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of the earth; and there is none that can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?"* When He who is mighty to save "t offers to deliver you from sin and hell, there should be on your part a prompt and heartfelt acceptance of the offer, and a calm, unshaken reliance upon him to secure your salvation.

You are not to make yourself worthy of the offer in any respect, or in any degree; for self-righteousness is at the bottom of all these efforts" to get fit to come," and pride is at the bottom of all this apparent humility that keeps the soul away from the Redeemer. There is no promise in the Bible to those who are good enough to come; for " they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick."‡ There is no promise for to-morrow; but, "behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation."Ş

Several years ago, a missionary among the Indians was visited by a proud and powerful chief, who had been deeply convicted of sin by the Spirit of God. The savage, though trembling under a sense of his guilt, was unwilling to take the water of life freely, and hence offered his wampum to avert the dreaded punishment. The man of God shook his head, and said, "No, Christ cannot accept such a sacrifice." The Indian went away, but, unable to rest beneath the frowns of his Maker, came back and offered his rifle, and the skins he had taken in hunting. The missionary again said, "No, Christ cannot accept such a sacrifice." The wretched sinner withdrew; but the Spirit gave him no peace, and he returned once more to offer his wigwam, his wife, his children, and all that he had, if he could only find pardon and eternal life. The missionary was compelled to say, "No, Christ cannot accept such a sacrifice.' The chief stood for a moment, with his head bowed, as if on the verge of despair, and then raising his streaming eyes to heaven, his heart poured itself forth in a cry of unreserved surrender and consecration, "Here, Lord, take poor Indian himself."

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Yes, this is the position to which you must come, if you would experience the joy of pardoned sin, and " the peace of God which passeth all understanding." You must give up your pride, and your efforts to make yourself better, Matt. ix. 12.

* Dan. iv. 35.
§ 2 Cor. vi. 2.

† Isa. lxiii. 1.

|| Phil. iv. 7.

and committing your guilty soul and all its interests into the hands of Christ, exclaim from the heart,

"But drops of grief can ne'er repay

The debt of love I owe;

Here, Lord, I give myself away,
"Tis all that I can do."

Wherever you may be while reading these words, at home or abroad, standing or sitting, in health or in sickness, now, just now, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe that he came to save you, believe that he is able to save you, believe that he is willing to save you, believe that he offers to save you, and at once, without delay, without doubt, without hesitation, trust in him to do what he promises to do; and I tell you, heaven and earth shall pass away sooner than your soul shall be lost.

*

You have nothing to do with the past, you have nothing to do with the future, you have nothing to do with the secret things of God, you have nothing to do with false professors of religion. All you have to do now is with Christ. Do not let Satan divert your attention from the one precious thought that the compassionate Saviour is standing, as it were, before you, and offering to pardon you just as you are, and this very moment. Only believe that he is making this offer, and take him at his word, and faith will be to you "the substance," the ground, or confident expectation of "things hoped for," and "the evidence," or clear proof and demonstration "of things not seen. Then shall you, through the Holy Spirit, obtain the peace for which you sigh, and the love which you desire to feel, and other graces and joys which spring out of this act of childlike faith as naturally as a stream springs from its fountainhead. Then shall you be able to testify, that it is no hard task which the Saviour requires, when he asks sinful men to believe on him, for "the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise: Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above;) or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."+

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MAKING THE BEST OF IT.

PART I.

You would have had to go a day's journey and more to find two friends so thoroughly unlike as John Spoor and Peter Kendall; and yet they were friends as fast as fast could be.

As a rule it will perhaps be found that if two men are very close friends, whilst they have a great deal in common, there are also some things in which they are widely different; but the differences between John Spoor and Peter Kendall were so marked, that everybody who knew them wondered at their friendship.

They lived in the same court when they were lads, and they went to the same school. All the boys in the neighbourhood liked Spoor, and he deserved his popularity, for a more cheerful, hearty, good-tempered fellow never lived. It did you good to hear his ringing, merry laugh; and nobody ever saw him with a cloud on his brow. He could "stick up for himself," if it was necessary, and that was pretty well understood; but somehow or other, he scarcely ever had to do so. He had the art of getting on so well with everybody, that it was the rarest thing in the world for him to be involved in anything like a quarrel.

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Peter Kendall was the very reverse of all this. He was 'touchy," and far too ready to think himself slighted.

