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such efforts will only be to impart a sort of posthumous or galvanic strength to the system, the efforts arising from which will be but as the mortal spasms of approaching dissolution. The doom of Babylon is sealed. The hour is fixed, and at no great distance, when the seven-hilled city shall be tossed from its proud pre-eminence--when the triple crown of blasphemy shall be prostrated in the dust-when, like a millstone cast with an angel's might into the sea, the great city shall be thrown down to rise no more at all for ever. Do you demand security that it shall he so, before you comply with the command to rejoice in the prospect? What better can you have than this?"strong is the Lord God who judgeth her." The might of Jehovah, the strength of the Omnipotent, is pledged for the destruction of Popery. There is no room for despondency. He, whose voice is obeyed by the wind and the waves-He, to whom he planets in their courses, and the angels in their holy ministry, do homage-He, who can rend the rocks with his word and shake the earth with his resence-He, who has the roar of the thunder and the impetuosity of the whirlwind, not less than the whispering breeze of love, at his command-even He It is that hath said, "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, nd ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath venged you on her. With violence shall that great ity Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no nore at all." The Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back? The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this. Contemplate it, then, with unwavering faith; pray for it with devotion; anticipate it with rapturous satisfaction and delight.-Rev. Dr W. Symington in an eloquent sermon recently published on "The Souls under the Altar."

SOUR WORDS.

I HEARD some lately, and they put me to thinking. It was not a very sweet topic, but I thought I could make something of it. I thought if sour words were to be used, there was some season of the year likely most appropriate to them, so I began,

1st, With winter. Here are ninety days, and well marked they are with snow and sleet, and storm and tempest. Now there are things, not a few, to make people uncomfortable, without sour words. I could ot find a day in the whole winter, in which such an addition to cold-weather sorrows could be got in with any decency.

2nd, So I hailed the spring with its gentle zephyrs, and opening flowers, and springing grass, and singing birds. But I could not find any sympathy in any of these things with sour words. And I had to give up spring, and dream on,

3rd, To summer. Here were ninety more days of sunshine and shower, with the scenery of verdant meadows, of luxuriant foliage, and of waving grain. But I could not find one of those days of the glorious summer, that were willing to have sour words take the discordant harp and sadden that day with its harsh tones.

4th, And autumn bade me welcome into her domains; and as I roamed among fields of golden grain, and heard the merry voices of those who were "shouting the harvest home," I found that sour words could have no welcome there.

So I could not find any season of the year that was

appropriate to such things. I could not find a day in the year that was desirous of such company; the bright and pleasant ones did not want their sweet music disturbed by such sad sounds, and the gloomy and dark ones had enough of discomfort without such an addition.

Then it occurred, that if every season, and every day in the year, shuts the door in the face of such intruders, then there must be something essentially repugnant in sour words. And by a little searching I saw,

1st. That sour words give a vinegar-like temper to those who use them. Cheerful and pleasant words, I have noticed, seem, by their happy reaction, to make the face of the speaker brighter. And some words react in like manner, to make both the face and the mind more sharp, sour, and repulsive. He who vents spleen and bitterness as often as he gets a fair occasion, is doing the work of making himself more and more morose, sour, and ill-natured.

2nd. Sour words make hearers sour. I have seen sweet and pleasant words operate like a charm upon a group of scowling, snarling, ill-natured persons, so that they were soon in a very cheerful mood themselves. But sour words sprinkle acid in all directions. They stir up sour words, and the scowl becomes a blacker scowl, and ill-nature becomes more! ill-natured, and those sour words generate those that are sourer, till they give a supper of gall and wormwood to all who take any part in the doleful business.

I could not but think, therefore, that sour words were but just a sheer and needless addition to human sorrow-a voluntary addition. We have sour things enough without turning that sweet musical instrument the human voice into a manufactory of them. Many bitter things we cannot help. Come they will, with no reference to our will. But sour words come not without our will. They come only with a will. They might have been kept in check, and that item in the account of misery have been saved.

I will only add, sour words are quite apt to get us to let them loose at precisely the wrong time, if ever there could be right time; viz. when other sour things are pretty plenty about us.-New York Evan gelist.

