for a physician till you feel yourself to be ill. It was only when Peter found he was beginning to sink, that he cried, "Lord, save me! So the sinner never goes to Christ till he feels himself to be a lost, wretched being. It is not enough to know this: you must feel it. Do you say you cannot? O, then, how lost, how wretched you must be! Your very language ought to fill you with shame and fear. Whose fault is it that you do not feel? How long need it be before you feel? You can feel alarm when a murderer holds you in his grasp; you can feel sorrow when a friend is dying in agony before your eyes; and can you feel no sorrow when you think of a suffering Saviour, whose love you have abused?-no alarm, when you call to mind that fearful judgment to which you are hastening? Will you dare tell your Judge, at the great day, that you could not feel your need of a Saviour? But you say, "I do feel, at least in some degree, that I am a poor, guilty, undone sinner; but this will not save me." No, it will not. Thousands have felt this, and perished. You must also, Believe that Christ is able and willing to save you, and to save you NOW. He is able, for he is almighty. You are a great sinner, but Christ is a great Saviour. Satan has been trying to persuade you that Christ is not able to save so great a sinner as you are. It is false. He is able, and unless you believe this in all its glorious extent, you will no more be willing to trust him, than a man on the roof of a burning house will step upon a weak ladder which he knows will give way beneath him. He has in many ways shown himself to be willing. If you doubt it, you disbelieve and offend him. Does it please him, think you, when he utters this kind welcome, "WHOSOEVER cometh unto me, I will in nowise cast out," to hear you reply, "O Lord, I cannot think that thou wouldst receive such an one as me, if I should come?" Yet you do in effect say this; every moment you cherish the feeling that you are too sinful to hope for pardon. You mistake this for humility; but it is unbelief and sin. You must believe that he is willing now. Perhaps you have thought he But you ask, "Does not a sinner, at the moment of his actual submission to the Saviour, feel more fit to be par doned ?-and is not Christ more willing to pardon him than ever before?" No, NO! He was less fit to be pardoned, for his sins had been increasing every moment up to that very times; and Christ was no more willing to pardon You must believe that he is willing. him than he had always been. Every Christian will tell you that, so far as Christ's willingness was concerned, he might as well have found peace in him months or years sooner, as when he hopes he was pardoned. The next required of you is, To believe the record of God concerning him, to cast yourself unreservedly upon the Father's mercy, and trust in Christ alone for salvation. This implies that you renounce all expectations of saving yourself, or of being saved any other way than through the righteousness and redemption of Christ. Did you ever feel as if you had done all you could? Have you tried to think of something more to do to obtain hope and forgiveYou have done too much in this ness? while he expects soon to accomplish the work of salvation, he will not look to Christ to do it for him. It is not doing but yielding, that is required. But you say, "If all I have to do is to cease from attempting to save myself, and to be willing that Christ should do the work of my salvation, why do you urge me to become a Christian, or to do anything? Why not let me sit still, and wait till Christ shall come and pardon me?" And what if the man in the boat had dropped his oar, and then folded his hands and waited for the rope to save him? He might as well have died rowing as sitting still, and would as certainly have died in the latter case as in the former. But he must grasp the rope. So the sinner must lay hold upon the cross; not by waiting till he is better, but by first concluding that he shall never be any better in the way he is going on, and then looking to Christ. As he perceives the ground sinking beneath him, and feels how lost and wretched he is, filled with mingled despair and hope- despair in himself, and hope in the power and mercy of Christ-he says, "I stand upon a mountain's edge, O save me, lest I fall!" Just stop doing, and begin to trust Christ to do all, and you are safe. A man is rowing a boat on a river just above a dreadful cataract. The current begins to bear him downward, the spectators on the banks give him up for lost. "He is gone!" they all exclaim. But in another moment a rope is thrown towards the wretched man, it strikes the water near the boat; now how does the case stand? Do all the spectators call upon him to row, to row stronger, to try harder to reach the His prayer is heard-the heart of the shore, when with every stroke of his compassionate Saviour is ready to welarm the boat is evidently floating