stand. In the light of this fact how blessed, how to be desired, is the work of the Holy Spirit! No wonder that the Psalmist prayed, "Open thou mineeyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." Psal. 119: 18. Ask, and receive!

47. Blood-Has It Been Applied?

There is an old Jewish legend that on the night of the exodus from Egypt, a young maiden, "The first-born of the family," was dangerously ill. As the midnight hour approached she anxiously inquired, "Father, are you sure that the blood is on the door-posts?" "Yes, my child," he answered, “I ordered it sprinkled and the servant always obeys." It lacked at length but a few minutes of the midnight, and once more the sick girl started up from her uneasy sleep, and asked, "Are you sure that the blood is there?" The same answer was returned, but she remained distressed. At last the father lifted her in his arms and taking a light, carried her to the door to see for herself, and, lo, the blood was not there! Hastily the father killed a lamb and with his own hand made sure that the blood was there. Dear Reader, are you sure that the blood of Jesus has been applied to your soul? O see to it that when death comes it finds your spirit protected by the blood the precious blood of Jesus.

48. Blood of Christ.

No power in chemistry, it is said, can convert scarlet rays into white paper, so red blotting paper is made of them. The wondrous alchemy

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BLOOD OF CHRIST.

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of Divine grace, however, verifies the promise, 'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow."

49. Blood of Christ--Cleansing.

Isa. I 18; Rev. 7: 14. One day, it is related, Queen Victoria visited a paper-mill. The owner showed her through the works, not knowing who she was, and among other places took her into the rag-room. When she saw the filthy, dirty rags, she exclaimed: "How can these ever be made white! “Ah, lady,” was the reply, I have a chemical process of great power by which I can take the color out of even those red rags." Before she left he discovered that she was the Queen.

A few days after the Queen found lying upon her writing-desk a lot of the most beautifully polished paper she had ever seen: On each sheet were the letters of her own name and her likeness. There was also a note which read as follows: "Will the Queen be pleased to accept a specimen of my paper, with the assurance that every sheet was manufactured out of the dirty rags which she saw on the backs of the poor rag-pickers, and I trust the result is such as even the Queen may admire. Will the Queen also allow me to say that I have had many a good sermon preached to me in my mill? I can understand how the Lord Jesus can take the poor heathen, and the vilest of the vile, and make them clean, and how though their sins be as scarlet he can make them white as snow. And I can see how he can put his own name upon them; and just as these rags

transformed may go into a Royal Palace and be admired, so poor sinners can be received into the Palace of the Great King."

50. Blood-The All-cleansing.

"The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." How many aching hearts and dying heads. have been softly pillowed on that verse! It caught the eye of Capt. Hedley Vicars when he was a daring leader in sin, sent him to toss all night on a sleepless bed, and enabled him to rise calmly in the morning, believing that it was "true for him."

It was spoken by John Wesley to a highwayman who had robbed him of his purse. Many years after, that man met him as he was leaving a church, and told him that verse of Scripture was the means of a total change in his heart and life.

Luther disposed of a long catalogue of his sins which Satan showed him, by demanding that his enemy write those magic words at the bottom.

Butler, the author of the "Analogy," in his last words, said, "I have read those words a thousand times, but I never felt their meaning as now."

51. Blotting Out the Handwriting.

Col. 2 14. Sir Richard Whittington entertained King Henry V. at the Guildhall with unparalleled magnificence. The braziers in the hall were supplied with logs of rare, sweet-scented wood for fuel; but they burned with a far more delicious fragrance when the noble citizen, bringing forth the king's bonds for the repayment of the large sum of £60,000, thrust them into the blazing fire, saying, that he was happy

thus to discharge the king's obligations. When the handwriting which was against us is put away, we receive a choice mercy indeed. The blessed fire of Christ's most fragrant sufferings hath consumed all his people's sins; this is royal bounty with an emphasis. SPURGEON.

52. Boast A Mistaken.

Hume, one of the most subtle and philosophical adversaries that Christianity has had to withstand, exclaimed in a tone of exultation, "Methinks I see the twilight of this Christianity;" meaning the twilight of the evening that would deepen into the night, the awful night of atheism. But he simply mistook the time of day. It was the twilight, but, glory be to God! it was the twilight of the morning which has ever since been shining more and more unto the perfect day.

53. Boastings of Infidels Futile.

Thomas Paine, in his low, ribald language, once said, "I have gone up and down through the Christian Garden of Eden, and with my simple axe I have cut down one after another of its trees till I have scarcely left a sapling standing." But where is the proud boaster today? His memory and his name are gone, and his vaunted "Age of Reason," like himself, is buried beneath the shades of oblivion. But the "trees of the Christian Garden of Eden still flourish in immortal bloom; not so much as one of their leaves has withered, neither do the trees cease from yielding their fruit in their season.

Gibbon, in his celebrated "History of the Decline

and Fall of the Roman Empire," has left us an imperishable memorial of his enmity to the word of God. But it is a fact, stranger than fiction, that the rich estate he purchased in Switzerland, with the profits of his works, has descended to a gentleman, who, out of its rents, expends a large sum annually in the promulgation of that very gospel which his predecessor insidiously endeavored to undermine, but had not the courage openly to assail.

Voltaire boasted that "with one hand he would overthrow the edifice of Christianity which required the hands of twelve apostles to build up." But the very press which he employed at Fernay to print his blasphemies has actually been employed for years past at Geneva in printing Bibles. Thus God makes even the wrath of man to praise him. “It is the Lord's doings and is wondrous in our eyes.' 54. Books The Praise of.

A great book that comes from a great thinker,— it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too. It sails the ocean, driven by the winds of heaven, breaking the level sea of life into beauty where it goes, leaving behind it a train of sparkling loveliness, widening as the ship goes on. And what a treasure it brings to every land, scattering the seeds of truth, justice, love, and piety, to bless the world in ages yet to come.-THEODORE PARKER.

The author of "Dreamthorpe" says,-I go into my library and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingers in it, while it vibrates