cheerful, not degrade ourselves; that we may be merry, not derided; for health, not for disease; to correct the weakness of the body, not to destroy the power of the soul. God has honoured you by the gift, why do you disgrace yourself by the excess? For if the holy Timothy, even when unwell, and suffering from frequent weakness, used not wine until entreated by the teacher, what excuse have we, if being well, we drink to drunkenness? For he said, Use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities: but such an one says,Use a little wine for thy frequent sallies of scurrility, and for other base lusts, such as drunkenness gives birth to.' Wine is given for joy; for it is said, 'Wine makes glad the heart of man; but you destroy its virtue; for what gladness is it to be from yourself, to have a thousand distresses, to see all things working round you, to live in dreadful darkness, and, like those who are in a fever, to need the head to be well soaked with oil; to turn day into night, and light into darkness; and, with open eyes, to be blind to whatever is before you, to pierce yourself through with so many and terrible calamities ?”

THE LAW OF LOVE.

"And it came to pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son, Bring me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. And the oil stayed," 2 Kings iv. 6.

POUR forth the oil-pour boldly forth:

It will not fail until

Thou failest vessels to provide,

Which it may largely fill.

But, soon as such are found no more,
Though flowing broad and free,
'Till then, and nourished from on high,
It straightway staunched will be.
Dig channels from the streams of love,
Where they may broadly run;

For LOVE has ever-flowing streams
To fill them every one.

But if, at any time, thou cease
Such channels to provide,
The very founts of love for thee
Will soon be parch'd and dried.
For we must share, if we would keep
That good thing from above-
Ceasing to give, we cease to have,

Such is the law of love.

From the Irish Friend.

UPON THE SIGHT OF AN ECLIPSE OF THE SUN.

LIGHT is an ordinary and familiar blessing; yet so dear to us, that one hour's interception of it sets all the world in a wonder. The two great luminaries of heaven, as they impart light to us, so they withdraw light from each other. The sun darkens the full moon, in casting the shadow of the earth upon her opposed face; the new moon repays this blemish to the sun, in the interposing of her dark body betwixt our eyes and his glorious beams; the earth is troubled at both. O God, if we be so afflicted with the obscuring of some piece of one of thy created light, for an hour or two, what a confusion shall it be, that thou, who art the God of these lights, (in comparison of whom they are mere darkness) shalt hide thy face from thy creature for ever! O thou that art the Sun of righteousness, if every of my sins cloud thy face, yet let not my grievous sins eclipse thy light. Thou shinest always, though I do not see thee; but, oh, never suffer my sins so to darken thy visage, that I cannot see thee.

UPON AN ARM BENUMBED.

How benumbed and, for the time, senseless is this arm of mine become, only with too long leaning upon it!

Whiles I used it to other services, it failed me not; now TRACT MAG., THIRD SERIES, NO. 99, MARCH 1842.

D

that I have rested upon it, I find cause to complain. It is no trusting to an arm of flesh; on whatsoever occasion we put our confidence therein, this reliance will be sure to end in pain and disappointment. O God, thine arm is strong and mighty; all thy creatures rest themselves upon that, and are comfortably sustained; oh, that we were not more capable of distrust, than thine omnipotent hand is of weariness and subduction.

UPON A DEFAMATION DISPERSED.

WERE I the first or the best that was ever slandered, perhaps it would be somewhat difficult to command myself patience. Grief is wont to be abated either by partners, or precedents; the want whereof dejects us beyond measure, as men singled out for patterns of misery. Now, whiles I find this the common condition of all that ever have been reputed virtuous, why am I troubled with the whisperings of false tongues? O God, the devil slandered thee in Paradise. O Saviour, men slandered thee on earth more than men or devils can reproach me; thou art the best, as thou art the best that ever was smitten by a lying and venomous tongue: it is too much favour that is done me by malicious lips, that they conform me to thy sufferings; I could not be so happy if they were not so spiteful. O thou glorious pattern of reproached innocence, if I may not die for thee, yet let me thus bleed with thee.

WHY AM I AFFLICTED?

Bp. Hall.

