man, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night.' By this use of watching, we are constantly reminded of the necessity of counting our days, so that they may not pass unobserved, or unimproved. Secondly, Watching is applied to the looking out for coming events of any kind. This is likewise exemplified by Isaiah in these words; 'Thus saith the Lord, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth—and he hearkened diligently with much heed.' This watching includes the great duty of observing the ways of providence, and the signs of the times in which God has cast our lot. Thirdly, Watching is applied to the guardianship of property, as when our Lord declares, if the good man of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.' Fourthly, Watching is applied to guarding a place against enemies. Thus Nehemiah, when endangered, 'prayed to God, and set a watch against them,' and thus the Lord says, by Isaiah, to his lately desolate and forsaken, but now restored and protected church, 'I have set a watch on thy walls, O Jerusalem.'

'seeing our adversary goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.'

But, while watchfulness suggests a wakeful sense of accountability-the call to prayer reminds us of our constant dependence. Prayer without watchfulness, is to ask of God what we judge not worth the keeping; watchfulness without prayer is to attempt to keep the treasure we have never actually received. For ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you,' are the precious promises upon which alone we can rely for preserving what we possess, or obtaining what yet we require. Whatever is the object of watchfulness should, therefore, immediately become the subject of prayer.

Prayer is the heart making report of its watchfulness to God, and offering therein all its desires for things agreeable to his will. But the main object, both of watchfulness and prayer, is to escape entering into temptation. To this preservation watchfulness and prayer contribute in two ways. First, as the means of obtaining, through grace, the counsel, protection, guidance, or deliverance of God; and, secondly, as the instruFrom these, which are the chief views of mental means of keeping us from evil. The man watching, we are forcibly reminded of the follow-who is watching against sin, is, by the very temper ing circumstances. of watchfulness, rendered unacceptable to sinners, so that they entice him not; while the man who prays without ceasing, is, by that very prayerfulness, so occupied with higher things as to be habitually rendered insensible to the lower things of the earth.

1. Of our constant liability either actually to forget, or live as if we did forget, the progress of time, the decay of youth, the advance of age, the nearness of death, and the certainty of judgment. How few feel that they are growing old, even when gray hairs appear! How frequently does even sickness fail to arouse to a sense of mortality! How needful, therefore, to watch our days, as we watch a time-keeper, to recollect how many are gone, and think of how few are to

come.

2. By our Lord's call to watching, we are reminded of our constant danger of becoming absorbed in the affairs of time, to the sad neglect of eternity.

3. By the call to watching, we are reminded of the invaluable treasure of which God has appointed us stewards, and of the awful terms of responsibility upon which our trust is held. This treasure is not merely our own souls, but frequently the souls of others, for whom we watch, as they who must give account.

4. We are, finally, reminded that we watch in a state of warfare, surrounded by enemies.-The world with its pomps, vanities, and allurements; the flesh with all its weaknesses; the devil with all his wiles-so that not even one moinent's relaxation can be permitted from our vigilance;

If we then be risen with Christ, let us seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Let us set our affection on things above, not on things upon the earth; for what is a man profited, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what would a man give in exchange for his soul?

How strange that Christ should be in an agony in the garden, while his disciples have ceased to watch; how much stranger, if he be interceding in heaven, and his disciples have ceased to pray. Let us watch without sleeping; let us pray without ceasing.

TWENTY-SIXTH DAY.-MORNING.

