ing in the man's own conscience. It is a sore struggle, at times, to quell the clamours of unbelief, and the suggestions of Satan; and at last, perhaps, the soul embraces the reality of God's love in Christ with a trembling kind of hopeless hope, and doubting believing. These things often puzzle the understanding, and perplex the whole. will and affections. A true believer is like Rebecca labouring with twins, a faithless Esau, and a trusting Jacob; and so, like her, he cries out, "If it be so why am I thus ?” Whereas, if it were not so, if he were not of God, it could not be thus. Nature alone would not struggle; nor can what is dead strive against the stream. The whole bent of nature is against grace. So again, if he were all grace and no sin, he would feel no trouble; for the opposition of grace is made to nature and to the sin which is in it. And it is a good sign, though not a pleasant feeling, that there is this conflict: it demonstrates the life of God to be within.

In this way, the Christian embraces the gospel. He is enabled in hope against hope to believe it, as the grand charter of his salvation. And this very act of believing is the evidence within, concurring with the evidence of the written word without, that his name is enrolled in the charter, and that he is consequently entitled to all its blessings.

Take heart, therefore, thou child of God, and fear not. Thou hast the promise, the power, the mercy, and the truth of Jehovah on thy side; and who can prevail against him? If thou dost not wholly believe, or art not perfectly cleared from all doubts, be not, however, dismayed. The faithfulness of thy Lord is not grounded upon the perfect exercise of thy faith, but upon his own sovereign grace and love. Thou desirest to trust him with thy whole heart; but thou never couldst have desired this, if he had never wrought that disposition within thee. He was the Author, and he will be the Finisher, of all in thee, as well as for thee. If God did not spare his own Son for

thy sake, what will he spare beside ? Who shall, or who can, lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God himself, with whom there is neither evil nor folly, that justifieth thee from both. Who can condemn thee? It is Christ who blotteth out thy sins by his precious blood, or rather is risen again to present thee faultless in his righteousness before the throne, and to plead for thee as that Advocate who never lost a cause. Who shall separate thee from the love of Christ? Shall the evils of life, all the distresses of time, all the rage of the devil? Nay, in all these things thine almighty Saviour will render thee a conqueror, and more than a conqueror, because he hath loved thee. O divine words that follow! From thine inmost affections, from the very ardour and spirit of faith, mayest thou breathe them forth! "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord."-Serle.

THE BIBLE.

The sacred volume was composed by a vast variety of writers, men of every different rank and condition, of every diversity of character and turn of mind; the monarch and the plebeian, the illiterate and the learned, the foremost in talent and the moderately gifted in natural advantages, the historian and the legislator, the orator and the poet, each had his immediate vocation, each his peculiar province: some prophets, some apostles, some evangelists, living in ages remote from each other, under different modes of civil government; under different dispensations of the Divine economy, filling a period of time

which reached from the first dawn of heavenly light to its meridian radiance.

The Old Testament and the New, the Law and the Gospel; the prophets predicting events, and the evangelists recording them; the doctrinal yet didactic epistolary writers, and he who closed the sacred canon in the Apocalyptic vision ;-all these furnished their respective portions, and yet all tally with a dove-tailed correspondence : all the different materials are joined with a completeness the most satisfactory, with an agreement the most incontrovertible.

This instance of uniformity without design, of agreement without contrivance; this consistency maintained through a long series of ages, without a possibility of the ordinary methods for conducting such a plan; these unparalleled congruities, these unexampled coincidences, form altogether a species of evidence, of which there is no other instance in the history of all the other books in the world.

Our divine Teacher does not say read, but search the Scriptures. The doctrines of the Bible are of everlasting interest. All the great objects of history lose their value, as through the lapse of time they recede further from us; but those of the book of God are commensurate with the immortality of our nature. All existing circumstances, as they relate to this world merely, lose their importance as they lose their novelty; they even melt in air, as they pass before us.

While we are discussing events, they cease to be; while we are criticising customs, they become obsolete; while we are adopting fashions, they vanish; while we are condemning or defending parties, they change sides. While we are contemplating feuds, opposing factions, or deploring revolutions, they are extinct. Of created things, mutability is their character at the best, brevity their duration at the longest. But "the word of the Lord endureth for ever."-H. More.

VARIETIES.

ON THE SPIRIT OF THE WORLD.-Nothing more fully proves the fall of man from his original creation, than the opposition and temper of his soul, while in his natural state, to the things of God. His wishes, his hopes, his labours, his principles of action and thinking, all are turned directly another way. "God is not" really, whatever a man of the world may speculate, "in all his thoughts." He is without God; or rather, in sober truth, he is, as the apostle calls him, an atheist in the world.

Hence it is, that the people of the world have, in all ages, reputed the people of God either to be fools, in not laying themselves out for such things as wholly engage themselves, or knavish hypocrites, who only take a pretended spiritual method to accomplish the same carnal and selfish ends. And if they can find an instance or two (as they often have done, and may do) to confirm this opinion, O how do they insult over professors of all kinds, and run down religion itself, as though it were a trap or an engine for all manner of deceit, or at best, a whimsical paradise, framed by superstition for dunces and fools.

On the other hand, how wild, mad, besotted, and phrenetic, do all the agitations of these men seem to the Christian, in his retired and considerate hours? They are pursuing, in his view, lies and shadows, vapours and dreams. They grasp after something, they scarce know what. Ever restless, they are always upon the hunt; but never finding, never satisfied. They live weary and tired lives, full of envy, disappointment, and care: and they die hopeless deaths, either in abject terror at what may come upon them hereafter, or in the stupid opinion, that God created them only to live for a while like maggots upon the trash of the earth, and then at last to be thrown into a hole to rot away into nothing. Such is the sordid spirit and wisdom of this world.-Serle.

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THE BROOK DRIED UP.-It is said when a friend proves like a "brook in summer," the traveller, being parched with heat, comes to the brook hoping to refresh himself, but the brook is dried up. Yet be content. You are not alone: others of the saints have been betrayed by friends; and when they have leaned upon them, they have been as foot out of joint. This was true in the type of David: 'It was not an enemy reproached me, but it was thou, a man mine equal, and my acquaintance; we took sweet counsel together;"and in the antitype, Christ, He was betrayed by a friend; and why should we think it strange to have the same measure dealt unto us, as Jesus Christ had ? "The servant is not above his master." A Christian may often read his sin in his punishment; hath he not dealt treacherously with God? How oft hath he grieved the Comforter; broken his vows; and through unbelief sided with Satan against God? How oft hath he abused his love; taking the jewels of God's mercies, and making a golden calf of them, serving his own lusts? How often hath he made the free grace of God, which should have been a bolt to keep out sin, rather a key to open the door to it? These "wounds hath the Lord received in the house of his friends." Look upon the unkindness of thy friend; and mourn for thine own unkindness against God: shall a Christian condemn that in another, which he hath been too guilty of himself? Hath thy friend proved treacherous? perhaps thou didst repose too much confidence in him. If you lay more weight on a house than the pillars will bear, it must needs break. God saith: "Trust ye not in a friend;" perhaps thou didst put more trust in him, than you did dare to put in God. Friends are as Venice glasses; we may use them, but if we lean too heavy upon them they will break. Behold matter of

humility, but not of sullenness or discontent. a Friend in heaven that will never fail you.

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