VIEWS OF GLORY.

precious cordials in all afflictions. These cordials, THE frequent believing views of glory are the most by cheering our spirits, render our sufferings far more easy, enable us to bear them with patience and joy, and so strengthen our resolutions that we forsake not Christ for fear of trouble. If the way be ever so rough, can it be tedious if it lead to heaven? O sweet sickness, reproaches, imprisonments, or death, accompanied with these taste of our future rest! This keeps the sufferings from the soul, so that it can only touch the flesh. Had it not been for that little (alas! too little), taste which I had of rest, my sufferings would have been grievous, and death more terrible. I may say, "I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." Unless this promised rest had been my delight, I should then have perished in mine affliction. "One thing have I desired of the Lord.

WOE IS ME FOR THE PAST!

that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me upon a rock. And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord." All sufferings are nothing to us, so far as we have these supporting joys. When perse

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cution and fear hath shut the doors, Christ can come in, and stand in the midst, and say to his disciples, "Peace be unto you." Paul and Silas can be in heaven, even when they are thrust into the inner prison, their bodies scourged with " 'many stripes, and their feet fast in the stocks." The martyrs find more rest in their flames, than their persecutors in their pomp and tyranny; because they foresee the flames they escape, and the rest which their fiery chariot is conveying them to. If the Son of God will walk with us, we are safe in the midst of those flames, which shall devour them that cast us in. Abraham went out of his country, not knowing whither he went; because he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; because he had respect unto the recompense of reward. He forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; because he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection. Even Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." This is the noble advantage of faith; it can look on the means and end together. This is the great reason of our impatience, and censuring of God, because we gaze on the evil itself, but fix not our thoughts on what is beyond it. They that saw Christ only on the cross, or in the grave, do shake their heads, and think him lost; but God saw him dying, buried, rising, glorified, and all this at one view. Faith will in this imitate God, so far as it hath the glass of a promise to help it. We see God burying us under ground, but we foresee not the spring, when we shall all revive. Could we but clearly see heaven, as the end of all God's dealings with us, surely none of his dealings could be grievous. If God would once raise us to this life, we should find, that though heaven and sin are at a great distance; yet heaven and a prison, or banishment, heaven and the belly of a whale, or a den of lions, heaven and consuming sickness, or invading death, are at no such distance. But as " Abraham saw Christ's day and rejoiced;" so we, in our most forlorn state, might see that day when Christ shall give us rest, and therein rejoice. I beseech thee, Christian, for the honour of the gospel, and for thy soul's comfort, be not to learn this heavenly art, when in thy greatest extremity thou hast most need to use it. He that, with Stephen, "sees the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God," will comfortably bear the shower of stones. "The joy of the Lord is our strength," and that joy must be fetched from the place of our joy; and if we walk without our strength, how long are we like to endure?-Richard Baxter,

Two HARD THINGS.-First, to talk of yourself without being vain. Second, to talk of others without slander.

EVENING HYMN.

From the German of Paul Gerhard.-1650.
Now o'er the earth's wide breast
Each living thing doth rest,

107

Both man and beast; the very woods are calm; But thou, my soul, awake,

The solemn silence break,

And praise thy Maker in a thankful psalm.
Sun, whither art thou fled?

Has Night thee banished?

Night, gloomy rival of the joyous day-
Then go; a sun more bright,
My Saviour, my delight,

Shines in my soul with purer, holier ray.
Darkens the evening air-

The golden stars are there,

Serenely walking in their home of years;
And shine like them shall I,

When to my home on high

My God shall call me from this world of tears. Soil'd garments of the day,

I put ye all

away,

Meet emblems of the spirit's mortal dress.
And when from death I wake,

My Lord shall bid me take

His spotless robe and crown of righteousness. Head, hands, and weary feet,

Ye go to slumber sweet,

Rejoicing in your work-day labour past;
Thou too, my heart, rejoice,

Thou from earth's strife and noise

And sin's dark bondage shalt be free at last.
Ye toil-spent limbs lie still,
And thankful take your fill

Of needful rest, so tranquil and so deep,
Yet think the hour is nigh,
When calmly ye shall lie

In the cold earth, and there as soundly sleep.
Scottish Congregational Magazine.

