Whom can and labour. Riches! What of them? they make more comfortable than a moderate competence would have made them? Whom that is worthy of respect did they ever make more so? Who that was benevolent became more so by riches? Whom did they ever make more modest, humble, dignified, or more truly good than they were without them? To whom does the possession of wealth give true peace? rational happiness? Fame and honours. A breath has made them, and a breath will blow them away. The creation of popular ferment, or of a brood of flatterers, many have staked character, and honesty, and life to gain them, and have paid the forfeiture. They who have attained them have found them baubles not worth wearing, or if they are weak enough to be pleased with them, are surely rather to be pitied than envied. Weary of worldly cares and anxieties. The anxieties it is sinful to indulge. The cares I ought patiently and cheerfully to bear. They are needful. They are a part of the discipline which the soul needs to make it more meet for divine service. They are inseparable from the responsibilities and duties of life. They are designed to make us thoughtful of our dependence, and to suppress the levities and triflings to which we are predisposed. They contribute to excite desire for the release and the rest set before us. But, oh! they do weary and wear away the frail tabernacle. Weary of sin. Far less so than I ought to be. Otherwise such a load of it would not still press upon me. Here is a great and palpable inconsistency. Weary of a burden, and yet so constantly adding to its weight. Ah, deceitful and sinful heart! how little thou knowest thyself. Weary of sinning, yet sinning daily and hourly. How shall we, who are dead to sin, live any longer therein? I trust I do not, as having delight in sin. I trust it is true that my soul loathes it; that I am weary of it. But it clings to me, if I do not hold fast to it. "For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do." Almost weary of waiting. I know not that I ought to say this; for I fear I have very little of the waiting posture. My lamp burns dimly; I have little oil in my vessel; my loins are loosely girt, and I am very unfaithful in watching. I fear my waiting is mostly a selfish desire for rest. Yet, Lord, is there not in it some desire for thy rest? Do I not desire to be near thee, that I may be like thee? Have I not a desire for a place in those mansions, because thou art there? Is it not my desire to be with thee, that I may see thee as thou art? SHAKING THRONES. PILGRIM. LIGHT thoughts are weighty follies now. Earth's thrones Are shaking, and affrighted monarchs feel Their ominous vibrations. What a peal Was that I heard! Commingled shouts and groans Proclaim one fallen: France no longer owns Her Louis! Though but yesterday his heel Seem'd firmly fix'd, and he defied the steel, And reason-prompted purpose of her sons, To-day we find him not: he's toppled down Amongst-beneath them! Subjects rise and stand Erect, who to his confiscated crown Once knelt, and homage paid at his command. Such are their sov'reigns when the nations frown; And such the wrath of Heaven's avenging hand. BEAUTY AND BLOOD. IF we feel anything of true loveliness, we shall, above all things, promote love. But, alas! men dis like deformity, and hate evil in every one but themselves, because they find no mirror to reflect their own moral image, and will not look into the law of God. Hence they can worship exterior beanty while unconscious of intrinsic hideousness. So deeply deluding is our outward life, that unless we are honest at heart, the more that is said and thought of the moral and personal excellence of others, the more apt are we to question the motives that influence them. Those who are hateful are always ready to become calumnious, and those are already outrageous who seek for pictured and extraneous beauty, rather than to be beauteous in their souls. The most horrible deeds of darkness and cruelty have been perpetrated by the worshippers of a pictorial religion, and the fiercest defence of nominal public virtue has been the fruit of intensest private vice. The worship of a beauty exalted and apart from any relation to a man's own soul, is consistent with a zeal that leads to massacre and murder. The fifty thousand victims of St Bartholomew were sacrificed to the power that presided over imposing forms in the name of God. The men who would have bowed to a picture of the Blessed Virgin, as divine, could stab a living mother with a babe upon her bosom. Because they had no beauty in their souls, they pierced again the heart of Jesus, while they seemed to kneel at his cross, and they thought to serve the Son of the Highest, by execrating those for whor he died. Light had lost its meaning to their eyes. As sight is a spiritual sense, and we do not beho the objects as material things, but only perceive the different degrees of antagonism between light and darkness, which we call colours, so these zealots of beauty made their own colours out of the darkness that was in them, when the true light shone upon it. The love of beauty is one with the love of goodness, in a mind purified by holy truth. But a nice taste for the fine arts, as means of pleasure, may prevail in a breast without humanity. The mob of murderers, with guns and bayonets, in the French Revolution of 1792, pursued the fugitives from the Palace of the