it with fervent prayer and longing desire, rather than prying curiosity. Study it side by side with thy sins, which made such a sacrifice necessary. So, under the influence of the Spirit of grace and supplications, shalt thou mourn for Him whom thou hast pierced, and this tenderness of spirit thou shalt find to be the principle of growth in grace-the greatest of all motive powers in the spiritual life.-GOULBURN.

APRIL 3.

And his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day.-DANIEL vi. 10.

To the Jews of every land, the temple was the crown and glory of their religious system. In their scattered synagogues and houses of prayer, they looked towards it at every service. Their gifts and offerings flowed to it in a golden stream-partly to satisfy the requirements of the law, but even more to gratify their religious devotion. Constant voluntary gifts, often of great value, streamed into the holy treasury. Tithes, also, were claimed by the Rabbis from all Jews abroad, as well as at home. "In almost every town," says Philo, "there is a chest for the sacred money, and into this the dues are put. At fixed times it is entrusted to the foremost men to carry to Jerusalem. The noblest are chosen from every town to take up the hope of all the Jews, untouched-for on this payment of legal dues rests the hope of the devout." Thus Jerusalem and the temple were the grand religious centre of

all Israel, to the remotest limits of its wanderings. The sanctuary lived in every heart. To maintain it inviolate was the one common anxiety. Foreign rulers might hold sway over Palestine, and even over Jerusalem, and so long as the temple was left untouched, submission was paid them as the will of fate. If, however, the haughtiness or greed of the enemy violated, or even only threatened, the sanctuary, there ran through the whole Jewish world a feeling of indignation that roused them at once, and at the cry that the temple was in danger, weapons were grasped, and solemn prayer rose, and one deep resolve pervaded all—to shed the last drop of their blood on the battle-field, or at the altar, for Jerusalem and the sanctuary.-GEIKIE.

APRIL 4.

For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether.-PSALM CXXXIX. 4.

Character grows for the most part insensibly, as the life grows at first. Now and then it gets notable impulses which we can mark, but commonly it grows imperceptibly, like our bodies. Single acts may show character, but they seldom form it, though some are supreme and ruling. It grows ring by ring, and the twig of this year becomes the bough of the next. There is no falsifying character rightly read; to the All-knowing the man and his act are substance and shadow. Character, like a well-cut jewel, shines whichever way we approach it. Life

without it is only a mask. What is called public opinion is the verdict of the world on it, and is courted and dreaded as their master, by kings and even by nations. Opinion, as Pascal well says, governs everything, and nothing more directly than personal character. To lose it is ostracism to a king as much as to a peasant. Honour without it is like the shout to Herod in his silver robes that he was a god, when he felt himself being eaten of worms. A good name is the best jewel in any crown; the pearl of great price, without which all others are a lie. In common life character is existence.-GEIKIE.

APRIL 5.

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. EPHESIANS V. 19.

We have said that good and holy sentiments are the oil which feeds the lamp of prayer. They are emphatically so. There are seasons known to every devout person, when the vessel of the heart seems to run dry, and the flame of prayer burns low in the socket. You may then replenish the vessel by reading the favourite spiritual author. Pass your eye once more over that marked passage-over those words which glow with such a fervour of devout sentiment, and the oil will flow again, drop by drop, into the vessel. Particularly may this be done with Christian poetry. Poetry is the voice of the affections, and, therefore, has a peculiar tendency to quicken the affections; the music of David's harp

chased away from Saul the evil spirit of moody sullenness. Elisha's minstrel, playing with his hand, laid such a spell upon the prophet's mind, that the hand of the Lord came upon him, and he prophesied. And the minstrelsy of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs has often brought the Christian out of a state of mind in which prayer seemed a labour and a drudgery, if not an impossibility, into that calm and holy frame in which he could again put forth spiritual energies, and has found himself able to renew his interrupted intercourse with God. Give the specific a trial, and you shall ere long know its virtue for yourself.— GOULBURN.

APRIL 6.

"Christian! seek not yet repose,"
Hear thy guardian angel say;

Thou art in the midst of foes;

"Watch and pray."

The age of man passes on, and real trials have to be grappled with when life is mounting to its noontide. Narrow circumstances, sickness, bereavement, the manifold snares of the great world, the lures of ambition, or sensuality, or covetousness beset the man on all sides. These great trials of faith and patience find themselves represented, in miniature, in the little crosses, ruggednesses, unpleasant collisions of one day's work. Temptations in the heat of conversation to overstate things, or to use acrimonious

language, or to throw out (for the sake of amusement) words bordering on the profane, temptations to lose one's temper, to indulge appetite in eating, to resign one's self to calls of ease and sloth; all this is the miniature crucible, in which, day by day, the faith and patience of God's children are tried and approved. Often the noon-day sun waxes hot upon them. The bright promise of the morning is overclouded. There are fightings without and fears within, oppositions, vexations, annoyances, anxieties, apprehensions. It is painful to thwart natural inclinations, as a Christian must do several times in each day; it is called in the Scripture, "crucifixion of the flesh;" and crucifixion cannot but be painful. But comfort thee, faithful soul! The night is coming when, if thou wilt endure patiently at present, the fever fit of passion, or anxiety, or excitement shall have worn off, and the Saviour shall fold thee under His wing, and thou shalt sit down under His shadow with great delight.-GOULBURN.

APRIL 7.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.-MATTHEW vi. 28.

The Gospels show throughout that nothing escaped the eye of Jesus: the lilies and the grass of the field, as He paints them in the Sermon on the Mount; the hen, as it gathers its young, in its mother's love, under its widespread wings; the birds of the air, as they eat and drink without care, from the bounty