WOE IS ME FOR THE PAST! "UPON the bed of his last sickness," relates the Rev. D. E. Ford, "lay a dying sinner. His character may be best learned by attending to his bitter complainings on approaching that awful gulf, from whence he never returned: My physician tells me

must die, and I feel that he tells me the truth. In my best hours, and in my worst, death has been perpetually upon my mind; it has covered me like a dread presence; weighed me down like an ocean, blinded me like a horrid vision, imprisoned my faculties as with bars and gates of iron. Often and often, when in saloons alive with mirth and splendour, I have seemed the gayest of the inmates, this thought and fear of death have shot through my mind, and I have turned away sick and shuddering. What is it then to approach the reality? to feel it very nearvery close at hand? stealing on, and on, and on, like the tide upon the shore, not to be driven back till it has engulfed its prey? What is it to apprehend the approach of the time when you must be a naked,

guilty, trembling spirit, all memory and all consciousness, never again for a single moment to sleep, or know oblivion from the crushing burden of the "deeds done in the body!" The dying may indeed be in a place of torment-in hell, before the time; and the remembrance of past life, stripped of all its deceptions, shrivelled into insignificance, may appear, in connection with eternity, but as a tiny shell tossed on the broad black surface of an ocean: then, again, the intense importance of that very insignificant fragment of time, and the intense remembrance of all that occupied it-its schemes and dreams, and sins and vanities, sweeping across the mind in solemn order, like a procession of grim shadows, with death waiting to embosom all. Oh! well may I smite upon my breast, and cry with all but despair, “Woe is me for the past! woe, woe, for the past!" Every dream is dissolved-every refuge of lies is plucked from me-every human consolation totters beneath me, like a bowing wall; and all the kingdoms of the world, and all the glory of them, could not bribe from my soul the remembrance of a single sin. Ambition, pleasure, fame, friendship, lie around like wrecks, and my soul is helpless in the midst of them, like the mariner on his wave-worn rock.'"

FAMILY PRAYER.

THERE is not on earth a scene more interesting than a family thus bending before the God of heaven. A collection of dependent beings, with tender feelings, with lively sympathies, with common hopes, fears, Joys, blending their bliss and their woes together, and presenting them all to the King of kings, and the great Father of all the families of mankind. There is not on earth a man more to be venerated, or that will be more venerated, than the father who thus ministers at the family altar. No other man like that father so reaches all the sources of human action, or so gently controls the powers, yielding in the direction of his moulding hand, that are soon to control all that is tender and sacred in the interests of the Church and State.

No Solon or Lycurgus is laying the foundation of codes of laws so deep, or taking so fast a hold on all that is to affect the present or future destiny of man. We love, therefore, to look at such venerable locks, and to contemplate these ministers of God which stand between the rising generation-feeble, helpless. and exposed to a thousand perils-and the Eternal Parent of all. They stand between the past and the coming age; remnants of the one, and lights to the other-binding the past with that which is to come -living lights of experience to guide the footsteps of the ignorant and erring-to illuminate the coming generation-to obtain for it blessings by counsel and prayer, and then to die. And if the earth contains amidst its desolations one spot of green on which the eye of God reposes with pleasure, it is the collected group, with the eye of the father raised to heaven, and the voice of faith and prayer commending the little worshippers to the protecting care of Him who never slumbers nor sleeeps.

Miscellanea.

FROM the notion which some entertained of St Columba being able to foretell future events, a man asked him one day how long he had to live. "If your curiosity on that head could be satisfied," said Columba, "it could be of no use to you. But it is

only God who appoints the days of man, and he only knows when they are to terminate. Our business is to do our duty, not to pry into our destiny. God in mercy hath concealed from man the knowledge of his end. If he knew it was near, he would be disqualified for the duties of life; and if he knew it were distant, he would delay his preparation. You should therefore be satisfied with knowing that it is certain; and the safest way is to believe that it may be also near, and to make no delay in getting ready, lest it overtake you unprepared."

A PERSON in the lower ranks, at Lochwinnoch, whose life had not been consistent with that of a genuine Christian, was nevertheless a great speculator in divinity. He came to die, and even then he was wont to perplex and puzzle himself and his visitors with knotty questions about the doctrines of the Bible. Thomas Orr, a person of a very different character, was sitting at his bedside, endea vouring to turn his attention to what more imme diately concerned him: "Ah! William," he said, "this is the decree you have at present to do with'He that believeth shall be saved,' he that believeth not shall be damned.'"

