The mother's love is different from the father's, in being more particular and minute. It springs from her own nature, not from any excellence in the child, and survives ingratitude, sin, and shame in the latter's life.

Her influence is the first felt, her care
The maternal relation has been pecul-

the first bestowed on us.
iarly honored by God. It was made the means of uniting the
divine and the human nature, and Christ at all times honored and
obeyed His mother.

2. The death of a mother occasions bitter recollections of filial disobedience and neglect.

God has set our duty to parents next to that which we owe Him. Parents stand in the place of God to the infant child, but the mother first exercises this authority. Happy is he who has no cause for repentance over his neglect or disobedience to maternal love.

3. It breaks up the home of our early days, and makes us feel we are only sojourners here.

Who can name all the tender associations that cluster about our early home? Amid them all the mother is the centre of influence and happiness. Ever after, the recollection is a hallowed one, kindling virtue and restraining vice. The mother's death seems to remove all this, but it is henceforth a cord to bind us to heaven. 4. The death of a mother, especially of an aged mother, makes us sensible of our nearness to another world.

It seems to place us a generation nearer the grave. It brings us in the foremost rank of the travellers to eternity.

Upon these relations I would present a few practical suggestions.

1. I appeal to fathers. Teach your children that a mother's love is the most sacred thing in life. Teach them to honor her authority fully as much as your own. When they come to despise that, they are far on the way to despising God's.

2. I appeal to mothers. Your responsibility is a most momentous one. You cannot carry it without God's help. delegate it to any other person.

3. I appeal to those whose mother is living. solicitous to fulfil your duties to her. to despise the mother's advice and That is a folly, cruel and guilty. honor their mothers as Jesus honored His.

You cannot

You cannot be too

Boys are apt to think that appeals is a sign of manhood. The truest men are those who

4. I appeal to those whose mother is dead. and honor her religion. shall draw near to God.

Cherish her precepts

Let her grave be a sanctuary where you So live that you shall meet her in heaven.

PREPARATIONS FOR MEETING GOD.

BY RICHARD S. STORRS, D. D., BRAINTREE, MASS.

Prepare to meet thy God.-AMOS iv. 12.

"GOD is not far from every one of us." "If we ascend into heaven, He is there; if we make our bed in hell, behold He is there." But with those who love and obey Him, He is present as a loving Father; while He meets as an adversary those who reject His authority; and to such a meeting Israel is summoned in the words of the text, and God recalls the sufferings He has inflicted upon them to impress them that He is a God of justice as well as of mercy. To such a meeting is every unrepentant sinner

summoned.

I. GOD'S JUDICIAL CHARACTER.

1. His righteousness. Every law of God is righteous, both in principle and in penalty. No one will be punished beyond his demerits.

2. His benevolence. He is the source of all benevolence. Strict righteousness, acting alone, would consign men to despair at once; but blended with benevolence it distributes numberless blessings to our undeserving race. The punishment hereafter of sinners is no more inconsistent with God's benevolence than are their sufferings in the present. Divine goodness will bestow on us all the blessings we can receive without injustice being done to Himself and other holy intelligences.

3. His knowledge. His eyes are on all the ways of men, and He seeth all their goings." Nothing can escape Him, no one can deceive Him.

4. His power. Behold Him measuring oceans in the hollow of His hand, meting out the heavens with a span, comprehending the dust of the earth in a measure, weighing the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance, and doing according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth!

Remember He once swept the earth of every living thing, over-
threw the cities of the plain, caused Babylon to drink the cup of
His fury, overturned Jerusalem in anger.
Before such a judge

who shall stand?

II. PREPARATIONS FOR MEETING GOD IN PEACE

Some say no other preparation is necessary than sorrow for our sins. But Judas was afflicted with deepest remorse, yet “it had been better for him never to have been born." Who ever dreamed that law regards as atonement the criminal's sorrow? If tears will avail nothing, can sacrifice? God has said, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice." Two principles are here disclosed :

1. The sinner has nothing of his own to offer God. 2. If he had anything, God would not need it.

Preparation can be made to meet God in peace only by accepting of Christ as our Savoiur. This act of acceptance is called faith. It is one thing to believe with the understanding, another thing to believe with the heart. Faith in Christ involves thorough regeneration, and constitutes a new and powerful principle of action.

