehended him. The remainder of the story is soon told he was sentenced to twenty years' transportation.

THE BAKER.

W. S. C. was a journeyman baker, and being a man of pleasing address and considerable ability, desired to improve his position in the world, and adopted means for increasing his knowledge of business. He became a member of a religious body, and a total abstainer; he was made a local preacher, and his preaching was highly acceptable to many; and he was a leading man in connexion with the temperance cause. He obtained a situation as secretary of a loan society, which, under his care, flourished so greatly

as to accumulate a capital of £30,000. The business increased; good dividends were paid; the utmost confidence was reposed by all parties connected with the concern; when one day C. was away from his post, and it was discovered that the whole of the capital, with a considerable amount in addition, was gone. The question naturally arises, How could a man abstract so large an amount without its being perceived in his habits or expenditure. He continued his strict teetotalism and his preaching; lived in a small and poorly furnished house, and appeared to be strictly economical. It was found, however, that he had sunk a large amount of money in mining specula tions, which were utterly worthless; he had hoped that they would realise large profits, and he intended out of the returns to make up his defalcations, and so conceal his guilt. He got away to America, but, after an absence of two years, was found in Southampton, brought to Liverpool, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude. After he had absconded it was discovered that his outwardly religious character was a cloak of hypocrisy. It was shown that, in his visits to various places, whither he went to preach, he had been secretly practising most licentious conduct, and that he had been intimately connected with a notorious woman, who kept houses of ill-fame in Liverpool. On his return there was found in his possession a certificate from the American Methodist Church, commending him, as their esteemed brother, to the brethren whom in his journeys he might visit. Why he returned is a mystery. Such a creature's word is not worth much; but he stated that he had come voluntarily to surrender himself to justice, that he was very miserable, and irresistibly compelled to come back.

OBSERVATIONS.

Riotous living has brought the owners of the vastest and most lordly estates to debt and beggary. Nothing

can stand it; even a rent-roll of £1,000 a day cannot supply its insatiable demands; and, of course, salaries of £100, £200, £300, £500 per annum very soon disappear. But I do not know that either "the lust of the flesh or the lust of the eye" is as strong an incentive to default as "the pride of life"-that irrational and unhappy love of display which takes possession of so many hearts. There is a feverish impatience which impels men to extravagance. It is an age of short and easy methods-short and easy methods of learning French; short and easy methods of learning music; short and easy methods of setting up in a great style. Here is Germany in six days; there a mansion, a carriage, a cellar of wine, servants in livery, shooting in the Highlands, and all the appurtenances of luxury and splendour, in six weeks! Now it is very well for middle-aged gentlemen, who have spent twenty or thirty years in business, and have realized twice as many thousand pounds, I say it is very well for them, good easy souls that they are, to gratify their tastes in this way; but youngsters just out of their teens, and on salaries of £100 a year, must needs vie with Mr. Smith, who is fifty years old, and who has made a handsome fortune; nay, it is probable that Mr. Smith's young shopman has an establishment more costly than his master's. So these lads begin where they ought to leave off, and consequently have to leave off where they ought to have begun. Poor, weak creatures, they cannot see a ring on a friend's finger, but they must have one as good, or better; the sight of a neighbour's drag and fast-trotting horse makes them wretched until they have a drag as stylish, and a horse that can trot as fast. Like children, they must have this, they must have that, they must have everything they see. They have no manly self-control, no idea that one of the noblest things in life is the battle with temptations to excess. And so they run into debt. They have brass in their faces, if