WHEN any trouble is upon thee, look to the inward root of it; look to sin as the cause, and thou shalt find it so. It may be, the immediate cause and instrument is some outward thing, some enemy, some sickness, etc. But who hath permitted it to work? is it not the Lord? and what is the motive of his permission but thy sin? Men may have many several motives to do this or that, but nothing moves the Lord but sin and grace. When an enemy comes upon thee, say not, This man is the cause of this evil; but, The Lord hath suffered him to work, and sin hath occasioned this suffering. Shishak was but the vial through whose hands God poured out his wrath, 2 Chron. xii. 5, 7 : so I

:

may say, Sickness is but the vial; it is the Lord's wrath that is poured out in it. Amend this common error; for men are ready to seek out the natural causes of the evils that befall them if it be sickness, they look to such a circumstance in diet, or cold, as the cause of it; so if they miscarry in any enterprize, what folly and oversight hath been the cause of it. These are but the natural and immediate causes; but Christians should look to and seek out for the supernatural. When there came a famine upon the land of Judah for three years, 2 Sam. xxi. 1, the natural cause was evident, which was a great drought, for that famine was healed by rain afterwards, and in those hot countries famine came by drought alone; but, David rested not here, but went to the Lord, and inquired the reason, the sin that was the cause of it, and God told him it was for "the sin of Saul and his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites." Wise statesmen, when they find a mean person in a treason, rest not there, but search out who was the contriver of the plot. When Jacob saw the angels descend and ascend, he looked to the top of the ladder, and saw the Lord there, sending them to and fro. Look not to the one or two steps of the ladder that are next to thee, but to the top of the ladder, and there thou shalt see the Lord sending one angel to afflict thee, another to preserve thee. If you say, How shall I know for what sin it is? Pray earnestly, and inquire as David did, and as Joshua did, when they saw the people flee before their enemies, that God would reveal to thee the particular sin and if thou canst not find out the particular sin, for it may be some sin long ago committed, or some secret sin, yet be sure that sin is the cause of it; for as in the works of nature, we know the vapours arise out of the earth, and ascend invisibly, but come down again in storms and showers which we are able to see, and are sensible of, so the judgments may be open and manifest enough, but not the sins, but some secret sin that passed by thee without notice may be the cause of it.

Preston.

THE TYPE AND THE ANTITYPE.

THE Israelitish tribes were a rebellious, stiff-necked, and disobedient people. They soon forgot the Divine goodness,

and provoked God in the wilderness. They murmured against God, and against Moses; they loathed that miraculous supply of food, the manna, by which they had been so long, and so wonderfully sustained. This drew down upon them the righteous displeasure of Jehovah, and he commanded the serpents to bite them. The serpents obeyed, and many of the people died. "Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses," Psa. cvii. 6. But how singular was the manner in which this was done! Were the fiery flying serpents destroyed? This the great God could have done in a moment, if it had pleased him; or he could have driven them to some distant corner of the wilderness, quite out of the way of the tribes of Israel. But this was not God's way of working, he had a higher end in view. The serpents were suffered still to live, and their bite was deadly as before. By God's command, a brazen serpent was raised on a pole, that it might be seen to a distance in all directions; and whosoever caught but a glance of this lifeless object, had no cause to fear the bite of the real serpents, though its poison was deadly. "Happy art thou, O Israel: a people saved by the Lord," Deut. xxxiii. 29. They sinned, but Divine compassion still abounded; they were dying, but here was the remedy.

In this remarkable type we see at once our dreadful state by nature, and the great remedy of the gospel. The Saviour himself declares, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life," John iii. 14, 15.

Satan and his angels are the fiery flying serpents, who are studious to destroy the souls of men. They have stung the race of Adam, and their deadly poison has been infused into our whole nature and frame; so that we may truly say with the prophet, "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint," Isa. i. 5. Does the reader feel this to be a true description of himself? "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," Matt. ix. 12. Sin has, indeed, rendered this world a waste howling, a terrible wilderness, a land of affliction and anguish, whence come the viper and the fiery flying serpent. The wound may seem to be slight, but it is nevertheless deep-seated and mortal, unless