Tulleries into the gardens; but they! refrained from firing on those who, in vain efforts to escape from their assassins, climbed up the marble monuments abounding there; and, lest the statues should be injured, they pricked down their victims, murdering them at their feet, with steel dripping with gore warm from the heart. Thus the divine beauty of a human form was mangled by lovers of beauty in stone. As usual, men, women, and chil dren were butchered at the feet of idols; for devotion to Apollo and to Venus is but the madness of pride and lust. The true perception of beauty was of course impossible in such savages. Men cannot see beauty while they merely look at appearances, be cause the spiritual relation of things is not discerned by the bodily vision. It demands a spiritual eye-sight and apprehension. Beauty in the abstract is truththe embodiment of moral law: it is an attribute of God. But in our relative view of the Divine love and power, as exhibited in the uses of created forms. beauty is, in fact, that order of things which tends, to preserve the complacency of man; and, while pleasingly exciting his attention, encourages the so cial affections. It is, in short, the visible expression of God's purpose in nature, the end of which is to promote harmony between thought, feeling, and sotion.-Dr Moore. PUNCTUALITY. A HAPPY HOME. It is said of Melancthon, that when he made an appointment, he expected not only the hour, but the minute to be fixed, that no time might be wasted in idleness or suspense; and of Washington, that when his secretary being repeatedly late in his attendance, laid the blame on his watch, he replied, "You must get another watch, or I another secretary.” I WILL TURN HEREAFTER. 1. You will not turn now.-That is, you will abide rebels to God, devils to yourselves, vassals to the devil, idolizers of this vain world, &c. This you will do, though you know it unjust, unsafe, unprofitable, ungrateful, and all that is worst; and though you would think it hard if God should hold you in such a state against your wills, or suffer Satan to keep you in it by force. This you will do, though you know that if God should now use you like yourselves (that is, like irreconcilable enemies, even against his very entreaties), you must be sent quick to hell;-though you know, too, that every sin you commit makes conversion harder, if ever it be made; and hell hotter for you, if it be not made; this you will do; of choice you will, and because you will; without any reasons that you dare to produce, or let mortal men hear you speak. 2. You will turn hereafter.-Thy power, foolish creature, thy power! where is thy power, thy will, or thy reason? Thy power, man! Canst thou live as long as thou wilt? Canst thou save thyself from distraction, delusions of Satan, &c.? Art thou able thyself to supply thyself with necessaries, natural and supernatural, now and hereafter ? Well; if thou couldst, say plainly, What is thy will? It is a will not moved by God's threats or promises to fear or love him. If it were so, thou wouldst convert now. And if it be not so, what is thy purpose, for all thy fair promise? Dost thou intend hereafter to turn unto a God neither feared nor loved? Surely thou dost not. Thinkest thou that thou shalt hereafter fear and love him? I ask, What should make thee so think? He will for ever be the same God that now he is. Lay to thy heart what I tell thee:-If God be not just now worthy of fear and love, then he never was or will be so; for he changes not. In a word, what, if thou hadst both power to convert when thou wouldst, and hadst a real will to convert hereafter to God! where is the reason for staying without and against God all the while? Thou art servant, he is Lord; thou the child, he the Father. When servants run away, and will not return to their masters; and very children run away, and will not come back to their fathers; no, though the masters and fathers call and send and promise, and do not need them, while they all the while need their masters and fathers: all people conclude there is a cause of this, and a fault must lie somewhere in one of the parties. Either the father is unnatural, and the master cruel; or else the child is a viper, and the servant a monster. Speak, man, and say now where is the fault? what is the 239 cause that thou canst not yet be prevailed with to return to thy Lord and Father? Thou must charge him or thyself with most black and bloody faults. If thou layest it on God, thou makest him worse than the devil, and proclaimest Satan the better master and father of the two. If thou takest the blame on thyself, I ask thee, how thou canst endure to see, hear, or think of thyself! a creature hating its God, that is all love, and all loveliness! No words, I think-no words of mine, I am sure-can express how blasphemous or how self-condemned they are, all that put off conversion to another time. Alas! here is life and all in the case. Conversion is the life of thy soul, man: it dying, till it convert; it is in hell, till thou convert. And is this a fit word?" I will then convert hereafter." Thy darling child drops into the fire, and thou promisest to come and help it out to-morrow: a very kind creature thou wilt be thought, and as wise a one! Upon every account I may say of these promises of turning hereafter, as was said of Judas: "It had been better they had never been born." And they be Judases indeed; for, though they flatter and kiss, they betray and kill poor souls.