present good feelings. Be much and earnest in prayer to God, that he would not suffer you to relapse into unconcern and neglect. Take every possible means to preserve and deepen your present convictions. Read the Scriptures with renewed diligence. Go with increased earnestness, and interest, and prayer, to the house of God. Endeavour to gain clearer views of the truth as it is in Jesus, and labour to have your mind instructed as well as your heart impressed. Be satisfied with nothing short of renewed mind, the renewed birth. Be upon your guard against self-dependence. Watch against this, as much as against grosser sins. Consider yourself as a little child, who can do nothing without God. Study your own sinfulness in the glass of God's holy law. Grow in humility; it is not well for a plant to shoot upwards quickly, before it has taken deep root; if there be no fibres in the earth, and no moisture at the root, whatever blossoms and fruit there be in the branches, they will soon fall off; and in the same way, if your religion do not strike root in humility, and be not moistened with the tears of penitential grief, whatever blossoms of joy or fruits of zeal there may be on the mind or conduct, they will soon drop off under the next gust or heat of temptation. Take heed of secret sinning. A single lust unmortified will be like a worm at the root of the newlyplanted piety of your soul. Continually remember that it is yet but the beginning of religion with you. Do not rest here; believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; nothing short of this will save you: without faith, all you have felt, or can feel, will do you no good; you must come to Christ, and be anxious to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of God our Saviour.Rev. J. A. James. IMITATING DEATH TO SAVE LIFE. DURING a visit to Cumberland we found several hedgehogs in Inglewood Forest. One of these, in order to destroy it, we put into the pond. It swam about in a circular direction for some time and reached the shore. After putting it into the water a second time, it remained motionless and apparently dead, and we left it on the grass. During the night, however, it walked away. The spider will imitate death to save itself, and canaries have been taught by some showmen to look as if they were dead. The most curious case, however, is that of a fox in the north. A farmer had discovered that he came along a beam in the night to seize his poultry. He accordingly sawed the end of the beam through, and in the night the fox fell into a place whence he could not escape. On going to him in the morning the farmer found him stiff, and, as he thought, lifeless. Taking him out of the building, he threw him on the dunghill, but in a short time Reynard opened his eyes, and seeing that all was safe and clear, galloped away to the mountains, showing more cunning than the man who had entrapped him.-Preston Chronicle. WHAT IS GRACE? THE terms grace,' 'by grace,' 'through grace,' 'grace of God,' 'grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,' are common expressions in the Scriptures. In one text we are exhorted not to receive the grace of God in vain. Grace, in a general sense, signifies any favour or benefit received from another. In the Scriptures it is used to signify, 1. The offer of salvation, as proposed in the gospel through Jesus Christ; hence the gospel is called "the word of grace," and "the gospel of the grace of God." 2. By the term 'grace,' we are often to understand the influence and work of the Holy Spirit, operating upon the heart, and giving life and power to our efforts. Paul says, "I laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God, which was with me." It was the Spirit that was with or in Paul. 3. Grace is used to denote all those means which God is pleased to make use of, to bring sinners to repentance and salvation. To receive the grace of God in vain, is to neglect and so to misimprove all God's blessings bestowed upon us, and all the privileges we enjoy, as to defeat the object for which they are bestowed, namely, our salvation. To grow in grace, is so to improve as to receive more grace, and increase in all the blessed fruits which the saving influence of grace produces in the soul. TIME'S TAKINGS AND LEAVINGS. What does age take away! Bloom from the cheek, and lustre from the eye, . Unclouded as the summer's bluest sky. What do years steel away? The heart's fond idol, Love, that gladdened life; Friendship, whose calm sway We trusted to in hour's of darker strife. What must with time decay? Young hopes, wild dreams, and fancy visions, And darker clouds preclude Death's coming night. But not for such we mourn ! We know them frail, and brief their date assigned; Less from time's thefts, than what he leaves behind. What do years leave behind! Unruly passions, impotent desires, Distrusts and thoughts unkind, Love of the world, and self-which best expires, For these, for these we grieve? What time as robbed us of we know must go ; But what he deigns to leave, Not only finds us poor, but keeps us so. It ought not thus to be; Nor would it, knew we meek religion's sway; Her votary's eye could see How little time can give or take away. Faith in the heart enshrined, Would make Time's gifts enjoyed and used while lent; And all it left behind, Of love and grace a noble monument. BERNARD BARTON. |