No: if we want to come to God we must take His estimate of ourselves and of the requirements of His law, "which is holy and just and good." "And what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." (Mic. vi. 8.) Can we meet that requirement? Nay, verily. St. James says, “If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man;" but, alas, “in many things we offend all.” And Micah is desired to mention the little things,-the deceitful tongue, deceitful weights, scant measure, violence,-which are so often excused, but which with other such like little things show that the root of the tree being corrupt it cannot bring forth good fruit. God says,

"

They have altogether gone out of the way," "though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before Me." And when God's Spirit convinces us of sin, that we are verily guilty concerning these things, we can only cry out, “How can a man be just with God?" and see that there is no way of escape but in God's way. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name given among men whereby we must be saved.” "For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be the righteousness of God in Him." Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

"The throne of God was reared

Above the awful place;

His justice there appeared

And cursed me to my face.

VI.

LESSONS FROM THE PAST.

"That which hath been is now;
The now repeats the long ago."

"Faith in to-morrow instead of Christ, is Satan's nurse for man's perdition.”

ONG years ago a terrible plague broke out in London, and there was hardly a house in which there was not one dead. At first the churches were crowded with terrified people imploring that the calamity might pass away. But as the disease still raged, the people feared to increase the danger of infection by contact with each other; the churches were shut up, and they assembled under the open canopy of heaven, the preacher beneath the shade of some spreading forest tree. The old tradition lingers yet about a neighbourhood, where "the Gospel oak" has long since fallen before the woodman's axe, to make room for the houses needed by the increasing population of the great city.

The disease was carried to a little village in Derbyshire, it was supposed, in a parcel of clothes from

London; and the village was at once shut off from communication with the surrounding villages. Terror seized the people, which the noble clergyman and his wife strove to allay, by remaining at their post to warn, comfort, and exhort. Afraid to meet for worship in the church, the villagers were wont to gather in a pretty, leafy, rocky dell, where from a sort of natural pulpit,-arched with stone, and still pointed out as " Mompessan's pulpit," the Word of life was expounded to the affrighted people, and they were bidden to apply directly to the great Physician. I have stood in that pulpit, and gone back, in imagination, to that terrible time. Can you not fancy how the preacher in earnest tones would teach his people,-telling them of the safe shelter in the secret place of the most High, under the shadow of the Almighty (Ps. xci.); and that, hidden there, no one need be afraid of the pestilence that walked in darkness, nor of the destruction that wasted at noonday, as they only touched the body, and "to be absent from the body" is to be "present with the Lord." There was no need to bid the people to prayer then. They were threatened with a real danger, and were ready enough to look out for some arm strong enough to avert it.

And we all are threatened with a real danger by reason of the virus of the terrible disease of sin; and though some won't believe it, some are fleeing to the great Physician.

After the terrible year of the plague came another

fearful trouble,-the great fire of London,-which in the end, however, proved a blessing: burning down old nests of houses which harboured disease. But bursting out suddenly, and spreading with alarming rapidity among the old-fashioned wooden houses, every heart failed at the sight, and wondered where it would end. Was there any need to rouse the Londoners then to take all the precautions they could for the safety of life and property? Delay was dangerous, and the impending doom urged haste.

Are you certain that the fire of the Divine wrath will not fall upon you? and when "the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up," and "the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved" (2 Pet. iii. 10, 12), do you know certainly that though you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon you? (Isa. xliii. 2.) "If judgment first begin at the house of God, what shall be the end of them that obey not the Gospel?"

Early in the present century there was an alarm of a foreign invasion; but were the people to whom the rumour came to be found sleeping quietly, as if naught had been heard of danger? Their fear possibly magnified it; but if Napoleon Buonaparte dared to set foot in England, he should find a people prepared to resist him to the uttermost. Every one was willing to bear arms, or do what could be done to ensure the safety of their homes and country.