and to the opinion of the medical profession and eminent chemists, writes:

"So far there is no controversy. All are agreed as to the deadly nature of the plant (tobacco plant). There is no dispute as to the poisonous action of nicotine." Again, "Nicotine, as the essential principle of tobacco is called, is a liquid alkaloid of such deadly properties that less than the tenth of a grain will kill a middle-sized dog in three minutes, In a single cigar there is sufficient nicotine, if administered pure, to kill two strong men. And thus, in smoking a quarter of an ounce of tobacco, the risk must be run of introducing into the system 'two grains or more of one of the most subtle of all known poisons.""

Here, then, is an enemy to health, both of body and mind, and as a consequence, an enemy to the attainment of that purity after which we are enjoined in the Scriptures to strive, because "our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost." How solemn the warning, "If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are."

Then there is often a great deal associated with the custom of tobacco smoking of a character to impair, when he mixes up with it, the tone of a believer's piety. And many are tempted so to mix. There is something, we are told, very alluring to a smoker about the resorts where the custom is being honoured. The company strongly attracts. Now those companies, as a rule, are of a mixed character, not at all favourable to godliness. If religion should be introduced as a topic, it will be to be discussed, or it may be ridiculed. The consequence is, that the atmosphere is injurious to the soul's health. Here many of our young members have been ensnared. They have paid the penalty of disregarding the apostolic warning, "Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners."

And I would further observe, that we are here introduced to an evil, to which the custom and company of smokers often lead, that not only makes against the spiritual, but also against the numerical prosperity of our churches. I now allude to the fact that the pipe not unfrequently leads to the taking of the glass in excess. From the one to the other has been found a short path, soon and easily travelled. So strong sometimes is the longing for stimulants which tobacco excites, that even total abstainers have been unable to restrain it, and have broken their pledge to satisfy their craving for what they knew had been to them a curse. A well-known temperance advocate writes:-"I have known members of churches break the pledge: but it has nearly always been the case that such have been smokers, and have blamed the pipe for it. So far as I have observed, more members of our temperance societies fall from being caught in this snare than in any other."

A few years ago, a promising young man left one of our colleges, and very soon disappointed the hopes of his friends, and saddened the hearts of his relatives, by his fall. He frankly attributed the sad calamity, when spoken to about it, to being induced by his love of tobacco to join himself to a company of smokers, and enticed to take the glass. mistake was altogether unpremeditated, and the consequences came upon him as a swift and terrible surprise. A gentleman long resident

His

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in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and well acquainted with the churches in the North of England, who had paid considerable attention to the hindrances to prosperity and increase, stated not long ago, in private, that he knew of more than one hundred and thirty exclusions due entirely to misconduct traceable to the use of tobacco, and then the glass, as the first steps. He did not think it was expedient for churches to encourage the practice of using tobacco.

III. Does not the custom referred to create a hurtful prejudice against our churches? In many minds it unquestionably does. It is now leading large numbers of on-lookers, who feel strongly on this subject, to regard the Christian public as encouraging an evil condemned by the gravest considerations and most indisputable facts. For they look upon it as a custom by which (1.) a vast amount of money is annually wasted-upwards of £14,000,000. By which (2.) the public health is being seriously injured; for they can now point to unimpeachable testimony attesting the fact that tobacco is a poison, and that it is now undermining the constitution to an alarming extent of young men and boys. By which (3.) intemperance is being increased; (4.) society in different ways annoyed; and by which (5.) the mind of our youth is turned away from religion. Alas! on this point they can wax even eloquent, without fear of contradiction, for it is a fact which cannot be disproved, that somehow the practice does alienate from religion to a fearful extent. An eminent minister in London remarked long ago that as à statistical fact, ninety per cent. of the smoking young men are irreligious." The late John Angell James declared "that the first cigar a young man puts into his mouth is often his first step in a career of vice."

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Now this prejudice is very likely to grow, because there is a growing public opinion that the use of tobacco is in every way pernicious. This opinion has now its organization, funds, and publications. Is it not then inexpedient that the use of tobacco should be countenanced by the members of our churches?

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AT Stuttgart a man came to me in the depths of gloom, saying, "Oh, Mr. Smith, I was so filled with joy in the meeting yesterday, and now it is all gone -all,—and I do not know what to do. It is as dark as night!"

