Reading, memorising, and extemporized utterance are means to an end; and if the end is gained, that is the chief thing. Still it is almost intolerable to hear a sermon read that is slipshod and repititious in style, weak in arrangement, and generally lacking in energy. When a sermon is read, the chief advantages of that mode of preaching ought to be secured. Elaborate and incisive argument, concise and forcible sty le, elegance and beauty of expression, neatness and precision of statement, and comprehensiveness and completeness of treatment: some of these things ought to appear in every sermon that is read. The sermon I heard this morning was read; and there was nothing in it. The sight of the MS. created an expectation; the continuous and fixed gaze upon it sustained that expectation for a time; and then, finally, the effect was one of disappointment and annoyance. The discourse to-night was not read; the thought was not striking, nor the illustrations fresh ; but the style was as clear and as finished as that of the written discourse, and the effect was immeasurably greater, simply because it was delivered with the eyes as well as with the lips, and did not raise higher expectations than it satisfied. Let men read if they will; but, by every means, let them write out what compensates for the sacrifice of the obvious advantages of extemporaneous utterance."

The last remark I will quote is on CONCLUSIONS. "Of all things to be avoided and abhorred by a preacher, a tame and spiritless conclusion to a sermon is the most to be abhorred. There should not be a soporific sentence in it; nor a drowsy and lifeless gesture; nor a weak illustration. No application is better than a tame one. If a man is exhausted, he should stop at once. Strength should be saved and concentrated for this final effort. Illustration, parable, appeal, rebuke, invocation, should be crowded into it in a style the most energetic, concise, and moving. I cannot understand two things: first, why I so rarely hear a really good conclusion; and secondly, why preachers forewarn their hearers that the application is coming, and describe its course, as if they meant men to get out of the way of it. It should be a surprise. It should not all be left for the end; but should grow out of the discourse as an essential part of it. When preachers understand their work as they ought, they will gather up all their strength for the conclusion of the sermon." C. SAMUELSON.

CHAFING UNDER THE FETTERS.

THE legal opinion given, in reply to the Rev. Mr. Freemantle, by Messrs. Stephen and Shaw, shows that the clergy of the Established Church cannot take any, even the slightest, part in a Nonconformist service without being guilty of an ecclesiastical offence. We are not sorry that it is so. Much as we rejoice in Christian union, and desire the most extensive intercommunion of churches, yet we have no faith in making wrong easy. It is fitting that error should appear in all its native ugliness. A State Church is a mistake, and our State Church is a glaring injustice; and therefore we are glad that the left-handed reciprocity lately indulged in is likely to be checked. We do not need interchange of pulpits just now, but the digging up of false foundations. Make the church free, and then "the liberty of unlicensed preaching" will follow.-Scraps.

THE DIARY OF THE LATE T. W. MATHEWS.

No. XIII.-A Collection of Sayings.

WE must appreciate fully the love of Jesus to love our fellow-creatures as we ought.

To glorify God is so to act that God may be loved and admired by others.

If we esteem a line of conduct, we condemn ourselves if we go not and do likewise.

Pardon is God Himself. He that liveth in mercy liveth in God. He that liveth in love liveth in God, for God is love; and when a man thus lives he becomes, by being put into the vat of God's transforming kindness, himself a little lump of loving-kindness.

God wants your confidence; He wants to embrace you, to have you with Him for ever; He wants to saturate you with His fulness; He wants to have your heaven begun on earth. Oh, then, why will you prefer husks to Jesus? For every drop of Jesus' blood you will have to give an account. For every proof of Jesus' love you will have to give an account. For the all-forgiving grace God has shown to you in Jesus you will have to give an account.

Repentance is ceasing to do evil and learning to do well; it is loving, delighting in, and consecrating your lives to God; it is saying, "I will never do anything again for myself." Christ is come to burn out your sins, to purify you unto God, and not to hide you from Him.

There is a God who can do just as He pleases with men; whilst man is a little creature that can do nothing without God. Now, is it not befitting that these two beings should be in agreement?

Never suffer yourself to speak of any person towards whom your heart is alienated.

The whole of religion consists in the having the sensations of heaven while on earth.

God does not answer prayer by direct infusion. No; when we want bodily strength we must eat as a means to obtain it. Just so in the spiritual life; he who would grow in grace and become strong in faith must be ever eating the strong meat of the gospel.

Marriage was instituted in order that the human family might be united each to each. Out of dependence rises obligation-hence the sense of duty. From obligation springs willing subjection-the little type of all religion. From submission arises gratitude-no small part of eternal religion. From this gratitude proceeds delight to serve them, requite them, and imitate them-which produces a beautiful moral power over the mind.

Meditate on God's love, that Christ's object may be accomplished in you; for His object in taking you into His family is none other than that He may have the individual affection of your hearts.

Christ was incarnate, not to purchase heaven for us, but us from sin. He died for us that He might transfuse into us His hatred of sin; that we might know God's hatred of sin, and His forgiveness of sin.