"There's no getting on with him," said one of their companions. "What a way he has," said another, "of sticking his elbows into everybody's ribs!" He would have been left out of many a game, and out of many a fishing and walking party on a holiday afternoon but for Spoor, who, whilst, in a quiet way, he remonstrated with him, pleaded for him with the others. So he was tolerated for the sake of his friend.

Yet there were some good points about him. He was thoroughly kind at heart, and he was truthful and genuine ; and Spoor liked him on these accounts. He was not very happy at home, for his mother was dead; his father had married again, and his stepmother was not so kind as she might have been; and Spoor, who knew all this, was the more disposed because of it to show him kindness than he might otherwise have been. Then, too, he saw that Kendall looked up to him, and sought his friendship; and he found that he could get on very well with him

better, in fact, than could any body else of their set. In one way Kendall could render some return; he was a good deal quicker than Spoor about his lessons, and many a time he had helped him considerably.

They went early to work, and they went to the same place. Their master was a cabinet-maker, and they were now, though about six-and-thirty years of age, journeymen in the shop in which they had served their apprenticeship. In the case of Kendall, however, there was a long break; for when he was about five-andtwenty, work being somewhat scarce, and other circumstances having also arisen, which made him think a change. would be advantageous, he had sought and obtained employment in a large town at some distance; but a year before the time of which we have now to speak, he had gone back again to Bolton. His wife, who had not enjoyed very good health, and who had, besides, been a good deal tried by the sickness of several of her children, and by the loss of one of them, wished to be near her relatives. And Kendall himself, who had not made many friends in the place to which they had gone, was quite willing to return, and even desirous to do so. Hearing, therefore, from his friend Spoor that there was a vacancy in his old shop, he wrote to the master, and was once more at work on the very bench he had left.

Meanwhile a great change had taken place in the views and character of Spoor. Not that he was a bit less frank and cheerful and open-hearted than before. He was just as well liked by his fellow-workmen in the shop as he had been by his companions when he was a lad, and he had a kind word for everybody. The man was in all these respects everything that might have been expected from the boy. But the great difference was this-he had become a true Christian. His genial nature had exposed him to some danger, and his company had been greatly sought by those who were fond of a Sunday stroll, and of what they called "a friendly glass," in the evenings; but one Sunday he was induced by a fellow-workman, who saw whither things were tending, and who was very anxious to do him good, to go with him to hear a young minister who had recently settled in Bolton. What he heard that night made a deep impression on his heart, and he went again, and again, till by and by his place was never vacant. He had never felt himself to be a sinner before; but he did so now, and for

a little time he was very serious and downcast. Then it began to be whispered in the shop that he was becoming religious; and some of his old companions mourned bitterly that "such a regular good fellow should be spoiled in that fashion." But the sunlight soon came back again to his spirit, and he was brighter than ever.

"And why should I not be happy?" he replied to one of his fellow-workmen who had ventured to speak to him on the subject. "Thank God I never was so happy in my life. It is true I was downcast for a bit, when I thought what a sinner I had been; but as soon as I learned to trust in the Lord Jesus, and knew that my sins were pardoned, all that passed away. Ah, Ned, if you would only try it!"

By God's blessing he persuaded his wife-for he was already married-to "try it ;" and glad he was beyond the power of all words to describe, when she too gave her heart to the Lord Jesus. It made their house a very happy one. Indeed, though they had been really very comfortable, he sometimes said that he hardly felt as if it had been thoroughly home till then.

It was a favourite saying of John's, "Let us make the best of it." Indeed it became so well-known as his, that it was often said, jokingly, “But, as John Spoor says, ‘Let us make the best of it.'

Sometimes he would enlarge on this maxim of his, and say, "There are some things so good that we can hardly see how they could be better; and there are some things so bad that we can hardly see any 'best' that can be made out of them; but things are very bad indeed when something can't be done."

Already he had had more opportunity of putting his principle into practice than falls to the lot of men who have as yet scarcely reached middle life. He had saved a little money, and put it into the savings' bank. It happens very rarely indeed that depositors in savings banks sustain any loss-never in those which are established by government; but it did happen that the manager of the savings bank in which John had invested his money had knavishly applied the deposits to his own purposes, and there was every reason to fear that John's savings were all gone.

"It's a great pity, Nelly," said he, when he took the news home to his wife; "and, of course, if we had known we would not have put it in; but it's no use crying over

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