"What do you mean?

"I am so glad," I quietly remarked. "He looked at me in astonishment,"Yesterday," I remarked, "God gave you joy, and to-day He sees that you are resting on your emotions instead of on Christ, and He has taken them away in order to turn you to Christ. You have lost your joy, but you have Christ none the less. Did you ever," I continued, "pass through a railway tunnel ? "

"Yes, often."

"Did you, because it was dark, become melancholy and alarmed ? "

"And did you," I asked, "after a while come out again into the light,-"

"I am out now," he said, interrupting me. "It is all right-feelings or no feelings."-R. PEARSALL SMITH.

THE DIARY OF THE LATE T. W. MATHEWS.

XIV.-The Atonement.

It has been seen that Mr. Mathews always felt that he must think for himself, and specially on those profound and mysterious questions about which all human thinking is of necessity imperfect in its character, and fragmentary in its results. He could not slide into the grooves of ready-made opinion around him, even though making his own road were a perilous task. It was impossible for him to be held by the strong logic-cords of Calvinism; for his study of the Word led him to believe that that system of formulated theological belief was repugnant to the nature and revelation of God. Pædobaptism could not satisfy him, with the plain directions and the notorious example of Christ and the church of the apostles before him. Thoroughly conscientious, and always fearless, he followed the leading of his convictions as to the mind and will of God wherever they might lead him; never losing that absorbing awe for the illimitable vastness of truth, which is the guarantee of modesty of spirit, and the source of frankness of speech.

Such a thinker was not likely to echo heedlessly the current phrases of the day on so profound a theme as the atonement of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and therefore all earnest students of that solemn mystery will be glad to compare their thoughts with those of a modest and reverent expositor of the Word, who so often had the subject before his mind, not of course in all its manifoldness of aspect-who of mortal men does see that ?-certainly he would vehemently have disclaimed any such assumption, but in some of its leading characters, as God's sacrifice for sinners, God's cure for sin, and God's supreme revelation of His love for men.

To comprehend the force of some of the sentences of the following letter, we must remember the dominant metaphysical representation of the atonement of thirty years ago, and the phraseology in which that was expressed.

"Dear Friend, Your question respects sacrifice; you also ask the meaning of the original word. The Hebrew 'zabach' means simply to slay, sometimes for food, oftener for worship. The Greek Thuo means the same. The Latin and English sacrifice, etymologically, means to make sacred, but really to present anything religiously. The idea of devoting seems essential to it, the giving up of something on the part of one to the pleasure of another. Now for its spiritual import, Jesus is the great Sacrifice spoken of in the Scripture; and He is so in a twofold way, corresponding to that two-fold nature that is in Him. Being the true God and eternal life, He is (1.) the sacrifice presented by God to us; and being also a true man, the son of Abraham, the son of Adam, the second Adam, He is (2.) the Sacrifice of the human race to God.

As to the first point, you find Him everywhere spoken of as the gift of God unspeakable, the fruit and proof of divine, eternal, unregenerated, unsolicited love, of love generous, forgiving, untiring, universal, impartial, inexhaustible, which, devoting the divine 'all' to us (for all things are ours by the gift of God), spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all-Rom. viii. 22. Therefore it is that we have

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forgiveness in His blood-Eph. i. 7, Col. i. 14. In whom we have redemption through His blood-the forgiveness of sin; not that pardon is purchased, but proved; not created in the heart of God by Jesus Christ's death, but flowing out from the heart of God through the selfdevoted heart of Jesus. It is to me a frightful heresy on the one hand to make Jesus better than God, on the other to make Him less than God. But these two mistakes are almost as common as sermons and books are common. Jesus is the true God and eternal life, God manifest in the flesh; that is exhibiting Himself, His feelings, principles, and character, in such a form as we may perfectly understand, viz., in the body, the feelings, the actings, and the sufferings of a fellow-man.

'Till God in human flesh I see,
My thoughts no comfort find.'

My heart triumpheth to write these words. I am exceedingly filled with comfort. Would that all men knew Jesus-that all nations called Him blessed.

