pure and holy joy of communion with God. Most miserable is the state of a man wearied and sated with earth, and yet unfitted for heaven. But we have wandered a little from our subject. We have seen that the Bible supplies man's wants as far as a clearer knowledge of the future is concerned. Next Sabbath we will inquire whether it reveals any way in which he may obtain the pardon of sin."

CHAPTER XII.

THE BIBLE REVEALS TO MAN THE ONLY WAY IN WHICH NE MAY SECURE THE PARDON OF SIN.

"IT seems to me, mother," said James, "that we have come now to the strongest argument we have had, to prove that the Bible is from God; because men might have known or invented something, perhaps, about God, or about the future, but they never could have found out anything about being saved by Jesus Christ, if it had not been revealed in the Bible."

"You are right my son. And if the Bible had met every other test, yet if it had failed

to meet and provide for this one great want of man, it would have lacked an essential feature; it never could have sustained its claim to be a revelation from God."

"It seems strange," said Fanny, "that God should have waited so long before he sent Christ; only think-four thousand years! and how many people died without knowing anything about him!"

"It may seem strange to us, blind and ignorant creatures as we are, and indeed many of God's dealings must seem so; but we should never forget that he has infinitely wise reasons for all that he does. In this instance the Bible expressly assures us of the fact; do you know the passage to which I allude?"

After a moment's thought, James and Fanny replied in the negative.

"You will find it in Gal. iv. 4,--'When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son. And again in Romans,- For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly?”

"How many times I have read and heard those verses, without thinking about them!" said Fanny.

"Although God may have had many rea

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sons which we cannot discover, for delaying the coming of Christ so long, yet there is one very important reason which we can see.” "What is that, mother?" asked James. "It was, that the world might be prepared to receive him when he should come. Do you know in what this preparation consisted ?" Fanny at once said, no. "I cannot think, mother,—was the world growing any better?" he asked, doubtfully.

James hesitated.

"On the contrary, it was growing worse; and if it had been growing better, that would have been no preparation for Christ's coming." "Why, mother!" exclaimed Fanny; "I do not understand you at all."

"I should have said, perhaps, that it could not grow radically better, without a Saviour; and any improvement in outward things, merely, would only have puffed men up with pride, and made them feel that they did not need a Saviour. Now, God's design in making them wait four thousand years, was to let them find out their need."

"O!" said Fanny, as if a new light had dawned upon her. "If Christ had come soon after the fall, it might have been said that there was no need of him; that science and

philosophy were able to regenerate men; that they were capable of guiding and governing themselves by the aid of reason; and that the fall had not left man wholly destitute of goodness, nor wholly dependent on God for salvation. It was, therefore, necessary that all human inventions and systems for saving men should be thoroughly tried, and found wanting, so that mankind might feel their need of a Divine Redeemer."

"I believe I always had a sort of notion," said James, "that God was waiting for the world to grow better."

"But it did not grow any better, you see," replied his mother. "Were the Pharisees in Christ's time, whom he compares to 'whited sepulchres, full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness,' and whom John calls a 'generation of vipers,'-were they any better than their fathers had been? And as to the heathen nations, we may find an account of what they were, in the first chapter of Romans."

"Well, mother," said James, "did it do any good for God to wait so long?—I mean, did people learn what he meant they should about their need of a Saviour?"

"If they did not, it was because they were

incapable of learning from experience," replied his mother. "The philosophers tried all their systems, one after another, in vain, and were finally obliged to confess that their teachings, and the inducements they were able to hold out to the practice of virtue, were wholly insufficient to restrain the lawless appetites and passions of the multitude. They could not help seeing the wide-spread corruption of human nature; but they could not account for it, or devise a remedy. But there was another question, and that is the one we have to consider, now,-not only how sin could be prevented or checked, but how past sins could be forgiven. This question engaged the attention of some of the wisest of the Greek philosophers, and they could find no solution to it. Plato declared that it was impossible for a just God to pardon sin. Socrates, however, expressed a hope that God would one day send a man instructed by himself, who should reveal to the world that most interesting of all mysteries-how he will pardon sin.

"How remarkable!" said James.

"What a pity he could not have known about Christ!" said Fanny. "But, after all,