-Burgess. A HAPPY HOME. A HAPPY home greatly depends on the recreations and amusements which are provided for young people. It is no small difficulty to give a useful direction to their play hours. Little more has been contemplated in the gambols of youth than the health and activity of their bodies, and the refreshment of their spirits. It is well when these objects can be attained without the indulgence of sinful tempers; but youthful sports have often proved the nursery of pride, ambition, and contention. In public schools these evils have been encouraged, or at least deemed unavoidable. The seed of revenge in manhood has been planted in boyish violence, and the unheeded acts of oppression by the elder boys towards their juniors have trained them to tyranny in riper years. Private education affords greater facilities for checking these evils, but the want of the stimulus supplied by numbers is apt to render the pastime uninteresting and home distasteful. Legh Richmond was alive to these inconveniences, and endeavoured by succession and variety of recreations to employ the leisure hours to advantage. He had recourse to what was beautiful in nature, or ingenious in art or science; and when abroad he collected materials to gratify curiosity. He fitted up his museum and his library with specimens of mineralogy, instruments for experimental philosophy, and interesting curiosities from every part of the world; he had his magic lantern to exhibit phantasmagoria, and teach natural history, to display picturesque beauty, and scenes and objects far-famed in different countries; his various microscopes for examining the minutiae of plants and animals; his telescope for tracing planetary revolutions and appearances; his air-pump and other machines for illustrating and explaining the principles of pneumatics and electricity; authors of every country who treated on the improvements connected with modern science; whatever, in short, could store the mind with ideas, or interest and improve the heart. When he travelled he kept up a correspondence with his family, and narrated to them the persons, places, and adventures of his progress. On his return he en livened many a leisure hour by larger details of all that he had observed, to amuse and improve.-Family Scrap-Book. "LOOK ON THE FIELDS." CHRISTIANS! the reapers of the earth The long-neglected ground; And patiently, with hope, they wait 'Till golden fruit is found. The reaper, Death, is busy too; His sickle swift he plies, While gath'ring those who turn to you With loud, despairing cries. "Look on the thousand fields" that lie In distant, heathen lands, The prophecy of old fulfil; Let nought the work impede. DYING GLADLY. : BEHOLD here the secret of dying! "These all died in faith." Bad men die reluctantly life is extorted from them as if by main force. The believer dies willingly; his will is sweetly submitted to his Father's will; he makes it a religious act to die. Just as Jesus himself commended his human soul to his Father, saying, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke xxiii. 46); so his believing disciple commends his soul to Jesus, and through him to the Father. Here, I repeat, is the secret how to die happily. To those who know not that secret, it is a fearful thing to die. It is a serious matter for any. But to the worldly-minded and ungodly, if not past feeling, to die, must be, as one of the heathen philosophers (Aristotle) confessed it, "of all formidable things the most formidable." Only mention a neighbour's death in a gay circle; lo, you have thrown a gloom over the whole assembly-all are evidently sorry that the topic was introduced. The ancient Romans would not mention death in plain words, if they could avoid it, but only by circumlocution and implication. The heathens, at this day, in like manner, "shun all conversation on death, as most repugnant to their feelings;" I quote the words of an eye-witness: "They account it the height of cruelty to speak of the probability of a sick friend's death, even to his relatives." Even serious Christians are often in bondage through fear of death. It is such a venture; a mistake may be so fatal: to go before God is so awful; judgment will bring to light such secrets; that many think, How can I die? Yet you all must. Be persuaded, give your soul to Jesus now; do it again from day to day; and then, when your dying day is come, again approach the Saviour, and sayLord, I hear thee calling for my spirit; I see. the waggons sent to fetch me home to thee; in the hand of death I recognise thy hand of love; thou askest for my soul; take it, for it is thine. Do with it what thou wilt, I have given it to thee to be washed in thy blood, and sanctified by thy Spirit; I am sure thou wilt do it no harm!" Does a thought here arise, And what shall become of my poor body? Why, even if, like Stephen's, it were battered and bruised with stones murderously. hurled, even though it were burning at a stake, or tortured on a rack, you need not mind; look but that the soul be safe; and then, whatever may become of the body, Jesus will take care of thy dust and ashes. The remains of his faithful servants are to him the most precious parts of this material earth. They form a pledge of his final coming. For if your souls are truly his, he will hereafter raise up your bodies glorious, incorruptible. immortal, like unto his own. (Phil. iii. 21.)