'So he drove out the man,' Gen. iii. 24. WHEN the earth arose from the hand of God in all the freshness and beauty of creation, he chose out a special residence for man, and 'planted a

garden eastward in Eden, and out of the ground | themselves again beneath the trees of the garden. made the Lord God to grow every tree that is And had God permitted this, they would soon pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree have concluded him to be such an one as themof life also in the midst of the garden, and the selves—indeed, had he permitted this, he would tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the have been such as themselves. They had beLord God took the man, and put him into the lieved a lie-God would have told an untruth. garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it. And They had practised sin-God had not punished itthe Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of and between the culprit who sins, and the judge every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; who neglects to punish, the sole difference lies in but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, rank; there is none in disposition or character. thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eat- The one is a culprit, because he breaks a law— est thereof thou shalt surely die.' the other, because he does not enforce it. The act of God in 'driving' out our first parents, is, therefore, a practical revelation of that 'indignation and wrath' with which he regards every sina revelation, not merely necessary for the exhibition of his own character, but equally necessary for man, who must see, before he can fly from, the terrors of the wrath to come.'

Thus amply endowed with all that was good for use, and fair to look upon-thus strictly cominanded, and thus solemnly warned,- -man stood without any excuse, when he coveted the sole royalty that God had reserved, and violated the sole command to which obedience was enjoined. Hitherto God had appeared to man merely as a gracious Benefactor, now he appears as an offended Judge. Hitherto he had spoken in the sweetness of blessing, now he speaks in the bitterness of the curse. The innocent creature he had put into the garden,' the guilty creature he now drives

out.

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'Behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God. On them who fell, severity.' But in a God of mercy, why this severity? Because the God of mercy is also a God of truth. God had given a reasonable command, enforced by a reasonable penalty, and the truth of God must be kept. Yea, let God be true, and every man a liar. Were one jot or tittle of God's word to fail, God would cease to be a competent or righteous Judge. He would cease to be competent for if he gave a law that required not to be enforced, the enactment of such a law proved his unfitness to legislate. He would also cease to be righteous for if he enforced not his law, he violated his word—and thus ceasing to be a righteous law to himself, must thereby cease to be a righteous Judge for others. The word of the Lord, therefore, cannot be broken; but sin must be followed by a correspondent punishment.

The punishment inflicted upon our first parents implies deep displeasure against sin. The Lord God did not simply 'send' them away. He 'drove' them out from the garden. Had he merely commanded them to go, there had been no reasonable expectation of obedience-for they who had disobeyed when innocent, would much more disobey when guilty. Had he merely commanded them to go-they who had so readily invented excuses for one sin, would no less readily have defended another. They would still have lingered around their earliest home, and hid

Our first parents did not attempt to deny their sin-they merely attempted to excuse it; the woman charged her guilt upon the serpent, the man referred his to the woman-both pleading temptation, not merely as the cause, but also as the defence of their rebellion.

And so do sinners still continue to plead, not with, but against God. Some sinners allege, in their excuse or defence, the peculiarity of their natural temper. On this ground, for example, some either palliate or deny the guilt of sudden anger with all its unseemly accompaniments and lamentable consequences. Others allege the power of natural appetite, or of acquired habit; while habit is again traced to the society and circumstances by which they were surrounded, inveigled, or betrayed. In a word, any plea, but that of guilty,' will the sinner put in before God; or, if forced to this at last, even still some allegation of the littleness of the sin, and of the greatness of the temptation, will be found on the lip or in the heart, in order to diminish the guilt, or to mitigate the sentence. Now, because, in reality, all this is but to transfer the sin back to God—and, in some way or other, to lay it at his door, it became absolutely necessary that God should not only exhibit the full detail of the curse, but that he should deprive the sinner of the scene of blessedness with which he had been originally endowed; that sin and misery thus meeting together, in the memory of past joys, and the pressure of present sorrows, might become as medicines in the hand of the great Physician, for working out, in mercy, the sinner's final cure; that the miserable exile might desire a better country; the unhappy outcast a father's home.

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Eden, the sad and terrible emblem of the final | merciful Saviour!

