we shall look back upon it as we now do on the creation of the world, the deluge, or the death of Christ.

And O! above all things, let us read aright this apparent slackness of God in bringing his own judgments to pass; and may his grace save us from the crimson sin of turning his own mercy into a weapon of offence against the honour of his name. Why is God so slow in the accomplishment of his threatenings, or the fulfilment of his promises? Why is the day of judgment so long delayed? O! just because the heart of man is hard, and God is gracious. In the plans of his grace he has a great work to accomplish before the coming of the great day; a work no less than the total reformation of the human race, and putting all things under Christ. If God then be slow it is because the hearts of men are slow in ceasing from evil, and learning to do well.' And so is it in regard to individuals, and the judgment that awaits us all at death. Why, we may ask ourselves, are we still alive? O! it is because God is willing that we, as indeed all men, should be saved. And therefore does he give us time to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. There is a time allowed, in sufficient measure, for all men; for God hath no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but desireth rather that all should come to him by repentance and live.' Why then should a single soul be lost? And why, O God, should that soul be mine?

THIRTEENTH DAY.-EVENING.

Likewise, I say unto you, There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth,' Luke xv. 10.

As the resources of redeeming love are, like itself, infinite, so is there an endless variety in its ways of winning souls to God. Of the many strings in the human heart, there is not one which the author and finisher of our faith has left untouched and untried, or rather upon which he has not brought every imaginable influence to bear, in his persevering endeavours to awaken within them a response of love, and wring out of them a tear of repentance. When he has tried us with the power of terror, and the fearful looking for of judgments, he addresses himself to the tenderest chord of our nature, and seeks to allure us over to himself and to heaven by voices of love and visions of delight. To change, after his own example, the figure, he is at one time checking us on the road to ruin by an exhibition of its

unutterable woes; and when he has terrified but not turned us, or turned us in the outward man, but not the inner, he opens as it were the gates of heaven, and directs upon our softest sensibilities the power of all its allurements.

In the passage before us, we find the untiring Saviour bringing into action the power of sympathy, and endeavouring to soften us into repentance by an impression of the joy, excited by this greatest of all revolutions in the life of man, among the sinless inhabitants of heaven.

Our

Of our fallen state, and our natural alienation from God, it is one of the many symptoms that we ourselves have no fellow-feeling with the holy angels, and are consequently slow to comprehend that they can have any sympathy with us. wrong feeling upon this subject is fed by wrong. thinking, and the heart defrauded of a pleasing and powerful sympathy by an error of the head. For in attempting to conceive the happiness of heaven, and its holy angels, we are apt to suppose that just because it is perfect and equable in its own nature, it can derive no accession from the events of human life; which, being in themselves fluctuating and uncertain, would seem to imply similar fluctuations in any order of felicity that can be affected by their changes.

We suppose, in short, that just as happens to ourselves, if joy be diffused over the family of heaven by the repentance of a sinner, or any tidings of great gladness from the earth, their joy must have been incomplete before; or, what amounts to the same thing, would have been less had such a repentance not taken place. And thus do we think ourselves forced, as long as we admit the perfection of their blessedness, to doubt the participation of angels in our welfare. We should observe, however, that as they are said to rejoice in the arrival of glad tidings from the earth, it is never said that the amount of their joys is thereby enlarged, and then we have only to conceive that the joyous events of our globe, such as the accession of a human soul to the kingdom of grace, may be one of the many sources that feed the ever-full and equable river of their bliss. Now this is just what Christ tells us; and there is therefore no other barrier between our hearts and the influence of such a beautiful truth but the want of all fellow-feeling, on our part, with the holy inhabitants of heaven, occasioned by sin, and perpetuated by impenitence.

Are we inclined, moreover, to marvel at such an insignificant event as the repentance of a single sinner, extending its effects all the way to heaven, and contributing to the bliss of all the holy angels? Can such a ripple in the stream of time communi

expressly commanded to go forth, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and teaching them, moreover, to observe all things, whatsoever I, the Lord, hath commanded them. With such a view of divine grace before us, can we be blind, or dead to the obligations thus lying upon all who have been made partakers of its blessings, to make themselves willing and unwearying instruments in working out the Redeemer's will, and promoting the regeneration of mankind. It is at once the duty, and the manifest interest of every Christian church, to labour continually in the great work of selfextension; for in no other way can its own security be maintained; and still more evidently can the injunctions of our text in no other way be fulfilled.

It is not only as churches or communities, however, that we are bound to serve the Lord in this field of duty, but likewise as individuals. O! if we have but a right sense of the privileges conferred upon us in baptism, and still more if we have tasted the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and the power of baptism in the inner man, then shall we not be slow to comprehend the obligation imposed upon all who are called by the name of Christ, to wage incessant war with iniquity; set their faces as flint against the reign of unbelief, and, within the little sphere of their personal influence, go on conquering and to conquer, till they make it as a green spot in the wilderness, fresh and sweet with the dews of Israel.