they have none in their purses, and the tradesman takes the risk; and that is very often all that he does take. As I have walked along a fashionable street, or sauntered on the promenade of a gay watering place, I have often thought, while I looked at the people around me, how many of these coats belong to the tailor? If every man had his own, many a finely-dressed, hawhawing swell would be stripped to the skin, and then have his body divided between the baker, the butcher, and costermonger, whose bread, and mutton, and cabbage, all unpaid for, constitute the creature's mortal coil. I would say to him, Sir, even that moustache, which you are continually twirling and twisting, is not your own. Don't say you have grown it! No, Sir; it has been grown, every hair of it, by those dealers in human food who have been foolish enough to invest meat and drink in such an unprofitable concern as you." "There's my place at Chester-terrace," said Redpath to the police officer; "there's my place at Chester-terrace; if they sell it well, it will at least fetch £30,000." "My place," indeed! Did not the fellow know that everything in it, from the platechest to the coal-scuttle, was the property of the Great Northern Railway Company? Credit, and far too much credit can be got; but still, credit will not last for ever; and so there follows peculation, or speculation, which, as in most of the cases I have referred to, has peculation for its basis. Thus, yielding to the love of money, the love of pleasure, the love of display, men make themselves defaulters.

CEPHAS.

WORK AND WAGES.

TO ALL WORKERS.

THE worker is not forgotten. In the Lord's vineyard there is no unrequited toil; the blessing comes if we do but in patience wait for it. Too many of us have yet to learn how to labour and to wait." We

sometimes forget that to sow is as important, honourable, and remunerative, as to reap. A good minister, who had laboured long and prayerfully, died mourning that there were so few avowed cases of conversion during his ministry. But, soon after his death, under the ministration of his successor, numbers came forward seeking admission to the church, all dating their religious impressions to the faithful labours of the deceased pastor. He had sowed the seed, and now another was gathering in the precious harvest, while he was glorifying God for it all in the kingdom of heaven!

Another Christian worker was so dispirited, that he meditated changing his field of labour; but one night, after a day of sad thoughts, he dreamed that he was a poor man, seeking employment, and that at last he found an employer who gave him a sledge hammer, and showed him an immense rock, as large as the largest church, and told him to hammer upon the rock until he had split it to pieces. After hammering away for some time, he at last remonstrated that the work given him to do was impossible. His employer replied, "That is nothing to you; I shall pay you for doing the work, whether you seem to succeed or not. Do you do the work! Only do the work! Upon this, he redoubled his blows, but was on the point several times of laying down the hammer. Still the employer said, "Keep to your work. Smite the rock! Smite the rock!" And he kept on smiting, with his heart sinking at the hopelessness of the effort, when, all at once, the rock rent asunder; and, by the convulsion, he awoke from his dream. Such was the impression produced on his mind that he took fresh courage, continuing in the old sphere with new zeal, and it was not long before he saw the fruit of his labour, and gathered there a glorious harvest of souls! Yes; "to patient faith the prize is sure.' We must not be peevish over our work, and say, because there is no immediate result, "This is such a barren soil,

it is in vain for me to cultivate it." No; possibly we may be working unwisely, and God is taking means to show us our folly, or curb our impatience. The motto, "Work and wait," is a most admirable one, when intelligently adopted. Some do not like it, because they misinterpret its import. It does not mean, work a little while, and then cease from working to look after results. No; it means work; keep on working in a patient spirit; waiting, while at work, for the expected issues. If you want to persuade your friend to take a journey with you, you may have to pay him many visits, and present the matter in various lights, before you prevail on him to accompany you. So if you want to induce some around you to go with you to the heavenly Canaan, "the happy land," you need not be surprised if you find it necessary to adduce many arguments, supply many motives, and use many entreaties, and to employ them again and again. You remember the words of the Apostle James, "Be patient, therefore, brethren: the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and bath long patience for it, until he receive the early and the latter rain." You know, the "husbandman," during all his waiting time, is most active, being engaged in manuring, weeding, watching and so must it be with you; and then you may look confidently for the promised reward of grace. "In due season ye shall reap if ye faint not."

From among the long list of workers in humble life on whom the Lord has conferred special honour, by making them peculiarly useful, I select the following as an illustration of how much may be done, when there is the heart to do it, and how visibly the Lord fulfils His gracious word, "Them that honour me I will honour." Some few years ago a stranger passing through one of our northern towns was surprised to see the shops closed, the manufactories emptied, and an unusual concourse of people in the streets.