is the way God forgives! how different from man!

Dear reader, I cannot tell what sins are separating you from your heavenly Father, but GOD knows, and you know! Is it drunkenness? has the fatal cup led you on from bad to worse till you are alike degraded in body and mind? Is it "the lust of other things". lowering to your self-respect, dishonouring to your moral character? Is it mere forgetfulness of God-a thoughtless, inattentive forgetfulness of all His goodness, and of your own proper duty? But whatever your sins have been, are you

now coming to yourself? Are you weary of Satan's bondage? sickened of herding with swine? grieving for the time, money, and health you have wasted in riotous living? Oh, then, do not sit idly down just wishing you were better, but arise! leave the swine! plead the precious blood of Jesus Christ before the throne of God,-and it shall come to pass that before you call, He will answer; and while you are yet speaking, He will hear (Isa. lxv. 24). Do not, I beseech you, delay; the longer you put off your return, the harder you will find it. Your heavenly Father is wait

ing, and watching, and longing for you will you come? If you return to Him, then, unworthy though you feel yourself, He will call you (not servants—but) sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.

"The King of love my Shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never :

I nothing lack if I am His,

And He is mine for ever.

"Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
But yet in love He sought me,
And on His shoulder gently laid,
And home, rejoicing, brought me.

"And so, through all the length of days,
Thy goodness faileth never :

Good Shepherd, may I sing Thy praise
Within Thy house for ever."

"The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.”

H

JAMES iii. 6.

ERE we have described to us in few words, but in striking language, a small instrument which is powerful alike for good or evil-one which we all possess—one on which, alas! we bestow far too little thought. Yet tremendous results follow the right or wrong use of this little member; and it is therefore of the

deepest importance that we should so learn to train it, and keep it under strict control, that it should not lead us into sin.

When we remember

that

even Moses-of whom we read that he "was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth," and who was called "the friend of God"

was betrayed into hasty words, so that "he spoke unadvisedly with his lips," and for that one sin was forbidden to enter into the promised land, we see at once the solemn light in which God views faults of this description, and how much