to- come him-the arms of mercy are wards the falls? O no, the eager and stretched out to receive him-a word of united cry is, "Drop your oars! Give kind welcome reaches his ear, "Son, be up your desperate attempt! TAKE HOLD of good cheer thy sins be forgiven thee.” OF THE ROPE ! But he chooses to He believes that word-he trusts that row, and in a few minutes he disap-heart-he falls into those arms, and he pears, and perishes. All his hope lay, not in rowing, but in ceasing to row; or while he was rowing he could not grasp the rope. So all the sinner's hope lies not in struggling to save himself, but in ceasing to struggle; for is safe. Now, dear reader, your question is answered. Is not the answer true? Is it not plain? Do you not see your mistake? Since all things are now ready, and the Holy Spirit not quite grieved away from your heart by your delay, by a sudden chain of reflection. His will you wait any longer? Does your heart now say, "Lord, I be lieve: help thou mine unbelief?" Will you take the Saviour at his word? Are you willing to trust him to do the whole work of your salvation? If so, lay down this book; prostrate yourself before this waiting, insulted, and still compassionate Redeemer; tell him all your heart, and he will pardon, accept, and save you. thoughts were busy upon the past, and anxiety was written on his brow. His mind was absorbed in the most thrilling scene of his childhood. He stood, in imagination, a youth at the bed-side of his dying mother. He looked again upon her pallid brow, on which beamed a heavenly smile. He heard again her voice in words of dying counsel. The faltering accents of her last prayer for the blessing of Heaven to rest upon his early years again thrilled his soul, and I saw the tear of penitence start from THE PERMANENCY OF EARLY his eye, and the sigh of contrition heave IMPRESSIONS. his heart. And I said, That mother's faithful warning lives after the thoughtlessness of twenty years, powerful to alarm, restrain, and reform. Surely, This truth reveals a power which mothers have, above all others, by which to school the immortal spirit for whatever sphere they choose. No les-childhood hath a power to retain lesson of early life is lost. Though not sons of wisdom and love, which belong perhaps made visible in its fruits for not to the experience of age. successive years, yet, from the nature of the mind, no early impression is effaced from the tablet of memory. I stood by the couch of the aged sire of ninety. I talked to him of scenes that transpired a few fleeting months before, and a vacant stare was all his reply. I asked him concerning the far-distant period of his childhood and youth, and at once the fire kindled in his eye, and a smile lighted up his furrowed brow. Words flowed apace as he glowingly described the scenes of life's fresh morning, when the old homestead rang with his merry laughter, and the brook where he angled glided along in its beauty; and I said, Surely the impressions of childhood are engraved in ineffaceable lines upon the spirit. I saw a man of middle age, unprincipled, profligate, and abandoned, but now arrested in his career of guilt I saw another, a gray-haired man of eighty, who went down to the grave from his hearth-stone in this rural village. For many years he had lived a widower, dependent upon the kindness of a cherished son. A numerous family of sons and daughters had been reared by his faithful care, and now were widely scattered abroad. As he rapidly descended the vale of life, his active mind began to fail, and before he died reason was partially dethroned. In his last delirious moments, when in the weakness of second childhood, he sighed for soothing words of love; he called not for his slumbering nor his loving children, but most touchingly pleaded for his remembered mother. His mind, in its awful wreck, retained no other impressions than those of his early life, when she dandled him upon her knee, or watched over him through the dreary night of sickness. He saw again, vivid as in real life, the form of that sainted mother, and he longed once more to hear the music of her voice, and feel the pressure of her hand upon his fevered brow. So deathless is the influence of the faithful mother over her innocent child. Her impressions upon the heart are like letters cut in brass or granite. God has elected her to a calling more curious and wonderful than the magic art of the sculptor; for her's is not to present a lifeless form of beauty to an admiring world, but one instinct with "Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn;" a workmanship which will reveal for ever the touch of its early fashioning. Mother! the tear of your child will be wiped away; its sorrows are fleeting: Not in wealth.-I care not how boundless that wealth-how exhaustless its treasures. It may gather into itself all the discovered and the undiscovered wealth of all worlds, and yet be weak. Not in numbers.