AN under-sheriff of London mentioning the saying of a Puritan divine, "Hem the Sabbath well, and it will not ravel out all the week;" adds, "My office has enabled me to confirm the value of the Sabbath, there being scarcely a criminal, whether for death or minor punishment, who was not daily confessing to me, in Newgate, that he considered his first fall, and subsequent misery, to be owing to the violation of that blessed day."

ONE of the Moorish kings of Spain wished to build a pavilion on a field near his garden, and offered to purchase it of the woman to whom it belonged, but she would not consent to part with the inheritance of her fathers. The field, however, was seized, and the building was erected. The poor woman complained to a cadi, who promised to do all in his power to serve her. One day, while the king was in the field, the cadi came with an empty sack, and asked permission to fill it with the earth on which he was treading. He obtained leave, and when the sack was filled, he requested the king to complete his kindness by assisting him to load his ass with it. The monarch laughed, and tried to lift it, but s002 let it fall, complaining of its enormous weight. is, however," said the cadi, "only a small part of the ground which thou hast wrested from one of thy subjects; how, then, wilt thou bear the weight of the whole field when thou shalt appear before the Great Judge, laden with this iniquity?" The king thanked him for his reproof, and not only restored the field to its owner, but gave her the building which he had erected, and all the wealth which it containe i.

"It

O LORD! what is a little clod of earth and dust, that thou shouldst ennoble him with so rich a nature, ard engrave upon him such characters of thy immense Being ?-Charnock.

THE CHRISTIAN TREASURY.

109

THE SUN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "SCRIPTURE EMBLEMS."

"Great source of day, best image here below

Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,

From world to world, the vital ocean round."

The

TRULY light is sweet, and it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun." glory of the heavens above, the source of light and heat to the earth below, in his absence all the world is a blank, and in his radiance all glows with beauty, life, and gladness. Often has it been remarked, that, if any species of idolatry could be palliated, it is that homage which the untutored savage offers to this glorious creature; and yet no part of the workmanship of the Almighty protests more distinctly against the sacrilege, or proclaims more extensively the being and perfections of the invisible Creator."The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth forth his

handiwork. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun-their line is gone through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." While thus, however, he rejects the honour due to his Maker, God has put a portion of his honour upon him. He has set him up, not as his rival but as his shadow. From objects even of an earthly kind, he is pleased to borrow a faint resemblance of his own infinite excellencies. The "rock" he has employed to express the unchangeableness of his nature, the "fountain of living water" to exhibit his inexhaustible and overflowing beneficence; but, when he turns our eye towards the heavens, he finds there the most splendid and perfect emblem at once of the effulgence of his glory, and of the extent and energy of his grace. The Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly."

One aspect of this figure renders it peculiarly attractive. It is used to express not simply the essential glory and general beneficence of the Deity, but that glory as it shines in the face of Jesus Christ, and sheds forth its powerful and benign influence in the redemption of a lost world. To "Immanuel," "God manifested in the flesh," has the title of "Sun of Righteousness" been specially appropriated. His appearance in the flesh, viewed as his actual rising, forms an important point in the eventful day of time; and no believer can now turn his eye towards the dazzling symbol, but

it seems to reflect the transcendant glory and unsearchable riches of him who is "the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature." "To you that fear his name, shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing under his wings." How brightly, Christian reader, does the summer sun now shine upon our hemisphere? May we not avail ourselves of his light to direct us to this brighter luminary, and unfold some of His glorious and interesting features ?

