come, when, borne on the shoulders of your fellow-men, will be set down in your room that last bed on which to lay your body, now so full of life and energy.

Not pleasant to contemplate, truly! But, I beseech you to contemplate it; this utterly solemn phase of humanity in its degradation-humanity suffering the curse that was passed upon all through sin. Contemplate it, not as the worldling, or the man who has no hope beyond the horizon that bounds his view, but as the Christian who looks on death as the means by which he enters the promised glory. But if you cannot so look upon death—if to you he would come as the "king of terrors "—if to you he would appear as the messenger of endless misery-then I can only use that Bible entreaty, and "Beseech you to be reconciled to God."1

Do you ask, what has that to do with my not being afraid of death? or with death not coming to me as the king of terrors? It has everything to do with it! Listen: I have ¦ just returned from a visit to a dying saint-she may live another day, but days are out of the question. What does she say of death? Does she tremble at the thought of the coffin being brought for her? No, she simply says, "I am longing to go, for death has no terrors for me. God is a reconciled God, through His dear Son; and I, by nature an enemy, am reconciled to God through His dear Son. The precious blood of Jesus has drawn me to Him for reconcilement, and the same precious blood has made Him willing and ready to be reconciled. So how can I fear death when death will open the gates of heaven to me ?”

Thus, dear reader, you see that being in a state of reconcilement has everything to do with making death come to you as a friend, instead of as an enemy! In one case he throws open the door of endless life; in the other, he shuts it on you for ever, and makes you a hopeless, helpless captive for eternity.

Oh, again, I beseech you to remember that the coffinpoor little Polly's ugly box-must come for you one day.

1 2 Cor. v. 20.

Be ready for it; be ready for the grave, by being prepared to meet your God as a reconciled God, through the Lord Jesus Christ!

"To meet thy God, prepare;

For late, too late the voice of prayer,
When comes thy God to thee!"

The Cost of Whipping a Rogue.

N looking over some old parish accounts, I came upon an entry which I cannot forget. It was this:

"Paid for whipping a rogue, twopence.

Paid for writing her pass, twopence."

I smiled at first, as perhaps the reader will smile, at the grim quaintness of these two lines; but there came back upon the mind a train of graver thoughts, as, in spite of myself, my mind would dwell upon the cost of whipping this rogue.

It matters very little to ask what the roguery was for which she was whipped, nor whether she might not have been punished in some more suitable way; the records do not specify what she had done to deserve punishment, nor why it was decided to treat her as she was treated; it simply calls her a rogue, and tells us that the parish paid twopence for getting her whipped. The poor creature was a traveller through the parish, and not an inhabitant of it; the authorities simply flogged her, and then passed her on.

I hope the whipping was mercifully done. There is nothing in the old account book that gives one any idea that the people of the parish were less kind and tender than they are now. I'm sure that they would not now flog a woman at all; I do not believe that they did it brutally then. Nevertheless there remains the fact recorded in the antique writing of the time: "Paid for whipping a rogue, twopence."

This matter haunted me night and day after I read it;

I could not get it out of my head; for there is in our hearts a feeling which God put there, that all men and women are brothers and sisters, children of sinful parents; and the consciousness of being a sinner oneself made me linger with pity upon the record of the whipping of this rogue.

At last the text occurred to me which made me write this paper: "It cost more to redeem their souls ;" and I turned from the book which recorded the dealings of man with his fellow-sinner to that other book which records the dealings of God with him. There I found that the woman who was whipped and they who whipped her were all in one boat; that no matter when we may live, no matter where we may live, we have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God. This poor woman had come short even of the decency and common respect to which we are all entitled from each other till we do something to forfeit it; but she had not sunk so low from respectability as we all have from godliness: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way." This poor creature's own way" may have been a very bad way; she may have parted company with modesty, or with chastity, or with honesty, and have found that cheap sins are dearly punished; but in the sight of God, they who whipped her, and we who read of the whipping, are as much sinners as she was. She went her way, and we go our way; and there are worse things in store for us all, except we repent. And then I read in that same book of God, that He does not, and will not, deal with us as we do with each other, but in a very different way.

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The laws of men are framed to keep man from hurting man; but the laws of God have a higher purpose-they are intended to keep man from hurting himself. If we sin against God, we sin against ourselves; and it ought to lead us to repentance to discover, as we may do, and easily too, that all God's punishments are so many merciful warnings that we are sinning against ourselves, destroying our own peace, corrupting our own minds, murdering our own souls.

That poor woman who was whipped in High Bray had laid more stripes upon herself many a time than the parish constable laid upon her. When we see that all God's punishments now, and the threat of infinitely worse ones to come, are intended to make us stop and listen to the voice which calls us to come and be washed from our sins, without money and without price, then surely we can under stand that God's severity is really God's love, shown to us in the only way in which, in the midst of our sins, we can understand it. And whilst we thus see that we are fools to ourselves as well as rebels against God, and that we deserve to be beaten with many stripes, we are told in God's book that the chastisement of our peace has been laid upon Jesus, and that with His stripes we are healed. to whip this poor sinner, but it cost the Christ to redeem her, and you and me. whipped her, they gave her a pass, as they called it, to say who she was, and where she came from; she went on her way with scars on her back, and deeper wounds in her mind; but if she had known what God's love had done for her, and what His grace could do, she would have gone on her way rejoicing; and if you, dear reader, desire to be helped out of your sin and misery, your life made a pilgrimage from grace to grace, and not a tramp from sin to sin, you will find that God is faithful and just to forgive you your sins, and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

It cost twopence precious blood of When they

He will forgive you, cleanse you, heal you, restore you to

yourself; and though He will not suffer you to forget your sins, He will put the guilt of them as far from you as the east is from the west, or as heaven is from hell.

If then you see your own likeness in this poor woman, if you also have sinned, and smarted for it, and are smarting still, remember that Jesus bore your sins in His own body on the tree, is able to save to the uttermost, and is as willing to do it as He is able. Be of good cheer; rise; He calleth thee.

The Guide of my youth.

"Wilt thou not from this time cry unto Me, My Father, Thou art the Guide of my youth?"-Fer. iii. 4.

HE Guide of my youth is my Father and God,

in path which my Saviour' has trod;

The light of His love there around me shall shine,
And the hopes which it kindles be pure and Divine.
Another hath claimed me his servant too long,
And the fetters of sin on my spirit were strong;

But more powerful still was the message of truth,

And I turned me once more to the Guide of my youth.
'Twas a Father who called me from error away;
At the voice of His mercy I dared not delay.
'Twas a God I had slighted, and trembling I came,
But the word on my lips was the Advocate's name.
Oh! mighty the plea of the Saviour who died-
'Tis a plea that is heard, and will ne'er be denied ;
Unchanging, unfailing, the promise of truth-
I looked up with hope to the Guide of my youth.

Yes, Father, in seasons of trial and sorrow

I look on in peace to the dawn of the morrow;
No cloud o'er my pathway too darkling will prove
If the light of my soul be an unclouded love.
Not too early the summons that bids me to come
In the spring-time of youth to my heavenly home;
Nor too long the delay, though years must be past,
If the Guide of my youth be my Guide to the last.

E. E. H.

Come, Come, Come.

OME to the blood-stained tree;

COM

The Victim bleeding lies;

God sets the sinner free,

Since Christ a ransom dies.