You must perfectly approve those things which God has declared to be His will, not because they are His will, but because they are right. Whatever restraint God has laid upon you you must feel glad of, and would willingly put it upon yourself if God had not. Now, without the freeness of the gospel no man can come to this condition, he cannot be supremely happy, that he has no right to choose anything for himself.

He that believes in Jesus comes into the situation of a soldier to his general who leads him, for the life of the spirit is through faith. God saves us by His word. His promises, threats, doctrines, etc., are as the very blood of our bodies. We are to be sanctified through the truth. He also saves us by His providence; for He maketh all things work together for our good, all to sicken and weary us of sin.

Rejoice in the truth of God, not in your experience of that truth; rejoice not in prayer, but in God who hears and answers prayer. Seek not gifts, but the Giver.

The first principles of the doctrine of Christians are to be held fast, and yet in a certain sense they are to be left. Have you forgotten your alphabet? No; but you have left it. Sir Isaac Newton never forgot the multiplication table; still, he went on unto perfection. We are not to despise, but use fundamental principles.

Conversion is not a gradual bettering and bettering, but a changeit is God's work. He is to be received by you by your believing what is

true.

God's love is as sunlight in the explanation of everything.

What is our righteousness? Simply being prepared to meet our God.

PAYING THE FARE.

THERE is nothing for which men have to pay so dearly as sin. It is the costliest thing in the world. So Jonah found it. God sent him to Nineveh-a great and wicked city-to cry against it. But the bold yet bashful prophet was afraid to go on such an unpleasant errand. He tried to run away from his duty and his God, by going down to the nearest seaport and taking the first ship that sailed in another direction. "He found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof." But he paid dearly. It proved a terribly expensive voyage. For no sooner had the ship got out on the broad sea than the strong breeze that met them changed to a gale, and the gale to a hurricane. The vessel began to pitch and toss to such a frightful extent that even the sailors were alarmed; they cried every man to his god to save them from a watery grave. As much of the cargo as could be got at was thrown overboard. But still the storm raged; nor did it cease till Jonah himself was cast into the sea. This disobedient prophet paid dearly enough when he paid his fare to Tarshish; for not only did he fail to reach the place, but he lost his money, lost his time, lost the approval of his conscience, and, what was vastly more, he lost the approval of his God; and if it had not been for a miraculous interposition, he would have lost his life also. All this was the fare which Jonah paid for sinning. A ruinous fare indeed. And so other men have found it. For no one can sin without having to suffer for it.

There is a divine connection between sin and punishment. If a man will have the sin, he must have the suffering. It is God's great law in the moral world. "The way of transgressors is hard." "He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it: and whoso breaketh a hedge a serpent shall bite him." The universal law to which there is no exception is this, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that”— that and not something else" that shall he also reap: for he that soweth the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." This is the thing I want to make

PAYING THE FARE.

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plain to my readers, that the dearest fare in the world which any man has to pay is the fare for sinning.

Take for example the case of the sceptic; a man it may be of fine intellect, and even brilliant attainments, the son perhaps of a praying mother and a saintly father. But he grows tired of the faith of his fathers, he shows a contempt for the House of God, he has an ill-disguised sneer for religious people, he calls the Bible effete, worn-out, a book of old women's fables, though the probability is he has never read a quarter of the Bible in his life. There is no heaven, he says, and no hell. But one night when he returns from his club the mother tells him that Charlie, the youngest-born-the merry three-year-old-is ill; she says, very ill. Half-a-dozen times that night he is in Charlie's room, feeling at his pulse, touching his cheek, listening to his breathing. He neither fears nor loves God; but he fears this sickness, and he loves his child. The days that follow are days of terrible anxiety and trouble, for the child grows worse, and by-and-bye it dies. What comfort has that father, what consolation, what hope in his child's death? He has cast out the names of God, and Jesus, and heaven, long ago. He recognises no tender, loving, heavenly Father, no strengthening, sympathizing Jesus, no comforting Spirit. For him there is no Father's house on high; and among its many mansions no rooms for little children. It was a fearful price he paid when he parted with faith for unbelief.

Take the case of the worldling. The respectable man of the world, one of those described in the Bible as "walking in the way of his own heart, and in the sight of his own eyes." He may be a statesman, or a philosopher, or a trader, or a mechanic. He is a man that lives and labours for that which is merely visible, present, temporal. He loves the world. He loves the visible and temporal. His hopes and ambitions are confined to earth and time. There is, for example, the man who is entirely absorbed in money-making, whose great passion is to become rich. Such a man must pay not only daily anxiety and worry, but he must run the fearful risk of being eaten up with covetousness. The apostle says, "The love of money is the root of all evil;" not the mere pos session of it, but the setting the heart upon it, the reaching out after it, the desire for that more than ought else, this is the root from whence all evils may spring. It is a terrible price that some men have to pay for wealth. Take the case of Lot. You know how Abraham, with all the generosity and disinterestedness of his noble nature, gave to Lot the selection of place. "The whole land," said he, "is before thee-choose." And Lot, we are told, "lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord, and he choose him all the plain of Jordan." He made no inquiry about the men that dwelt there; he simply saw the goodliness of the land, and that decided him. No doubt he would be called shrewd, sharp, very business like, yet he made a fool's choice, and paid ruinously for his folly. He who pitched his tent toward Sodom, was very soon found in Sodom. His family mingled with the men of Sodom and learned their ways; and when the poor father, alarmed for his children's safety, implored his sons-in-law to escape, they seemed as one that mocked. In the destruction of his property, in the loss of his family, you may see the fare which Lot paid for his worldliness.

