DECEMBER 13.

"While over life's wide darkling plain
Unheeding as we roam,

Through many a path of joy and pain,
God leads his children home.

And though sometimes in prospect viewed,
The winding way seems dark and rude;
Ah! who the backward scene hath scann'd,
But blessed his Father's guiding hand."

To look back and see all the way by which the
Lord our God hath brought us, to scan and trace
the guidance of his providence, and to learn all
the workings of the riches of his grace, through all
the events and changes of our earthly pilgrimage,
and fully to understand and comprehend all his
purposes of mercy and love towards us, both
before and after we desired to be found in Christ
Jesus; this, all this, will be the delightful
and everlasting exercise of the soul in the king-
dom of heaven. At present, a thousand infir-
mities and impediments lie in our way, in thus
reviewing the Lord's dealings towards us.
see as through a glass, darkly, and know but in
part. Yet even that little part, so indistinctly
seen, and so little understood, is enough to fill
the heart with gladness and the lips with praise.
And so it ever must be; because the Lord doth
all things well. Henceforth, then, O my gracious
Redeemer, do thou enable me to lie passive in
thy hands! let me be found seeking to do thy
blessed will through the hours of the day, as
each day passes over my head. And O! thou
Searcher of all hearts,

"Is there a thing beneath the sun,

That strives with thee my heart to share?
Ah! tear it thence, and reign alone,
The Lord of every motion there!

Thus shall my heart from earth be free,
When it hath found repose in thee."

We

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DECEMBER 14.

Pilgrim, burthen'd with thy sin,
Come the way to Zion's gate;
There, till mercy speaks within,

Knock, and weep, and watch, and wait:
Knock-he knows the sinner's cry;
Weep-he loves the mourner's tears;
Watch-for saving grace is nigh ;

Wait-till heavenly grace appears."

To feel the burden of sin, and then to go in faith and hope with our load to Jesus for deliverance and peace, will never be our soul-saving experience, if the great enemy of all righteousness can prevent it. First, he will endeavour to keep us unmindful of and unbelieving in the sinfulness of sin, and next he will labour to implant despair of mercy in our bosoms. Reader! art thou groaning under the discovery and weight of thy sins. Art thou looking hither and thither for consolation, and still art thou sinking in despondency? Oh, turn unto Jesus, the stronghold and refuge open for every prisoner of hope. In defiance of all that the adversary can suggest, do thou determine to believe in those many and great promises given by a gracious and faithful God, on purpose that, through patience and comfort of them, thou, on all occasions, mightest have hope. Oh, do but persevere in knocking, weeping, watching, and waiting, and, by and by, thy sorrows shall be turned into joy, and all the days of thy mourning shall be ended.

"Hark, it is thy Saviour's voice!

Welcome pilgrim to thy rest!'

Now within the gate rejoice,

Safe, and own'd, and bought, and blest.
Safe-from all the lures of vice;

Own'd-by joys the contrite know;

Bought by love and life the price;

Blest-the mighty debt to owe!"

DECEMBER 15.

"It is a good thing for the heart to be established with grace." Heb. xiii. 9.

"The Lord is faithful, who shall establish you, and keep you from evil."-2 Thess. iii. 3.

How many professors of religion are strangers to this establishment in grace at this day! Ever learning, and never coming to a profitable knowledge of the truth; ever running hither and thither, and almost every month carried away by divers and strange doctrines. Vainly puffed up with a fleshly mind, and ever anxious for change and for something new, they mix up the politics and revolutionary spirit of the world with the profession of the gospel, and seem determined to serve Christ and Belial in harmonious conjunċtion. Oh! happy is that humble Christian whose steps are ordered by the Lord; who desires and prays for grace to be kept from these evils of the times; who prays and longs to be more and more established in all the mind and spirit of Christ Jesus, and to be rooted and grounded in the faith, the fear, and love of God. Such a soul will be preserved from the snares of the enemy, and enabled to hold on his way in safety and true wisdom among all the sophistries, and flesh-pleasing doctrines, and revolutionary contentions of agitators and politico-religious leaders. He shall be "like a rock of the sea, which is beaten with the tide, and washed with retiring waters, and encompassed with mists, and appears in several figures, but it always dips its foot in the same bottom, and remains the same in calms and storms, and survives the revolution of ten thousand tides, and there shall dwell till time and tides be no more.' Thus shall it be with the man whom the Lord guides by his counsel and establishes with his grace.

DECEMBER 16.

"Thus saith the Lord God; I will even rend it with a stormy wind in my fury."-Ezekiel xiii. 13.

WHEN the eye of the traveller, at this season, gazes on the stormy darkness gathering and thickening fast around him, and looks forward to a long night of exposure to its gloom and fury, it may be that his thoughts run back to those evenings of summer when he has stood, and looked, and wondered, and looked again and again with admiration on the glories of a setting sun and a tranquil sky. At such recollections the man will feel the contrast in a way he could not otherwise experience. And should it be his unhappy lot to sink and expire under the fury of the night, far from refuge and far from help, how will such recollections embitter his last thoughts! But there is a stormy wind of a more dreadful nature, that will rend in its fury many a wayfaring man in his journey through life and as that storm gathers, and beats him down where no shelter is to be found, how will his soul be agonized, if he has to remember that there were once sweet summer seasons of spiritual blessings shining all around him, and

that he once tasted of the heavenly gift," and once beheld something of the glories of the world to come, but that he fell away, and by his conduct tempted Satan to tempt him, and that now he is without hope! Most merciful God! grant that whatever darkness covers the earth, the light of thy countenance may shine on my soul; that whatever storms and wintry tempests may rage without, I may be blessed with thy peace within me, for Jesus Christ my Redeemer's sake.

DECEMBER 17.

"O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me: it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

Whither shall I

go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee." Psalm cxxxix. 1-12.

"WHAT a majestic, what an awful, what a glorious manifestation of God is furnished us by this passage of Scripture! We are here taught that God is essentially present in all places, and to all beings; that he is equally present in this world, and in the heavens; that he dwells alike throughout the universe of being, and the uninhabited regions of immensity. That he comprehends, at the same moment of time, every thing possible and actual; that eternity, past and future, is perfectly present to his eye, and that no distance of place or duration can be any thing to him; that no retreat can conceal, and no darkness cover any being or event from his sight. That the mind of man is equally open to his view with the body; the thoughts and affections, as much so as the words and actions; that hell is as equally naked and present to him as heaven; and that the destroyer and the seraph are alike without a covering."-(Dwight.)