multitude are gathered about the hill of shame. The nails are fastened into the quivering flesh; and in agony and torture ebbs His pure life away. The last ministering angel leaves Him; for He must tread the wine-press alone. Darkness gathers suddenly round; and—oh, mystery of mystery! - the Father hides His face from the Beloved. Darkness deepens in the sky and in the mind-how long, the affrighted gazers know not. A cry bursts through the gloom, sharp, shrill, piercing. All is silent-it is finished! The night, that had climbed up strangely to the throne of noon, as suddenly dispersed. The multitude, that eager and wondering had gathered round the hill of shame, separated to their several homes, talking about the tragedy they had witnessed. The moon rose on high as calmly as if the sun had not set on a scene of blood. But, oh! what a change those few hours had wrought in the fortunes of the world. Christ had died, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. Go, tell it to that despairing sinner-that man, I mean, who has the cord about his neck, and the pistol at his throat, who is just about to escape from the terrible harrowings of an alarmed conscience, by the dreadful alternative of self-murder. Go to him; be quick; tell him he need not die, for Christ has died, has died to bear his sins away. Proclaim salvation from the Lord for wretched, dying men. Sound it out from the summit of that hill-side of Calvary, and let the sister hills echo it, until round the earth has spread the rapturous hosanna— Salvation! Go with it to the wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: it is just the thing they need-Salvation! Ring it out through every avenue of this vast metropolis of a world, till it rouse the slumbering dust, and awake the coffined deadSalvation! Take it to your own hearts-be sure of that; and, in the fulness of your own experience, let us hear your song:-"There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Meet for Heaven. To create enjoyment for man in the world, there must be agreement between the inward tastes and the outward objects. If you want to make a man happy here, you set about it in a business-like way, and you give him everything that his heart requires or his fancy conceives. You let competence attend his circumstances; you let friends gather in his halls; you let his board be well spread; you give him a retinue of servants to attend him; you do not let him withhold his hand from every joy with which the world festoons the track of its travellers. You have done your best for that man; you have given him "richly all things to enjoy." Let the same tastes, let the same outward circumstances surround him, and the man will be happy in heaven. Ah! but the circumstances of heaven are fixed already, and they are changeless; happiness there depends on certain conditions of mind which the man has not. It is not enough, in order to make a heaven for the sinner, that you should prepare a place for him; you must go further than that, you must prepare him for the place. It is not enough that he should hold the title-deeds; you must work in him, somehow, a personal meetness. It is not enough that a forensic change should pass upon his character; a transforming change must pass upon his life. Even if he should pass into heaven—if it were possible for him, by any chance, to elude the vigilance of the seraphguard, and to enter heaven as he is—with his earthliness unrestrained, and with all his impurity reigning-heaven would be unparadised to him; its music would gravitate downwards into a sad and melancholy miserere; its labour to him would be a toilsome drudgery, and its atmosphere of holiness would be unsupportable to his diseased and leprous soul. Home. It Fancy an officious stranger entering into your dwelling, suggesting alterations in the interior arrangements, depreciating the furniture, and anxious about remodelling the whole. "That bed is coarse and hard. must have been in use a century. Modern skill will cast one in a shapelier mould." "Ah, I have pillowed on it through many a fevered dream, and it is hallowed to me because from it the angels carried my firstborn to a sabbatic rest in heaven." "That chair is clumsy and antiquated, and out of date. Send it out of sight." “ Oh, 'Touch it not-a mother sat there, And a sacred thing is that old arm-chair.'" Rude and insolent, what does he know of the sensibilities on which he tramples, of the clustering thoughts and memories--the spells of sweetest wizardry, which give to each and every object its sanctity and charm? Steps are on the stair, but they are not for common ears, and familiar faces are present to the household more than are counted by the stranger. The strongest affection in the national heart is this fond love of home, and it is this which has secured the integrity of the rustic roof-tree, no less than of templefane and palace-hall. It may be a mean and homely dwelling- there may be a clumsy stile at the garden-gate-the thatch may be black with the grime of yearsthere may be no festoon of jasmine over the trellised window; but it is sacred, for it is home. "And if a caitiff, false and vile, Dares but to cross that garden-stile- |