season, what time have you fixed on as a convenient season? The period for the fulfilment of your last resolution has passed away, and you remain alienated from God, and in the bonds of iniquityfor how much longer now do you wish to defer attention to religion?

But why ask such questions as these? You surely cannot fail to see the folly and criminality of such conduct on your part. Contemplate for a moment your position in the universe of God. You are born for eternity, possessed of a soul capable of boundless, of endless felicity. Your iniquities have separated between you and God, and exposed you to his righteous indignation. In his mercy he has revealed to you a way by which you may escape the infliction of his wrath, and be restored to his favour and friendship. He has placed you in the world he has surrounded you with innumerable favours, and blesssed you with distinguishing privileges, that, by the acceptance of his offered mercy, and by availing yourself of the provision he has made in the gospel of his Son, you might be prepared for another, and a better state of being. Your condition and your destiny, therefore, demand that such preparation, more than all other things, should engage your attention and occupy your thoughts in time. But by your conduct in procrastination, you say in effect that the time allotted you by God is too long to devote to preparation for eternity, and, accordingly, you wish to abridge it. Is not this the very greatest ingratitude, as well as the most consummate folly? Besides, you know not what a day may bring forth. The beams of that sun which has risen upon you on

the morning of the first of January, may, long before the last day of December, have caused the grass to vegetate over your grave. Will you, then, rush on, reckless of your danger, and regardless of immortal pleasure and endless felicity? Will you persist in pursuing pleasures which are so soon to vanish, in embracing shadows which are so soon to be dissipated, and in clinging to objects which are so soon to decay, to the exclusion and neglect of those things which belong to the everlasting peace of your soul? Will you still procrastinate? Oh! banish the word from your lips, and the thought from your hearts. There is a voice in the lapse of time, a language in the present season, which calls upon you to awake and arise. You are not ignorant of what is required of you; you know what is necessary to your happiness and peace. "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world." Believe on Jesus Christ, place your implicit faith in the testimony of God, regarding him as the only Saviour of the world. Cast yourself, as you are, on the mercy which flows through his shed blood. Then you may look forward to futurity with joy, and regard your exit from time, whenever you may be called hence, as your entrance into a blessed eternity. Thus only will you be enabled to "redeem the time," and thus only will you be prepared for the blessedness of heaven. "Now is the accepted time, and now is the day of salvation;" now is God's time, and it should be yours. May he, in his mercy, teach you so to number your days, that you may apply your heart unto wisdom!

SIGMA.

of his disciples, and the existence of brotherly love among them, is evidently an object dear to the Redeemer's heart. He not only enforces it on them by motives the most powerful and affecting, saying to them as their Lord and Lawgiver, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another: as I have loved you that ye also love one another;" thus positively enjoining the exercise of brotherly affection on them, and making his boundless love to them the model and the motive of their love to cach other; but also in his intercessory prayer on their behalf, he specially and earnestly pleads that they all may be united among themselves, speaking of this unity as a thing that would be productive of the happiest effects on the world, by promoting faith in him, and consequently the salvation of men. In this prayer he intercedes first of all for his immediate disciples, and a principal and prominent petition for them is, “Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are." Then, at the twentieth verse, he begins to pray for all those who, to the end of the world, should believe on him through the word of the gospel; and the very first blessing which he supplicates for them is, "Unity among themselves." Referring to his immediate disciples, on whose behalf he had just been interceding, he adds, "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on me through their word: That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me."

A few remarks on this important passage may be interesting to the readers of your valuable and widely-circulated Magazine, and may, through the blessing of God, be the means of contributing, however feebly, to the promotion of Christian love and unity-the object for which the Redeemer here pleads, and for which many of his most eminent ministers and people in the present day

are labouring and praying: it will, at least, have the effect of bringing the subject afresh before the minds of your numerous readers. In order to our understanding the passage, it is necessary that we ascertain, first of all, who the persons are on whose behalf the petition is presented. Now, they are thus described by the Saviour, "Those who shall believe on me through their word." This plainly means those who believe the testimony of the inspired apostles respecting Christ, or "the record which God has given of his Son ;" and, on the ground of the record, trust in Jesus, and embrace him as their Saviour. This apostolic testimony, or Divine record, is contained in the New Testament. Those who cordially believe what is testified in this inspired volume respecting Jesus as a Saviour, believe it in such a manner that it influences their principles and conduct, so that they act on the record as being the word and the truth of that God who cannot lie, are the disciples of Christ, and shall be saved. They have believed in Jesus through the word of his apostles, and consequently are all included in the petition contained in the passage before

us.