Come unto me, all ye that sentence against impenitent souls, to whom the labour and are heavy laden.' Toil-worn with your Judge, on the throne of his glory, shall say, 'De-work, down-borne by your burden, ‘Come unto part from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire?' me'-but not that I may task you more heavily, Here sin and misery are in temporal, there in as Pharaoh did Israel when he sought for libertyeternal union! But miserable sinners though but come unto me, and I will give you rest.' we be, while here our state is never hopeless. And learn of me,' it is added, for I am meek Here the cherub guard is not only withdrawn and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest to your Look souls.' from the tree of life, but Jesus says, And because we unto me, and be ye saved.' were under the curse, he himself became a curse for us;' and because we were in sin, he himself bare our sins in his own body on the tree;' and because we were in misery, he bare our griefs, and carried our sorrows;' and because we were exiles and outcasts without rest from our profitless toils, Jesus therefore said, and says, 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'

Let us then contemplate, first, the characters invited-all that labour and are heavy laden.' Since sin entered into the world, labour has been 'And unto Adam he said, Bethe lot of man. cause thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of itcursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee-and in the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.' The earth, cursed in one place with ob

Let us then flee to the refuge, to lay hold upon the hope set before us! Once were we, in Adam, expelled from Eden; now are we, in Jesus, in-stinate barrenness, in another with perverse provited, entreated to return. Let us linger no more-let us doubt no more. He who was and is just to punish-was and is also mighty and merciful to save. He who righteously drove out the man,' is the same who, in grace, restores him to glory.

TWENTY-SIXTH DAY.-EVENING.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,' Mat. xi. 28. SOME parts of scripture seem specially intended either for particular characters, or special circumstances. Thus the 'twenty-third' has been called 'the child's psalm'—and certainly from the lips, as it were, of babes and sucklings,' it has been Thus the other. any more frequently heard than 'hundred and third' has also been denominated, 'the sick man's psalm,'-and how often, in the valley of the shadow of death,' it has been a lamp to his feet, and a light to his paths,' every one can tell, whom office, duty, or sympathy, has called to visit the bed of affliction, or the house of mourning. But, perhaps, even beyond all these and similar blessed portions, the words upon which our meditation turns, have been employed to give light in darkness, comfort in sorrow, strength in weakness, and even hope in despair. What surpassing beauty, what attractive emphasis in every word! 'Come!' O! why is it not 'Go?' Why not 'depart' from me? 'Come unto me!' To Jesus! The incarnate God, the mighty, the

ductiveness, yields only to labour; nor does win-
ter in its cold, or summer in its warmth, afford
any interval of relaxation from continuous toil.
And all this labour of man is for the mouth, and
yet the appetite is not filled.' But how greatly
is this labour increased, when we contemplate the
various arts that man must cultivate, the compli-
cated manufactures in which he must engage, in
order to provide the necessaries, conveniencies, or
comforts of his short and weary life! And how
when
much greater still becomes human labour,
the body almost comes to rest, and the mind,
either from choice, habit, or compulsion of cir-
cumstances, becomes the labourer in the field of
thought.

The contemplative investigator of truth alone can tell how true are the words of Solomon when he said- Much study is a weariness to the flesh.'

But how often is this mental and bodily labour most grievously increased by disastrous disappointments in all our studies, purposes, and plans! How much heavier grows our burden still when we consider those sad bereavements of dear and beloved ones whom we expected to aid in our toils, to share in our successes, to divide our sorrows, or to double our joys! And how grievous becomes our labour, how intolerable our burden, when debilitated by sickness, or tormented with pain !—when 'wearisome nights are appointed to us, and tossings to and fro to the dawn of the day'-when in the morning we say, Would God it were even! and at even, Would God it were morning!'

But the most grievous labour and burden of

our state ever arise from the power of temptation, sake his way, and the unrighteous man his and the consciousness of sin. The spirit of a thoughts, and return unto the Lord, and he will man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he spirit who can bear?' This wound of the spirit will abundantly pardon.' sin alone can inflict, the conscience alone can feel. This burden alone is intolerable, for every other may be shaken off, or borne up-but sin unremoved must sink the soul into eternal misery.