"The more I strove against sin's power, Come hither, soul, I am the Way.' They were in the way when Jesus came up with them, and the Lord is with you in the way, and will bless you. Abraham's servant could say, "I, being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master's brethren." Go pray before Him, He answers your prayers. Has He not done so many a time, in a wonderful way? Has He not led you on wonderfully in a way of providence, though you have been plunged into the deeps? The Lord has been with you in the storms of persecution and temptations, in trouble or bereavement in your family; when you thought you could not endure it another hour, then the dear Lord gave you strength. How He comforts you; what blessed tokens He gives to poor needy sinners. He says, "Oh thou afflicted, tossed with tempest and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and thy foundations with sapphires.' "And they said one to another." I do not want for us to be ashamed of these things. God forbid we should; these things are eternal things, these things are connected with the eternal settlements of a Triune Jehovah, as the first-fruits are gathered through Christ's resurrection that guarantees the harvest. Christ has redeemed soul and body, and His dear people shall be raised again, and enjoy heaven with Him. Let us be more friendly, don't let us be ashamed of one another; if a man has two or three thousand pounds, sometimes it puffs him up. Why should it? It is better to come down and see a poor friend that has not a shilling, and if the Lord inclines your heart to go and give him five shillings, it is a good thing; the Lord will restore it sevenfold into your bosom. The Lord, speaking by Paul, says, "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." Now these disciples were in the way, and their hearts burned within them; the love of God was planted there, and I hope, my dear friends, you may feel the love of God in your hearts, and follow Jesus in the way. Look at Him who has gone before, who was made the Son of David, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. What a mercy, if you are led to believe in His death and resurrection; that is the foundation of the Gospel, as Paul says in the fifteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians, "I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures." Oh, what a testimony. How could they help preaching Jesus? It was burned into them. They stood up before the people, declaring that Jesus, the Son of God, had appeared in our nature, that He was crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem, that He died, was buried, and rose again; this they preached through faith in His name. If your hope of salvation is there, He will guide you, and be with you in all your ups and downs. I have proved that. Truly He is a precious Saviour, a kind Saviour. "Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?" He opens the Scriptures; you can't open them. He also opened Lydia's heart to receive His truth; He caused her to feel that she was a wretched sinner, and she was led by the blessed Spirit to receive Paul's testimony of Christ. That was the song of the Apostles, "Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness, but to them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God." There is power and life in Him. If you only felt it, it would lift you above everything to the contrary. There is power to believe, to trust, to walk, and it is all of the Lord; it all comes from the fountain head. The Lord gives these gifts freely, "according to the riches of His grace." "While He opened to us the Scriptures." To know them in verity and truth, to prove that they are indeed the truth of God, the Lord said to His disciples, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." It is a blessing to know, to have an understanding of the truth. Christ is the embodiment of truth, the fulness of truth. All power is concentrated in God's dear Son, that all men may adore, honour, and worship the Son even as they do the Father. He opens, and none can shut; He shuts, and no man can open. He has produced all those sweet feelings of love to Him in thy heart. Oh, how pleasant it was when thy mind was stayed upon Him, when thou could'st leave all in His hands, when you could say, "Not my will, but Thine be done." Outside things will never produce it; it is the work of the blessed Spirit of God in your soul, bringing you to acknowledge that whatever you have that is good is from God. And such a soul is led at times, even under bereavement, to say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord." He that commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined into our hearts. That eternal God, who made the sun, moon, and stars, and all the beautiful things spread abroad on this earth, has shone into your mind, and when He came you saw things very differently from what you had seen them before; when you saw Him by faith, He was the chiefest among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely. I like, when I am at home, to get among some of our old friends, get into their cottages, and sit on a three-legged stool; when they begin to talk about the Friend of sinners, it kindles such an affection in the breast that you could embrace them. All distinctions are laid aside when you hear the poor pilgrims tell how God has helped them, and you have communion one with another, and God's people are led to prove the necessity for it. Some people say, "I will keep it all to myself, I will say nothing to anybody;" but where the love of Christ is, they will not put it under a bushel, they will want to talk one to another, at the prayer meeting, in God's house, and by the way. How sweet it is to have fellowship and communion one