"How often is Jesus made less than God, in His not only being treated as a mere man (as the Socinians do), but in His having a sort of feeling toward us which God has not-a kind of forgiveness and pity merely human. How often, how generally is Jesus made better than God; in its being represented that God never would have had any mercy on sinners had not Christ come, and by paying our debt, exhausting the bitter cup of the curse, and satisfying the claims of divine justice, turned the mind of God, changed His feelings, merited His mercy, purchased His love-in short, induced God to be as good as Himself. No wonder at there being Infidels, and Deists, and Socinians in the world, when the orthodox have promulgated such horrid, unreasonable, unscriptural, anti-scriptural ideas of God and of His Bible. Jesus is the Lamb of God; God's Lamb, which He 'gave,' 'put to grief,' 'sent,' 'provided for a sacrifice,'-spared not, but delivered for our transgressions, for our sins, for our unbelief that we might 'perceive the love of God;' that we (not God) might receive the atonement-Rom. v.; that we might be reconciled to God' (not God be reconciled to us)-2 Cor. v.-because God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, nor imputing their trespasses unto them, but forgiving them, all of them, through the blood-shedding of Jesus once for all.

"Then, as to the human nature of Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of man, He was offered to God a sacrifice for a sweet smelling savour. It is right and reasonable that all creatures should be yielded up to God; it is equally their happiness and His eternal claim. Jesus, therefore, the righteous, offered Himself in the Eternal Spirit, the living Holy Ghost, the everlasting right life of moral creatures-offered Himself without spot to God, as the Head of the human family. He did so to show what all ought to do; to show the way of peace with God; the only right state of a creature's heart towards God. And He was raised from the dead to show all men what God does with those who yield themselves up unreservedly to the will of God. Every one who follows this Master in self-devotion shall reign with Him in glory, shall enter into the joy of his Lord. They who will not thus follow Jesus shall

perish. If we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. We can only yield ourselves to Him, and suffer with Him, when we fully know the forgiveness of sin, when we know the love of Jesus, that is, of God, for Jesus and the Father are one; and we can only do this in the Holy Ghost. But this is not all. It is right that sin should be followed by suffering. Jesus therefore offered Himself a sacrifice for sin (on account of sin), not His own, for He did no sin, but for ours. Not that God punishes an innocent person for the guilty; but that a good person cannot but suffer with the guilty. God is angry with sin. How could Jesus, the manifestation and image, the visible representation of the invisible God, but suffer from sin? Human nature was withered and cursed with sin. How could Jesus, the representation of the human family, but be cursed and withered with our sins; not by being a sinner, but by being injured by our sins. Here is a family; the father and eldest son are perfectly of one heart; all the rest of the family are rebellious, and having in their disobedience set themselves on fire in the house, the eldest son scorches himself most dreadfully-nay, mortally-in trying to rescue them from the flames. Thus it was with Jesus; the heart of God the Father in Him made Him suffer a sacrifice for human guilt. If we are good, we feel for sin, both our own and others, as Jesus felt. With the sacrifice of praise and beneficence God is well pleased-Heb. xiii. 15, 16. By the one we devote ourselves to God; by the other we devote ourselves to our fellow-men. The idea of devotedness is in both.

"I wish this may be satisfactory to you. I wish all men knew it. "Believe me affectionately yours, for Jesus' sake,

"THOS. WRIGHT MATHEWS."

"My dear Friend,-I will endeavour to answer your question laconically, but I hope satisfactorily.

"The blood of Jesus is the most solemn, awful, and perfect assurance which the almighty and all-holy God could give of His pardoning grace towards a rebel world; and at the same time of human wickedness and God's unspeakable hatred against wickedness. The blood of Christ, therefore, which has taken away all our guilt by its being once offered, does, when it is understood and received by the mind and conscience of a sinner (i. e., when believed), produce immediately entire confidence towards God, love, joy, peace, admiration, delight in God, a desire to please God, shame at all past sins, and a determination to grieve God no more. The pardoned sinner feels the spirit of adoption. His conscience, purged from dead works, serves the living God with living love.

"He breaks the power of cancelled sin,

He sets the prisoner free.'

"I am your much obliged and faithful friend,

"T. W. M."

UNSEEN HARVESTS.-Astronomers say we see the light of stars that have ceased to exist. It is so with the influence of many a mother on her child, many a teacher and his people. The worker is gone, but the work abides, enlightening, gladdening, and saving the world. Be not weary in doing well; the world reaps a harvest, even if the sower never sees a ripened grain.