measure, called to take our part in the great sweep and roar of human life, called to battle with temptation, called to subdue sin, called to brace ourselves, called to succour others, called to evolve out of ourselves the image of the heavenly; and yet we are to be judged at last by laws that are not human, but Divine; we are to be scrutinised by a Being who sees all the events, and influences, and circumstances that have helped to confirm us in the right, or that have helped to warp us to the wrong; and we are to be tried by the records of a book which lets nothing escape its register, but which sets down in impartial chronicle, not more the crises of our being, than the unnoticed matters which make up the history of every day. Oh, to think of it, brethren! You and I, since last Sabbath—and it is not long since then-have done something, it may be a great deal, towards shaping our character for eternity. Thoughts casually entertained, words idly spoken, deeds done in the routine of daily life, all have been parts in that preparatory process by whose results we shall abide. Calm and unchequered to the most of us, perhaps, have these two or three days

been; but we have not done with them--we shall see their results again. Unconscious limners, they have been taking our likenesses for the future; scribes at work unwittingly, they have written down a register about us in the book of God's remembrance. How solemn, in this aspect of it, is the life that now is !

Temple Worship.

They deprive themselves of a very large inheritance of blessing, and are deeply criminal, "who forsake the assembling of themselves together, as the manner of some is," in the place where the grand ordinance of preaching is established, where the sacraments are duly administered, and where united and solemn prayer is wont to be made. The ordinances of religion, indeed, may, and, doubtless, very often are, observed only in external decorousness. The song may be a formal praise; the prayer may be a lip-service only; the whole may be a Sabbath compromise with conscience for a week's indulgence in sin: but to the true-hearted and to the contrite worshipper, it is from the temple that the healing

waters flow. The heart, ignorant of God and of its own duty, and conscious that the reconciliation for which it pants must be achieved only through the merits of another, hears of that other in the temple, and is glad. The contrite one, loathing himself and his former practices of iniquity, bows cheerfully in the temple, as he says, "The foolish shall not stand in Thy sight: Thou hatest all workers of iniquity. . . . . But as for me, I will come into Thy house in the multitude of Thy mercy: and in Thy fear will I worship toward Thy holy temple." Here, as in a spiritual laver, the soul of the polluted receives the cleansing of the water and of the Word. Here the poor children of sorrow smile through their tears, as they are satisfied with the goodness of His house; and the lame halts no longer as he emerges from this Bethesda of the paralysed, whose waters have been stirred from on high. It is from between the cherubim that God especially shines; it is among the golden candlesticks that He still walks to bless His people; and here, as in a gorgeous and well-furnished hall of banquet, believers eat of the fatness of His house, and drink of the river of His pleasure;

and in the temple are at once the highest teaching and the most satisfying comfort, the closest fellowship with God and the most effectual preparation for heaven.

Light.

God is the great original of light. There was a time when it was not, when this world was a nameless and unfinished chaos. God said, Let there be light and there was light. All the forms and modifications of light may be traced up to this act of the great Creator, who made two great lights—the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. From the fount of the sun all the streams of light are flowing. Light is presented to us in ever-varying conditions, but it is always the same; there is a oneness in its essence after all. It is the same light that glistens on the wings of the fire-fly, and blazes on the ruddy hearth-stone, and sparkles on the jewels of the diadem, and flashes in beauty in the morning. Science tells us that those prolific beds of coal in the bowels of the earth were once forests on its surface, forests of

luxurious vegetation; that they incorporated the sun's rays, and then in merciful convulsions were embedded in the centre of the lower earth by an all-provident foresight for the wants of an inhabited world. Science tells us, too, that time was when the shapeless crystal was yet new to its covering of earth. Subjected to the wheel of the lapidary, it sparkles out to view as a gem of the purest water. It is but the release of imprisoned rays, which shone from the same great source, long centuries ago; so that both in the cottage fire-light and in the monarch's gem we have just the resurrection of some olden summer, the great return of some sepulchred sunlight from which man has rolled away the stone.

Now, whether this scientific theory be true or not, certain it is that in our spiritual condition we are in darkness, all of us gross and utter, until the true light shineth on us from on high. We have no native light above us; we cannot gather any from any of the sources by which we are surrounded. "Every good and perfect gift cometh down from above, from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."