HUMAN LIFE TRANSITORY.

BY EDWARD N. KIRK, D.D., BOSTON.

What is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.-JAMES iv. 14.

I. How MEN MAKE THE MISTAKE OF REGARDING THIS LIFE AS SOMETHING SOLID AND STable.

1. Men count on the certain continuance of their strength. Men's plans and hopes are generally built on the foundation of enduring health. All the pleasures of sense require health and vigor. Just so far, then, as life and happiness are made dependent on them, we count on continued strength. For such persons the thought of death is horrible, and they strive to banish it. The young can hardly realize that they are to become aged and infirm. Why do we dread advancing age? Because it shows the falseness of the life embracing only the pleasures that depend on health.

2. Men count upon an indefinite prolongation of life. Suppose that health is to continue as long as life, yet life itself is altogether

insecure. The eager pursuit of wealth, and power, and pleasure, appears vain and foolish when we consider that even if possession of the object desired be attained, how long such possession will continue is uncertain.

3. Men count on the next life as resembling this. Men fancy heaven as they wish it to be. The Indian's heaven is one of gross delights, but there are many in Christian lands whose views are not much more exalted.

II. THE UNIVERSAL UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE.

It is like the vapor, which a breeze or sunbeam may the next moment destroy. Look at it in reference to God. Before His eternal existence it is but a moment. Look at it in reference to nature. We call the hills everlasting, but even they shall vanish away. Look at it in reference to experience. Every day new illustrations crowd upon our attention. Our cemeteries vie with our cities. And this uncertainty is universal. No one, no matter

what his plans or how important his life, can escape it.

III. HOW SHALL WE RECTIFY SUCH ERRORS IN OUR OWN MIND? 1. We must understand the reality of the case. "Teach me so to number my days that I may apply my heart unto wisdom." We must understand what life is given us for, and recognize fully that we must suffer pains and sorrows, and that earthly blessings are but transitory. Let us remember life is a scene of discipline.

2. We should become reconciled to it. If we come to look at life in the light of revelation and eternity, it is not thereby degraded, but rendered a thing of the utmost importance. It is exalted above all other views of life, and, rightly used, becomes the means of the highest good and fullest happiness to us.

3. We must accommodate our feelings and plans to this view. Make nothing that can perish the foundation of your hope. Lay up treasures in heaven. Let the heart find its chief joy, not in the vain pleasures and ambitions of earth, but in purity and selfsacrificing love.

STRENGTH AND BEAUTY IN CHARACTER.

BY REV. W. R. DAVIS, ALBANY, N. Y.

Upon the top of the pillars was lily-work.— -I KINGS vii. 22.

Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God.—REV

ELATION iii. 12.

OBSERVE that the strength was first and the beauty of lilies afterward. We have here those two qualities which are worshipped by the soul of man the world over. Power and beauty alike win his homage, but not unfrequently he yields himself to the sham of strength and the semblance of beauty-to power ungifted with love, to beauty unadorned by holiness. It is the lie of the world

that the righteous must needs be the weak, and the pure the uncomely. God declares the right to be the only strong, and the good to be the only beautiful.

I cannot speak of the sudden darkness and inner pain that smote my heart when a messenger entered my room with the tidings," Dr. Gregory is dead." I felt that a pillar in our temple had fallen, that a life on which leaned hundreds of lives was shattered. Yet looking forward beyond the finite I see a shining, stately shaft set up on high, and read, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God."

I. THE STRENGTH OF HIS CHARACTER.

1. He was a man of convictions. When he came to apprehend the realities of life illuminated by the realities of divine truth, it was in no negative mood, but with a vivid experience that made them his own. Faith was the substance standing under his per

sonality.

2. His fidelity. He was not a rover or a shifter, playing fast and loose with duty, but an earnest man, who, having found truth, planted himself on it with a firmness invincible.

3. He was sincere. He could no more bear a sham than be a sham himself. He had no hiding-place even for his faults.

4. He was self-sacrificing.

5. He sympathized with human life in every stage and experience. The sorrows and struggles of others became his own. His consolations were swift to offer all his resources. Wherever his name was mentioned you seemed to hear the beat of a big heart. As