-Hambleton. Fragments. Why was the Bread of Life hungry, but that he might feed the hungry with the bread of life? Why was Rest itself weary, but to give the weary rest? Why was the Prince of peace in trouble, but that the troubled might have peace? None but the Image of God could restore us to God's image. None but the Prince of peace could bring the God of peace, and the peace of God, to poor sinners.-Dyer. - Some professors pass for very meek, good-natured people, until you displease them. They resemble a pool or pond which, while you let it alone, looks clean and limpid, but if you put in a stick and stir the bottom, the rising sediment soon discovers the impurity that lurks beneath. God will confound the language of those sons of pride who cry up the powers of nature; as if man with the slime of his own free will, and the bricks of his own self-righteousness, were able to rear up a building whose top might reach to heaven itself. The times are such that it is almost impossible for a man to go to heaven without getting a nickname by the way. But it is better to go to heaven with a nickname, than to go to hell without one. Sin being the disease, and holiness the health of our souls, and the chastenings of God being the physic to effect this cure by, surely we had better take the remedy, though it make us sick, than keep our disease, which will make us die. (Heb. xii. 9.) The remedy is better than the disease, affliction better than sin. (Job xxxvi. 21.) It were an ill choice to choose sin rather than affliction. To go out of God's way for life, is to go out of the way of life. (John v. 39, 40, vi. 68, xiv. 6; Acts iv. 12.) It is not only lost labour, but the way to death, to seek life out of or without Christ Jesus. (Rom. ix. 30, 33, x. 3, 4.) I have heard of a lady who, hearing of the death of her two sons in one day (and that in such a way as would make the ears of him that should hear to tingle), uttered these words: "I see God will leave me nothing to love but himself." God takes that from our love which would take our love from him-God parts that and us which would part us and him. When God leaves us with a little to love, it is that our love may cleave much to him. THE CHRISTIAN TREASURY. 241 THE HEAVENLY COUNTRY TO BE KEPT IN VIEW. "And let Jerusalem come into your mind."-JER. ii. 50. THIS and the preceding chapter contain one prophecy, foretelling the destruction of Babylon. Its predictions have long since been literally and wonderfully fulfilled. The land where that proud city once stood is now a dreary waste, and so completely has the desolation foretold been realized that a modern traveller states, "Not a habitable spot appears for countless miles." The predictions of Jeremiah, and those of Isaiah (xiii. xiv.), have received their awful accomplishment. motive for encountering hardships and dangers, and for encouragement by the way, Jerusalem was to come into their mind. The passage, if accommodated to the case of Christian pilgrims, furnishes much interesting and useful instruction. It is very difficult, in our passage through time, to feel sufficiently of how little moment this world is to us, and of how much the next! If, in passing through a town which we should never revisit, we were to spend one hour at an inn, and thence proceed to spend sixty years elsewhere, of how little importance would be the inconveniences The prophets who foretold the ruin of Baby- or advantages, the comforts or sorrows, of that lon, predicted also the deliverance of captive single hour, compared with those of the folIsrael; and scarcely had the golden city yielded lowing threescore years! yet that hour would to the arms of Cyrus, before the conqueror is- bear a much greater proportion to sixty years sued a decree, proclaiming liberty to the suf- than the longest life bears to the eternity which fering children of Abraham. In the first year awaits us. How needful is it for such transient of his reign," the Lord stirred up the spirit of sojourners here to keep eternal realities in Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclama-view-to let the heavenly Jerusalem come into tion throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel."Ezra i. 2, 3. In what stands connected with the text, the prophet addresses those that Cyrus would set free, "Ye that have escaped the sword, go away, stand not still; remember the Lord afar off, and let Jerusalem come into your mind." The phrase rendered "come into your mind," is of frequent occurrence,* and is more literally translated, "come upon your heart"-perhaps expressed by "be uppermost in your affections." Blayney's translation of the text is, "And let Jerusalem gain possession of your heart." This admonition, though not uninstructive to such of the Israelites as continued in Babylon, was peculiarly addressed to those that, on the publication of Cyrus' decree, returned to the land of their fathers. They undertook a long, a wearisome, and dangerous journey, and as a As in chap. iii. 16; vii. 31; xliv. 21. No. 21. their mind! I. Remark, there is a close resemblance between the condition of those Israelites whom the prophet addressed, and those who, going after Jesus, acknowledge, "We here have no continuing city; but we seek one to come."Heb. xiii. 14. 