with another. "And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?" I hope He will open the Word of God more fully to you and me, that we may taste of that love that is without a bottom, or a shore 66 Oh, love, thou bottomless abyss, My sins are swallowed up in thee; From condemnation I am free. While Jesus' blood, through earth and skies, May the Lord add His blessing. Amen. "HE IS ABLE TO SAVE TO THE UTTERMOST.” LINES SUGGESTED BY THE FOLLOWING TEXT, LORD'S DAY Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” -HEBREWS vii. 25. WHAT heavenly voice I hear resound Forth from the sacred Word! To sinners helpless, wholly lost, To save, is Jesus Christ!" All who by Him to God draw near, Seeing He ever, ever lives For them to intercede; He smiles, and peace and pardon gives M. B. THE PILGRIM AND HIS DWELLING-PLACE. MY DEAR FRIEND,-Through mercy I arrived safely home from L- yesterday. I felt much tried before going, but had some helps which encouraged me, and enabled me to go cheerfully. The evening text was Isaiah xxxiii. 16: "He shall dwell on high," &c. A traveller dwells not in the desert he is passing through. His dwelling-place is his home, where those are whom' he loves-where his treasure is, for he takes not his treasure with him, only his spending money, so that, if he falls in with robbers, and loses his ready cash, he cannot lose his treasure. That is safe where he dwells. Distance does not prevent his dwelling there in his affections: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." God will not entrust His people with their treasure here in the wilderness. He will choose for them, and remit to them continually what He sees needful for them. "Give us this day our daily bread." "Thy bread shall be given thee, and thy water shall be sure." As the manna fell in the wilderness day by day— no stock allowed to be kept on hand-"it bred worms and stank." It would breed pride, independence, forgetfulness of God, and would make the poor soul loathsome to his own senses. Sufficient evil always dwells within us to make us abhor ourselves. The Lord loves to hear often from His children. If they were allowed a stock in hand, He would hear from them but seldom. If it is to be "day by day our daily bread," need we be surprised if we so soon lose the comfortable feelings we are favoured with at times? Our comforts and helps are generally preceded by deep feelings of our poverty, and going in that state to a throne of grace is very humbling to our proud nature. We should prefer going in what we think would be a more becoming way, namely, not so empty and poor; and, when we are helped again, we are apt to think we shall go better next time. But no; we have still each time to go as poor and needy as ever-the same in grace as in nature, in this respect. We take our food to-day, and are satisfied; but, if we are in health, we shall be as hungry and as needy of our food tomorrow, as to-day. The evil is, spiritually, we are so often out of health, through feeding on carnal things. We come too full, and then is fulfilled that word, "He filleth the hungry with good things, but the rich He sendeth empty away." As the "Bread" is Christ, on whom the Christian lives by faith, so I understand the Water to be the Spirit proceeding as a river constantly flowing from Christ: "The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of living water, springing up into everlasting life." "This spake He of the Spirit." This differs from the Bread, which may be given at intervals. This Water is ever R welling up. The spirit of a man is his life. If there were to be a moment's cessation of his spirit dwelling in him, there would be a cessation of life. He is then dead. So there must be a constant abiding of the Spirit of Christ in a Christian, otherwise he must be dead, and perish, which is impossible, for, as Christ has declared, "They shall never perish," so here the means by which they are kept from. perishing, and the cause why they cannot perish, is the continual influx of the Spirit, "the Water of Life." May we still press on after more knowledge and enjoyment of this Bread and Water of Life, until "satisfied" (Psa. xvii. 15). I am, yours affectionately, January 13th, 1874. E. MORGAN. THOUGHTS ON REVELATION VII. 14, 15. (BY THE LATE AUGUSTUS TOPLADY, M.A., SLIGHTLY ABRIDGED.) "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple." THE Scripture particularly sets forth these three things; namely, first, what we are by nature; second, what we must be made of grace; and, third, what those who are possessed by grace shall be in glory. St. John had a blessed vision of the latter, of the glory of the saints in light, and of the delightful employ in which the spirits of just men, made perfect, are engaged. Their number exceeded the utmost arithmetic of angels and men, yet are they all minutely numbered by the Omniscient Being who wrote their names in His book, and whose praise they celebrate in ceaseless songs of adoration, harmony, and love. They stand before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms of immortal victory in their hands. Do we ask, "Who are these that are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they?" A heavenly intelligencer will inform us. Pause then, my soul, a moment. Fix thy meditation on the solemnly delightful subject, and may it have a happy tendency to raise thy affections to things above. First," they came out of great tribulation." The words signify very grievous oppression, affliction, and trouble of every kind. The distresses of God's people are various, and flow from a vast multiplicity of sources. They are tried by the world outwardly, and inwardly by their own corruptions. A believing man's greatest foes are often those of his own house, and especially the |