None else, however, are his disciples; and in behalf of none else is the petition presented.

Christ, then, does not pray in this passage for any who have not faith—a living, saving faith in himself. He does not pray for mere nominal Christians, with whatever body of religious professors they may be connected; or for men of the world, who may bear his name and attend to the observances of his religion, though they show by their conduct that they are strangers to the power of his gospel, and, in reality, the enemies of his cross. It is perfectly possible to be called a Christian, and to attend to all the observances of Christianity, and yet to be among the foes of the Redeemer. If a man's conduct be not as becomes the gospel-if he be not a new creature in Christ Jesus-if his heart be not animated with love to God for the gift of his Son, and to the Redeemer for laying

down his life in the room of sinners; and if this love do not constrain him to walk in the way of God's commandments, he is, whatever may be his religious professions, or whatever his ecclesiastical connection, a rebel against God-a despiser of the Saviour―a neglecter of the great salvation. Therefore Paul says of some professors in his day: "For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things." Christ could not pray that such characters should in any sense be one with his people. It could not be his desire or his prayer, that worldly men, persons who give no evidence of union to himself, should be admitted to the fellowship of his house, and be visibly united in one body with his disciples. One great end of church fellowship is to separate those who believe in Christ from those who do notto distinguish between the regenerate and unregenerate-the precious and the vile -the clean and the unclean. Therefore, the apostles uniformly separated the disciples, and formed them into little societies called churches, admitting none into their fellowship but such as in the judgment of charity were faithful or believing brethren, and sanctified in Christ Jesus. Therefore, also, they enjoined them not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers; but to come out from among them, and be separate; and to turn away from such as had a form of godliness but denied its power. For churches then deliberately to mix Christ's disciples and the world in their constitution, or to admit into their fellowship those who give no evidence of a change of character, is to act in direct opposition | both to apostolic practice and to apostolic precept. It is a mixing together of heterogeneous materials that can never amalgamate, that can never even be mixed in this way without decided, serious injury to both. It is the union of the living and the dead-of the cold,

clammy, mouldering tenants of the charnel-house, with warm, breathing, sentient humanity, of those who are one entire loathsome mass of spiritual corruption with those who are renewed by the Spirit of God, and arrayed in the beauties of holiness. It is a most unbecoming union. It is unseemly to see those who are evidently ungodly men, appearing as parts of God's church-that holy spiritual living temple which he is raising for himself-as absurd as if some foolish architect should endeavour to rear a spacious, beautiful, and orderly building with such incongruous materials as "gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble." It is a daring profanation of the house and ordinances of God; and they who are knowingly guilty of it, have certainly much reason to tremble at the apostolic denunciation,-"If any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye (believers) are."

While, however, this petition does not include worldly men, nor imply a desire on the part of the Redeemer, that they should be united in fellowship with his people, it embraces all who have believed on him, with whatever denomination they may be connected. Christ's disciples— they who learn of him, love him, and obtain salvation by him, are, by no means, confined to any one sect or body of professing Christians. Accordingly, the Saviour includes in this petition all who shall believe in him through the word of his apostles. Some, indeed, would confine the favour of God and the blessings of salvation within the narrow limits of their own communion. However pious an individual may be,-however correct and enlarged his views of the gospelhowever clear the evidence which he gives that he believes the truth, loves it, and lives under its influence; yet, if he belongs not to their little party, and believes not as they believe, in regard to some peculiar opinions and practices, of which the Bible says little, in many cases nothing, they cannot see how it is possible for him to be saved; or, at least, turn