-We like to have a large church. We always rejoice when additions to it are made. We believe that it will eventually become coextensive with the world. This consummation of the church's hopes and prayers might, however, be realized, and yet the church not be strong. Not in the earthly dignity and rank of its members.-The names of kings, and courts, and cabinets might have a place upon its roll; men of honour and influence, all the dignitaries of the earth, might be, nominally, sons of the church, and yet it have no strength. Not in temporal prosperity.-There "The tear down childhood's cheek which may be no open foes, internal or exter flows, Is like the dew-drop on the rose; When the next summer breeze comes by, And waves the bush, the flower is dry:" but the impress of your life upon its soul is immortal. THE STRENGTH OF A CHURCH. Not in age.-It may have lived through the lapse of centuries; it may have outstood revolutions which buried empires; it may have witnessed the setting up and throwing down of many successive thrones; it may have connection, sure and unbroken, with the first church which the Redeemer planted on the plains of Judea, and yet not be strong. nal-no fires of persecution, or floods of opposition-no discordant views and aims, and no straitened circumstances whatever; all this, and yet no strength. But a church's strength does consist in the living, growing, shining, active piety of those who compose it.-Here is the hiding of its strength-the secret of its might. It may have lived but a single year. It may be absolutely in poverty in respect to this world's goods. It may number scarcely a score of souls, and these the obscurest in the community. It may scarcely have been once gladdened by the sunshine of earthly prosperity; and yet be strong. If those few and obscure, and possibly despised Christians but be faithful to duty-if theirs be the prayer of penitence and the life of faith continually if they have a zeal and devotedness corresponding with their obligations and professions, that church cannot help being strong-strong in God, and in the power of his might; valiant for the truth, and wise to win souls unto Christ. THE FAITHFUL WIFE. GOD had revived his work in many churches in —; multitudes of weary sinners had sought and found rest in Him who is exalted to give repentance and forgiveness of sins. J 46 H was a sceptic and scoffer, but one evening was led by his affectionate, pious wife to hear the Gospel. On their return home, he solemnly asserted his intention to go no more. Why not, my dear husband ?" said the alarmed lady. "I was both provoked and insulted," said he; "that entire sermon on infidelity was preached at me; and scarcely one in the house but knew it. I am for ever done with church-going and preaching." Weeks elapsed; the wife prayed, and friends prayed for this deluded man-and God heard their cry. Said the deeply concerned Mrs H-, one evening, "Dear, will you grant me one little request ?" Being unwilling to promise till he knew its purport, she continued, "Go with me to-night to meeting." "I will go to the door, but no further," said he. "That will do," said this amiable Christian. They went together, parted at the entrance, her heart absorbed as she took her seat in fervent prayer for her beloved partner. Some minutes elapsed, and service had commenced, when suddenly the door opened, a heavy step advanced, and to her unspeakable joy, her husband calmly seated himself near her. That night Mr. H—was interested and affected. Hope beat high among his friends. The next evening after tea, as Mr. and Mrs H sat conversing at their pleasant fireside, he rose, and while a tear dropped from his cheeks, "Wife," said he, "is it not time to go to church?" She sprang from her chair, and though it was early by an hour and a half, she feared delay, and taking hat and cloak they went. That was the happiest night of her life, for Mr. H -presented himself an humble inquirer for the way of salvation, and now numbers half a score of years in his Redeemer's service. All who know him believe that, under God, he owes what he is to the sweet influences of a loving, patient, meek, Christian wife; "For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband ?" 1 Cor. vii. 16. ONLY A TRIFLE. "THAT's right," said I to my friend Simpkins, the baker, as the sickly-looking widow of Harry Watkins went out of his shop-door with a loaf of bread which he had given her-"that's right, Simpkins; I am glad you are helping the poor creature, for she has had a hard time of it since Harry died, and her own health failed her." "Hard enough, sir, hard enough; and I am glad to help her, though what I give her don't cost much—only a trifle sir!" "How often does she come?" "Only three time a week. I told her to come oftener, if she need to, but she says three loaves are plenty for her and her little one, with what she gets by sewing." "And have you any more such customers, Simpkins?" |