baggage impedimenta.

"Wherefore, laying aside

every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, let us run with patience the race set before us."

In leaving the literal home, and in prosecuting a literal journey, travellers should cherish a prayerful desire that all they meet with may be sanctified. There is a religious use to be made of the eyes and ears, and all the incidents of an excursion. The very conveniences and inconveniences of travelling, the impudence and imposition encountered, bring hallowed hints to a devout mind, touching the Better Land. There will be no noise, no rudeness, no fatigue there; no want of suitable accommodations; no perilous locomotion, nor one jarring vehicle in all that world; no deceptive, petulant, profane guides; angels never ask for fees. In our Father's house are many mansions, but no confined, ill-ventilated, infectious rooms. Bolts are not required; bills are not presented; police are not needed in the New Jerusalem.

Even a high enjoyment of the objects, scenes and events of earth, if devoutly managed, is no part of worldliness; it is using the world as not abusing it; it belongs to conversation in heaven. Appropriate prayerful use of what passes before us

will only foster a keener relish for things unseen. Cultivating such a habit, we shall be laying up treasures in heaven. We would, then, have our senses all on the alert; we would drink in the living colors that float at daybreak, at noontide, and in the softened hour of fading day. We would stamp on our memory an image of the enchanting, glorious garniture of sky, rivers, lakes, sea, mountains and valleys, and would let praise and prayer to God hallow all. Beholding thus with open face as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we shall be changed into the same image, from glory to glory.

"And their brethren said unto them, What say ye? And they said, Arise, for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good." In declaring plainly that we seek a better country, we do not consider ourselves to be on a voyage of discovery. Our knowledge of the other world is derived from sources very different from those which carried hints concerning the existence of this western continent to the shores of Europe, - floating trees and plants, borne by the gulf-stream from the tropics. He, who alone came down from heaven, who is himself the way, the truth and the life, has declared, "If it were not so, I would have told you: I will come again and receive you unto myself, that

where I am, there ye may be also.' In the midst of our toiling and rowing, Jesus cometh to us, about the fourth watch of the night, walking upon the sea; and presently the shipmen deem that they draw near to some country. "And that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed; the night is far spent, the day is at hand.”

"Our life is like the hurrying on the eve
Before we start on some long journey bound,
When fit preparing to the last we leave,
Then run to every room the dwelling round,
And sigh that nothing needed can be found;
Yet
go we must, and soon as day shall break;
We snatch an hour's repose, when loud the sound
For our departure calls; we rise and take

A quick and sad farewell, and go ere well awake."

CHAPTER II.

CLUSTERS OF ESHCOL.

In some hour of solemn jubilee,
The massy gates of Paradise are thrown
Wide open, and forth come, in fragments wild,
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,

And odors snatched from beds of amaranth,
And they that from the crystal river of life
Sprung up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales!
The favored good man in his lonely walk
Perceives them, and his silent spirit drinks
Strange bliss, which he shall recognize in heaven.

COLERIDGE.

A traveller, after a long journey, when he is weary and faint, and sits down, if he sees the town before him, it puts life into him, and he plucks up his feet, and resolves not to be weary till he be at his journey's end. O, look at the crown and white robe set before you, and faint if you can get on the top of Mount Nebo,look on the land of promise, - those good things set before you; taste the grapes of Canaan before you come to Canaan.

NALTON.

ALL superior minds are enterprising. They are marked by an activity which conceives and attempts greater things than the surrounding multitude. Their spheres of effort may be various, their powers unlike, their measures of success very diverse, yet

all minds which impress themselves upon others, and accomplish much for good or evil, are characterized by a forth-putting energy and courage. Little souls are timorous. They venture nothing; they do not aspire; they do not grow; for they shrink within themselves, listless and inactive.

Among those sent from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land of promise, were Caleb and Joshua, men of true enterprise, and their subsequent career showed them possessed of a persevering and sanctified energy. They never lost the impressions of their visit to the goodly land; the beauty of its prospects, and the security of the covenant of Jehovah's pledge of possession to them. "And they came unto the brook Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bore it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates and of the figs and they said, We came unto the land, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it." Are not we in the wilderness? is not Canaan before us? are not clusters of Eshcol presented to us? Shall we not taste of the same, and quicken our steps toward the Better Land?

Older and discerning Christians remark an unusual spirit of worldliness in the churches. It is