instructive example of the riches of God's grace in granting opportunities, and of the folly and perver

sity too often shewn by men in throwing them away. Let us apply the example to ourselves, under a humble and solemn sense of our responsibility. To us the word of the gospel has more fully come than to those of old times, to whom it was preached by the various messengers who were sent to prepare the way for the coming of our Lord, and therefore surely "We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?"

III.

THE BLESSEDNESS OF DRAWING NEAR TO GOD.

PSALM lxxiii. 20-"It is good for me to draw near to God."

YES, truly. There can be nothing better for a man than to draw near to God.

It would sweeten our prosperity. When the world is smiling upon us, and our affairs are progressing smoothly, and there is peace and plenty in our homes, I am sure we should neither prosper less, nor enjoy our prosperity less, if we were living near to God, in the habitual and thankful acknowledgment of Him as the Author of it all. I am sure the day's work would be done with none the less of spirit and manly energy because we prayed in the morning that God would give us our daily bread. We should not relish less the fruits with which our industry is crowned because we received them as the answer to our prayer, and, discerning in them the paternal beneficence of the Most

High, accepted them as tokens of His love, and pledges, therefore, of still better blessings yet to come. Nor are our peaceful homes the less agreeable asylums from the strife and turmoil of the world because the name of God is written upon our roof-tree; and, thankful to Him for their manifold amenities, we regard them as the type and prediction of a still more blissful home above.

Often we forget the Giver amid the abundance of His gifts; but in the very forgetting of the Giver is not the abundance of the gifts diminished? Do not we lose the best gift of all? For is not the best gift of all a sense of the Giver's love? What is so valuable in the gifts of God as the revelation they contain of the heart of God? Yes, this is the best thing in all things that are good, that they come from a good God, and are revelations of His goodness; and it is then, and then only, we obtain out of them all the blessedness that is in them, when they are known and felt to be such, and received as such. The godless voluptuary, adept though he believes himself in the arts of enjoyment, is but the poorest novice in them after all; for what an infinitely sweeter delightfulness there is in things than he knows how to draw out of them, ignorant as he is of the heavenly promise of which earth's gifts are full to

those who discern in the gifts the bounty of the Great Bestower! The godless money-maker, wise though he may be to gather gold and silver, is a fool and blind as to the best of all the treasures earth has to supply; for is not this the best, the prophecy that lies in every blessing, when received as a paternal grace to us unworthy, of a still richer and nobler inheritance?

And we need not restrict the argument to mere grovelling voluptuaries and worshippers of wealth, but we may extend it to minds of a higher order. He who can penetrate with subtle intellect the secrets of the universe,-does not he miss the best and happiest secret of all if he fail to receive into his heart the testimony which it bears to that Great Being who is not only its Author but "Our Father?" What a cold and hard thing the system of nature is when looked at merely as a system of nature, and not as a revelation of the living God! How it fails to disclose its highest beauty, not only to the eye of the man of science, but even to that of the artist or the poet, so long as it witnesses nothing to him of that Infinite One whose embodied thought it is-so long as the face of the world is to him like an illuminated page, with the tracery and colouring of which he is so occupied

that he sees not the letters of the name that is written, "The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth!" There is nothing fair but it grows fairer—there is nothing pleasant but it grows pleasanter-when it is traced up to the great Fountain of all good and perfect gifts. It would double every blessing to receive it as from Him. It would make it twice a blessing-a blessing for what it is, and a blessing for what it promises-a blessing for what it ministers to our necessities or enjoyments here below, and a blessing (how much more precious still) for what it shews us of Him above, with whom are all the blessings we can ever need either here or hereafter. Truly, therefore, "it is good for us to draw near to God."

As it would sweeten our blessings, so it would also lighten our burdens. To no man is there ever granted a course of unmingled enjoyment all the way from the cradle to the grave. The sun never shines in the climate in which we now are the climate of this earthly life of ours-the whole day through from dawn to nightfall. And when the clouds cover the sky is it not good to draw near to God? Is it not in His presence, is it not from His face that the light shineth eternally? When mis