Consider the case of the drunkard, and the terrible penalties he has to pay for sinning. What those penalties are you may gather from the picture which Solomon has drawn of the drunkard in Prov. xxiii. 29, and following verses. I would that this picture were hung in every drunkard's chamber, and every tavern, and hotel, and club of the land. The words seem to imply that there is no wretchedness equal to the drunkards; the very means of his pleasure "biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Whose " woe is greater? He has the woe of ill health, the woe of contempt, the woe of remorse. Terrible fare indeed. There are others beside the drunkard that travel on the road of sensual indulgence, and who have to pay the fare thereof. The licentious man pays it in shame and self-loathing, in remorse and rottenness of the bones.

But I cannot recount further the penalties which men and women have to pay for sinning. The costliest thing in the world is sin. It costs self-respect, purity of conscience, spiritual sensibility, mental freedom, the freshness and vigour and beauty of life, the favour of God, and if not repented of and forsaken, it will cost at the last the loss of heaven.

J. H. ATKINSON.

No. VII." Weekly Storing."

BY A "LIVE" DEACON.

I Do not profess to understand the true exposition of the passage of Scripture on which the doctrine of "Weekly Storing" is based. The words are explicit : but whether they contain a perpetually binding rule, or only a transitory direction referring to a special occasion and a special need, I must leave to the acute judgment and wide research of the professed students of the Bible. But it is plain to me, and becomes more and more so with my lengthening life and observation, that the right foundation for Christian beneficence is method, habit; not only in giving, but chiefly and in the first instance, in making definite and conscientious and self-sacrificing provision for giving; in "laying by," on fixed principles, or reserving a portion of our gains for God. Means of distribution can easily be found when the "store" is there. The first duty is to get the "store," is to arrange for its regular supply; and the most strenuous efforts should be made by the diaconate to bring the members of the churches to an intelligent apprehension of this duty, and to secure a cheerful and prompt performance of it as far as possible.

Now too often provision is made against giving. Not only is no "store" laid by, but the laying by itself is knowingly rendered impossible. It is easily done, and can be defended by a hundred plausible excuses. Men of business, of ardent temperament, may lock up their money in land, in houses, in trade, so as to fetter their hands and leave them with nothing to give; and what is still worse, with a satisfied and easy conscience. They have a "good case" for every appeal. "Positively havn't the money; and how can I help you." It's all alike whoever comes; the sustenance of divine worship, the evangelizing of the heathen, the help of the needy-how can they do anything. They have only a nominal balance at the banker's. There is scarcely enough working capital in hand. "Of course" they are excused; and yet they know well enough that stock-taking day will show that not only have they locked up their money and left God and God's kingdom totally out of consideration, but also that it is placed where it is making ten per cent. now, and will bring twenty by and bye. So they feast their covetousness, and starve their minister, and beggar their souls with a good conscience.

Others reach the same goal by a different road. They make provision against "storing up" for God by assuming a style and habit of life beyond their gains. They dress themselves and their children, if they have any, and furnish their houses, just a little beyond what they can afford. They attempt the fashion of £200 on £190, or of thirty shillings a week on twenty-eight, and so gradually crowd life with unnecessary anxieties, burden their backs with debt, corrupt the simplicity and sap the power of the Christian life, and make it impossible that they should know the joy of giving money to the Lord.

A Christian, it seems to me, is not only bound to provide things honest in the sight of all men, but, if I read my Bible rightly, whether in the Old or New Testament, he is under obligation to the Lord who made and saves him to make provision for forming the habit of free-handed bounty; and to arrange for the inclusion of giving in his acts of worship as certainly as prayer and the study of the Scriptures. I cannot undertake to say anything about the theology of the matter, but to me it seems no less than a sin to make a plan of life which shuts out the very possibility of giving to God. But this I leave.

The neglect of this forecasting treatment of domestic life, business and wages, is seen in the way in which money is foolishly and thoughtlessly "frittered" away, spent without thought on the merest trifles, given without knowledge and from blind impulse, wasted on pleasures that are not refreshing or ennobling, so as to leave the most slender "store" for the service of the Lord.

George Muller says, "many of the children of God lose in a great measure, yea almost entirely, the privilege, and thus also also the blessing to their own souls, of communicating to the Lord's work and to the necessities of the poor, for want of a regular habit of giving;" and this arises chiefly, I may add, from the want of a regular habit of storing. Honest and conscientious dealing with money, with the gains of business be they represented in hundreds of pounds