As Can you unto My Father, and your Father, and to My God, and your God." Believer! there is a voice here which speaks, and asks, whether you trust in that one work of your great Redeemer, or are trying, in ways which He has forbidden, to work out your own Salvation? Will you not rather rest on His all-sufficiency? one writer has said, "Christ is resting, and will not you, too, rest? add ought to that which He thought so perfect? Is He, the one Almighty Saviour, reposing in His Sabbatic rest, and must you go on working for salvation? For shame, troubled and tempesttossed ones! truly ye are disquieting yourselves in vain, go and REST.” Often go and ponder those blessed words, "It is finished." IT is finished!-0 what pleasure Do those gracious words afford; XIII. The Pilgrim's Rest. "TELL me, O Thou whom my soul loveth, where Thou feedest, where Thou makest Thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside, by the flocks of Thy companions?"-SOL. SONG i. 7. "LET us labour, therefore, to enter into that rest."-HEBREWS iv. 11. EVER to men of God the hills were dear, Plucked the wet olive-pledge of hope and cheer, While God on Sinai thundered from above. Then hail, calm sentinels of heaven, again! Where all home longings find a home, at last! THIRTEENTH DAY. TRAV RAVELLERS through a dry and thirsty land, where no water is, often suffer much from that painful sensation, thirst. The extreme lengthiness or dreariness of the journey is as nothing when compared to this. So the Christian pilgrim suffers. He has hunger, thirst, nakedness, weariness, and cold to encounter, and, besides this, many cruel and bitter enemies. With him, however, the barrenness of earth is not so much a matter of repining. He knows that he is a pilgrim, surrounded by many dangers, exposed to many storms, and foes the most numerous, powerful, and malicious; and he is animated with the hope of a triumphant victory ere long. That he should have to encounter so many moral desert wastes, is saddening enough to his spirit, but he turns to that sweet and sure promise, “ I will make her wilderness a pool of water, and her dry land springs of water." The Saviour, when on earth, said, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of;" and so God hath not left one of His pilgrim band without some secret consolation" the shadow of a great Rock in a weary land." It is a glorious privilege to have an interest in the Divine favour; for whatever be the toils of the Christian pilgrim, or the conflicts of the Christian warrior, God is his refuge, a very present help in trouble. He looks behind, and sees that much of his journey is already accomplished, that many of the dangers are already past, and so he sings of happy deliverances and tender mercies; he looks forward, across the river that divides the place of his journey from the "land that is afar off," and there he sees, by faith, the fields that are clothed with living green, knowing that there is his future rest, and rejoices in prospect of a glorious home; and that home is HEAVEN! In that home there is everlasting rest. But even now the pilgrim's song tells of that sweet rest, which is afforded as refreshment on the road. "The Lord is my shepherd; He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters." He always deals with His children as a father; if He lay affliction upon their loins until they droop or faint, He will provide them also with consolations by the way, and give them "rest from sorrow." Blessed rest for the weary pilgrim! Traveller, stay not; urge on thy way a few more marches through the desert; the time cannot be long; the end cannot be distant. REST must be near. OUR journey is a thorny maze, There on a green and flowery mount And with transporting joys recount |