1. The Israelites were captives, restored now to freedom. Such are the disciples of Jesus. They were in bondage to sin," were the servants of sin," and the end of their course was death; but "now, being made free from sin, and become servants to God, they have their fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.”Rom. vi. 16, &c. While in their former condition, they were the slaves of Satan-were in subjection to him, the prince of the power of the air-were the children of wrath, and members of his kingdom that is the god of this world (Eph. ii.); but how they "give thanks to the Father, that hath delivered them from the power of darkness, and hath translated them into the kingdom of his dear Son."-Col. i. 13. Great was the deliverance which Cyrus wrought for Israel, but infinitely greater is that enjoyed by them who are rescued by an almighty Deliverer from the grasp of an infernal foe. 2. The freed Israelites were travellers. Be fore them was a long and wearisome journey; it occupied Ezra and his company four months.- mised that land to Abraham, no change has Ezra vii. 9. The way was beset with dangers; taken place in the feelings of his descendants; dreary deserts were to be passed over, and men still no land is so dear to many a Jewish heart. to be encountered more ferocious than the sa- It was a country possessed of many excellenvage beasts that prowled in those deserts. So ces-was described by the Lord himself as the fearful was the prospect, that Ezra and his glory of all lands, a land flowing with milk and brethren, before they commenced the journey, honey (Ezek. xx. 6); " a good land, a land of spent some days in fasting and prayer, that God | brooks of water, of fountains and depths that might help them "against the enemy in the spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat way."-Ezra viii. 21-23. Before such compli- and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomecated ills there was reason to fear that " granates; a land of oil-olive and honey;"—a land the youths should faint and be weary, and the where bread should be eaten without scarceyoung men utterly fall."-Isa. xl. 30. ness, where no good should be lacked, whose stones were iron, and out of whose hills might brass be dug; a land for which the Lord God cared, and on which his eyes were "from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year."-Deut. viii. 7; xi. 12. even All that, in this respect, the redeemed Israel- "Worlds should not bribe me back to tread To see again my day o'erspread But mean were the excellences and attractions of the heritage of Israel, compared with those of the Christian's country. For the children of God "now desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city."-Heb. xi. 16. That better country is their own, for it is a promised land. The richest and sweetest promises insure to them the possession of this inheritance. Their Their way is also beset with foes, and those Lord has said: "If any man serve me, let him foes more formidable than roving plunderers follow me; and where I am, there shall also my or beasts of prey. These strangers and pil-servant be: if any man serve me, him will my grims have to encounter "fleshly lusts, which Father honour."-John xii. 26. "Fear not, war against the soul.”— 1 Pet. ii. 11. They have little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to wrestle not merely against "flesh and blood, to give you the kingdom."-Luke xii. 32. “In but against principalities, against powers, against my Father's house are many mansions, I go to the rulers of the darkness of this world."-- Eph. prepare a place for you: I will come again, and vi. 12. Their "adversary the devil, as a roar- receive you unto myself; that where I am, ye ing lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may may be also:"-John xiv. 23. Thus they have devour."-1 Pet. v. 8. Amidst these varied the promise of "an inheritance incorruptible dangers of "the great and terrible wilderness," and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, resome that promised fair faint and grow weary. served in heaven for them."-1 Pet. i. 4. Demas loves the present world, and forsakes the suffering servants of God.-2 Tim. iv. 10. Some, like those of Ephesus, leave " their first love," and others" draw back unto perdition." 3. Further observe, that the rescued children of Abraham, while pursuing their toilsome journey, had the expectation of a country that would amply recompense them for their anxious nights and weary days. It was their own country; God had given it to them by special promise.-Gen. xiii. 15; Deut. xxxii. 8. It was their beloved country. No land was so dear to them as the mountains and plains of Israel; and though three thousand and seven hundred years have elapsed since God pro That promised land is their beloved country. They set their affection on the things above.Col. iii. 2. To them the world is crucified.— Gal. vi. 14. Like a dying malefactor, it has lost its attractions. They look at the things which are not seen, but which are eternal.-2 Cor. iv. 18. They belong to the family of God," of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named."-Eph. iii. 15; Heb. xii. 22-24. The excellences of that better land are numberless. The Father has provided it; the Son delights to bestow it, and, in introducing his redeemed to so blissful an inheritance, sees of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied (Isa. liii. 11); the Eternal Spirit, by his quickening and |