While teaching others, however, may we ourselves be wise to learn. We are taught in the passage before us, in aiming at salvation, to apply, with diligence, all the means appointed by the grace of God for working it out. The word all is here exceedingly emphatic, and manifestly implies that the neglect of any divine ordinance involves a nullification of all the rest. The express injunction of our text is to observe all things whatsoever Christ has commanded; and it is impossible, with such an explicit word as this all before us, strengthened, moreover, by the intensive term whatsoever, to overlook the manifest conclusion, that no commandment of Christ can we be keeping, while living in wilful disregard of any; for all his ordinances are wrapped up in this one commandment to observe them all; and therefore, as a system, they must stand or fall together. Just as obvious, at the same time, is the inference, that to neglect even the smallest ordinance of the gospel, is to renounce all its blessings; for we may be sure that Christ has given us no needless directions, or useless means of grace, but that, on

the contrary, they are just sufficient for our need And verily, when we contemplate, on the one hand, the end in view-the total renewal of our own nature after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness, together with an inheritance of honour, glory, and immortality in the purest dwellings of eternity; and on the other, the simplicity of the means appointed for working out such immeasurable results, we shall rather be inclined to wish that these means were enlarged than contracted; and, while working out our great salvation with fear and trembling, shall be careful to apply every direction that Christ has given in small things just as well as in great. For he that in this, his season of merciful visitation, is despising the day of small things, is in sad reality despising the great day of the Lord. O! let us be up then and doing while it is yet called to-day, for the night is fast approaching wherein no man can work..

FOURTEENTH DAY.-EVENING.

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'For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth,. so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: . . . it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it,' Isa. lv. 10, 11. We never doubt the power of God to do what he pleases. But it is one thing to admit, or not deny, and another to believe a truth, with an ease and familiarity of faith corresponding to its importance. There are many great truths, which, although no one ever thinks of denying them, remain so strange to our thoughts, that believing them is an effort and a process of the reason requiring to be repeated just as often as they force themselves on our notice. Of such a kind is, in the minds of perhaps most men, the motion of the earth, or the omnipresence of God; so that, when reminded of either, they have to think, and remember, and reason within themselves, in order to clear away the habitual illusion that the world is at rest, or that God is as far from their steps as he is from their thoughts. There are other truths, again, with which we are so familiar, that they affect us like instincts, and pour their influences direct upon the heart without passing through the filter of reason by the way. Of this sort is our belief in the regular return of the seasons, or in the divine promise that while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.'

The comparison employed in the passage before us, is a beautiful instance of the same kind; and by the careful kindness of him who is not only the author of the simile, but also the contriver of the likeness, is admirably suited to interlink an important topic of religious faith and meditation with our most familiar modes of thought, feeling, and action.

Of all appearances in the natural world there are none that more manifestly lie within the kingdom of providence, or depend more unquestionably on the will of God, than snow and rain; nor are there any that make us more sensible of our own helplessness and dependence in the midst of our most strenuous exertions and most anxious expectations. Hence says the proverb, with emphatic simplicity, It is God who saith unto the snow, Be thou upon the earth;' and, with a sublimity of conception surpassing all human poetry, hath the psalmist called the rain the river of God. All rivers, indeed, might with abundant propriety be so called, but pre-eminently is the rain entitled to such a distinctive name, by its marvellous manner of flowing, in a perpetual alternation, from the heavens to the earth and from the earth to the heavens, performing the one portion of its endless circuit in the form of light vapour, and the other in that of rain. All the while, moreover, is its aërial channel, if we may so express ourselves, continually shifting with the blowing of the wind, of which we hear the sound, but cannot tell whence it cometh;' so as to pour out the small or the great rain' upon whatever spot of the earth God pleases, with the precision of a vine-dresser watering the plants of his vineyard. For the Lord by watering wearieth the thick cloud; he scattereth his bright cloud, and it is turned round about by his counsels, that they may do whatever he commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth.'

Why then should we be slow in believing that just in like manner shall the word of God water the spiritual world, and prosper in the thing whereto he sends it? O! we never doubt; 'for who hath resisted his will?' But alas! do we believe it in the same manner as we believe in the fertilizing properties of rain? And do all eyes look up unto God for the reviving showers of his wind, as in the day when their corn is in the tender blade, and the heavens are like brass, they look up to him for the early rain? O! let us associate in our minds just as closely as we find them connected in the metaphors of scripture, the necessities of the soul with the wants of the body, and the promises of the life which is to come with that which now is ; let us connect the spiritual vineyard in our thoughts with the natural; and the word of the one with the rain of the other, till they blend together, and become, as it were, the same idea. Let us remember that the God of providence, and the God of grace, is one and the same Jehovah! And that a man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God! And O! if it be sweet, pleasant, and refreshing to our own hearts, to see the tender blades of a corn-field wet, and fresh, and green with the watering of God; can we be dull and dead to the reviving power of his word on the drooping graces of the soul! In the days when all eyes look up to heaven for rain as they do for meat in due season,' and when they see the passing clouds bearing to other hill-sides the quickening waters so much wanted on their own; and when, in the impatience of 'the hope deferred that maketh the heart sad,' they wish they had the winds in leading-strings, or the hills on wheels, are they not reminded that they themselves have feet to bear them to the spot where God is blessing the preaching of his word; and pouring down the spirit of revival, and satisfying the soul of the people in drought like a well-watered garden?