from those of his own household. Sarcasm aims its shafts, and strives to disturb his equanimity. Earnest entreaties against singularity, and being righteous over much, flow in from those with whom he was once identified in opinions and habits. The charge of arrogant assumption is laid against him, and he is asked, "What right have you to set up as a judge of us-you, who, a short time ago, were as fond of worldly pursuits as ourselves?"

In this stage of the Christian life, the counsels of Christian love are eminently needed. The warfare is begun, and the cost must be counted. The individual in question is inexperienced, as to the workings of his own mind, as to the temptations of the world, as to the wiles of the devil. The conscience within him has hitherto been practically dormant, and habitually perverted. Sin has been overlooked, or palliated, or justified. "The entrance of the Word has now given understanding." operation of that Word is "quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul

The

and spirit, and of the joints and marrow." The lowest depths of the heart are fathomed. The complex nature of sin is unravelled. The mystery of iniquity within is laid open. The man begins to understand himself; for that Word is "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." "The deceitfulness of sin" stands prominent as a human labyrinth, and the man finds himself in its maze. prospect is darkened; and perplexity, sorrow, and self-distrust subdue the spirit of him who so recently thought that "nothing could separate him from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

The

Christian love steps forward between himself and despair. She encourages him by the assurance, that this is the beginning of enlightenment; that to know himself is the first step towards safe and satisfactory walking with God. She reminds him of the days in which his self-satisfaction, his carelessness, his buoyancy of feelings, were hurrying him towards a precipice, from which, if no arm had intervened, the next step would have been the

bottomless gulf of perdition. She calls to his recollection an apostle, whose expressed anguish under self-remorse was, “Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" but whose revivifying self-assurance, springing from faith in a Redeemer, led to the declaration, "I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." She sets before him the man after God's own heart, whose load of conscious guilt called forth the desponding wail, "Mine iniquities are gone over my head; as a sore burden, they are too heavy for me;" but whose heaven-gifted resolution brought peace to his conscience: “I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin."

How wise and how salutary is her address ! She loves too well to flatter, and she loves too well to withhold Scriptural comfort from the humility and contrition which self-inquiry has produced.

Increased self-knowledge arms the Christian convert with caution in his intercourse with

the world; he surveys the world, and he finds that "all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." He prays that he may "abstain from all appearance of evil, and he comes out and is separate.' Such is the effect of charity's plainness and charity's admonition.

A partial view of the Gospel would have perplexed and left unprepared; but an exposure of the inward evil of the heart, combined with a revelation of the offered grace, by which that heart may be renewed, a call to obedience, grounded on a constraining sense of the Redeemer's love, produces an harmonious cooperation between repentance and faith, and leads to "growing in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." Trained up under such influence, the Christian convert "goes on from strength to strength, and is made more than conqueror, through Him that hath loved him, and given Himself for him."

The operations of Christian charity have

hitherto been confined to cases of mental infirmity and inexperience, devoid of the infliction of any personal injury between man and man. They have been the spontaneous effusions of Christian love striving to elevate the tone, to enlarge the resources of the mind, and to fortify it for active and rational exercise.

We will now endeavour to trace those operations when, through mental infirmity or perversion, the feelings of a brother are wounded, and the temper put to the test.

Take, as a case presenting itself to the observation of charity, the infirmities of old

age.

The mental vision of old age becomes progressively beclouded. But a vivid impression of the early past is very continually retained. It is the world in which the individual lived when his susceptibilities were keen, when his affections were ardent, when his opinions were comparatively unsophisticated, and, whether right or wrong, were not mixed up with any complicated theory, and consequently held a more abiding place in his memory; it was the