into gold, or translated men into angels, or anticipated heaven by perfecting grace in glory.

The inconsistencies of professing Christians often furnish an apology for disregarding the message of God. These are painful, and also powerful hinderances to the truth. The children of the world see Christians give way to evil, or touch unhallowed gain; or prevaricate; or cringe to greatness; or crouch to power; and they naturally exclaim, "These are your saints— these your communicants-they are no better than other men." The charge is too true-but why do you denounce these practices of professing Christians? Just because the principles of Christianity condemn them. Your censure on the professor is therefore by implication an encomium on the gospel. It is the pure light of the latter that enables you to see the grievous sins of the former. Your objection to the truth from the sins of its disciple you can answer yourself. Rebuke the pretender, but receive the message. Do not reject truth because some one misrepresents it. His wickedness injures his own soul, but it neither depreciates the value nor displaces the authority of the gospel. Make it not an excuse-it is none in reality -it is none in the sight of God-it will be none at the judgment bar.

Are you, reader, afraid to believe and appropriate the message of God? Do you think your sins too. many-your case too hopeless? I would not speak lightly of sin; but I would not pronounce it mightier than God, or too deep in its dye to be expiated by the blood of Jesus. The Holy Spirit puts into the lips of the sinner the strange but blessed litany, "Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great." Is this not very won

derful? God is not such a one as yourself. He glories in forgiving. He waits to welcome and embrace you. His thoughts are high above our thoughts, as the heaven is high above the earth. "Let the wicked. man forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon." Satan at first lured you into presumption, and he would now leave you in despair. Once he represented the greatest sin as too trivial for man to shrink from, and now he describes the least sin as too great for God to forgive.

We are not ignorant of his devices: "Resist him, and he will flee from you." Millions have believed our report, and now reap in heaven the blessings it sowed upon the earth; and every generation as it rolls away still adds new stars to that galaxy that shines with imperishable glories. Its sound still awakens new echoes. In France whole communes are emerging from superstition into heavenly light. In Germany, that upas-tree which has distilled its death-dew on successive generations, has been torn up by its roots. Ireland, Protestant Christianity is lengthening its cords and strengthening its stakes. This shows it is of God. Receive this divine message then, "not as the word of man, but as in truth the word of God."

In

You surely would not, and assuredly cannot arrest the progress of the gospel of Jesus. We may be crushed, however, in its colossal march, or we may be carried in its van to victory and happiness. The eagles of Rome and the idols of Greece have fallen before it; the pride of philosophy and the power of empire have capitulated to it; nations still are porn

in a day; and the trophies of the cross accumulate with revolving years. Let us enter our names also in its career of conquest, and glory, and joy.

Reader, set your heart on God himself. Stop at nothing short of his throne. Nothing is higher than man but God, and nothing must come between you and him. Neither the priest, nor the church, nor the sacrament, nor the shibboleths of synods, nor the canons of councils, nor the subtilties of schoolmen must arrest or interrupt you in your upward flight. The church, the sacrament, the ceremony must be your stepping-stones, not your resting-places-means to enable you to see GOD IS, not cold icicle-memorials of GOD WAS. The throne alone is the resting-place of your soul, and the message of God is the summons that bids you soar till you reach it, and stand and sing among the seraphim.

CHAPTER IV.

Danger of Rejecting the Message.

"What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"-MATT. xvi. 26.

THE true reply to every objection that can be urged against the instant reception of the message of God, is, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

The fact, that the safety or the ruin of the soul is involved in our obedience or disobedience to the heavenly voice, is sufficient, one would imagine, to awaken every slumbering feeling within us. In what terms. shall I attempt to express the grandeur of the soul, or to set forth the terrible nature of its ruin? "The merchandise thereof is better than silver, and the gain thereof than gold-it is more precious than rubies; and all things thou canst desire is not to be compared to it." Its very power to sin is an awful indication of its greatness. Its incessant search after satisfaction in the things of time, is evidence of its fall-but its failure to find satisfaction is the greatest of them all, is a proof of its grandeur, and an augury of its immortality. It was made at first a living soul. It is a scintillation from the source of life, and even the least living thing is of greater value than the sun himself. The life of the soul, too, is endless-all else of beauty or of excellence beside it dies; the body decays and is

dissolved into dust-but the soul survives-its origin divine-its duration eternal. It had a commencement, but it will have no close.

Its capacities, too, of happiness and misery, have never been sounded. They are too vast. It is capable of drinking and delighting in these pleasures that are at God's right hand-these joys that are for ever -of illimitable progress, and of endless felicity. It can be made to love God, to delight in his presence, and to enjoy him, and that for ever. All its affections may overflow with God. There is not an atom in that soul which may not lodge the glory of Deity. What stupendous capacities are these! As we know not the limits of the bliss it may reach, so we know little of the depth of that misery to which it may sink. The language used by him who is love to set forth the state of the lost is very strong: "The worm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched." The future shall in such a case be rife with the bitter fruits of the past. Every sin shall come forth from the fields of hypocrisy in which man hid it upon earth, and confront him as an accuser, and torment him for ever as a consuming

curse.

The outward tabernacle in which this divine inhabitant is lodged, is evidence of its greatness. Why is the casket so fair, if the jewel it was made for be not very precious? Was that majestic brow so richly chiselled-were these mystic fanes from which the soul looks forth upon a world subject to its sovereigntywas this noble statue-all symmetry, all beautycarved out for some worthless resident? It cannot be. The soul was made in the image of God; and, marred and mutilated as it is now, yet all the linea