He is the centre of the new creation. The mechanism of the heavens was not, indeed, fully understood when the volume of inspiration was written; but its popular language is so constructed as to expand, so to speak, with the expansion of human knowledge, and beautifully to adapt itself to all the discoveries of true science. The natural sun, it is now well known, forms the centre of the planetary system. Immensely larger than all those dependent orbs by which he is encircled, his attraction retains them all in their proper orbits, and regulates all their motions. 66 Hung upon nothing," as the striking phraseology of Scriptures expresses it," each world is established that it cannot depart;" and the whole system, bound together by an unseen but adamantine chain, is kept in a state of beautiful subordination, and moved with the regularity of the most perfect mechanism. And who now can fail to see in this a most expressive representation of the place that Christ occupies in the spiritual world? By him were all things created, and by him they all consist; and he is head of his body the Church, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence." Attracted by his invisible but irresistible influence-an influence which, like the law of gravitation, operates in proportion to the nearness of its object to the glorious centre-all the members of this truly celestial system, whether moving in single orbits, or in groups of kindred and correlative organizations, are retained in their proper places, and propelled in courses of constant and holy activity. "In him we live, and move, and have our being." "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all then were all dead; and that they who live should not henceforth live to themselves, but to him who died for them and rose again."

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How vast is that region over which the central power of our sun extends! Besides hundreds of more eccentric but regular attendants, more than thirty different worlds, of larger or small dimensions, have already been numbered as constituting distinct members of the planetary system, and encirling round him in orbits measured by millions on millions of miles, and in periods some of which extend to centuries; and yet this magnificent organization is but a speck in the universe. But what mind can conceive, what figures can calculate, the sphere of the influence of the "Sun of Righteousness?" Around him are collected "all things, both which are in earth and which are in heaven." He occupies the centre of all worlds, and "fills all things;" and while around him the whole family of God move in courses of everlasting dependence and holy obedience, all things, animate and inanimate, spiritual and material, are constrained to fulfil his will. "For God hath set him at his own right hand, in heavenly places, far above all principality and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath given him to be head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." 2. He is the glory of the spiritual world. The sun is the most splendid object in the visible creation. The only luminous body in the system, all the others shine by his light, and reflect the lustre they borrow from him. When he rises, the whole heavens are filled with his radiance, and, amidst the dazzling splendour, all other celestial bodies hide their heads. Nor is any other object required either to fill the eye or to expand the mind with ideas of the highest sublimity. How vast his magnitude as now measured by modern science! How immense his distance! how inapproachable his position! and yet how rapid the emission of his rays, and how powerful their effects! How pure and brilliant his lustre-best image of the purity and majesty of his Maker! How pervading and penetrating, like the eye of Omniscience, is his light! What an idea of irresistible power, of ceaseless activity, of unfading youth, of permanent duration, is given us by his regular movements and uniform appearance! "As a bridegroom cometh he out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race: his going forth is from the end of heaven, and his circuit unto the end of it; and there is nothing hidden from the heat

thereof."

A similar but far more splendid object is the "Sun of righteousness." "The brightness of God's glory, and the express image of his person," He not only reflects the physical perfections of deity; but in him, in all the moral and spiritual grandeur, "dwells the fulness of the godhead bodily." He fills immensityhe inhabiteth eternity-his eyes are flames of fire, go to and fro through the earth, and penetrate to the deepest recesses of the human heart; and he is, not in appearance only, but in the strictest reality, "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." The sun shines by imparted light, and dark spots appear on his disc; "He is light, and in him is no darkness at all." The sun himself "shall wax old as a garment, and as a vesture shall he be changed;" but He "is the same, and his years shall not fail." The sun seems to go forth with irresistible power, and like a strong man rejoiceth to run his race; but one "word of power" from Christ, even uttered by the lips of mortal man, can stop him or move him at pleasure. The sun sheds on all objects on which he rests a bright external lustre; Christ possesses in himself, and sheds on all the new creation, the ineffable brightness of unspotted holiness, inflexible justice, and unswerving truth; mingled with the rich and mellow radiance of compassion, mercy, and love. What a galaxy of divine perfections, melting into one another like the hues of the rainbow, and filling heaven and earth with a splendour which at once attracts and dazzles even angelic eyes! "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have embraced each other," "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and his throne filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim, each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is filled with his glory."

Yes, reader, this forms the special attraction of this glorious luminary. Each sun in the vast expanse has his own peculiar shade of light. "One star differeth from another star in glory." But the star of Bethlehem is "the Sun of righteousness." This is a moral and spiritual glory. Uniting in his wonderful person the perfection of divine holiness and human rectitude-preaching righteousness in the great congregation, and working out, in behalf of elect sinners, a righteousness not only beyond challenge, but highly honouring and magnify

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