"for that word 'whosoever.' If God had said there was mercy for Richard Baxter, I am so vile a sinner that I would have thought He meant some other Richard Baxter; but when he says whosoever, I know that includes me, the worst of all Richard Baxters." There is not a true stricken penitent on earth but understands and sympathizes with this shrinking sensitiveness. The watchword of all such is, ""Tis mercy all, immense and free, for O my God, it found out me." Then, as we would not have the blood of souls on our heads, let us have a care what freedoms we use with God's life-message to the perishing. The great universalities of Gospel grace-by these let us stand. To us they are dearer and ever dearer, the longer we exist. In the faith of them let us live, for the sake of them let us toil, in the defence of them let us strive, and in the hope of them let us die. In this spirit let us sow, with erect front, with firm foot, with full hand, and with free arm. "Preach the word; be instant in season and out of season." "In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand; for thou knowest not whether shall prosper either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good." (Eccl. xi. 6.)

And in this disseminating work let no one, not even the obscurest, not even the youngest, attempt to shoulder off his responsibility on ordained men or seniors, for the smallest creature can carry and ground a seed germ; and the annals of Sabbath Schools teem with cases in which the child has borne home from his class grains of truth, and dropped them into the mind of a careless parent with soul-saving result. "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings (and who could say more?) God ordains strength." "As every leaf of the forest," it has been well said, "and every ripple on the lake, which itself receives a sunbeam on its breast, may throw the sunbeam again, and so spread the light around in like manner every one, old or young, who receives Christ into his heart may and will publish with his life and lips that blessed name." Glasgow. JOHN GUTHRIE.

SYMPATHY.-An eminent minister sat in his study, busily engaged in preparing his Sunday sermon, when his little boy toddled into the room, and holding up his pinched finger, said, with an expression of suffering, "Look, pa; how I hurt it!" The father, interrupted in the middle of a sentence, glanced hastily at him, and with just the slightest tone of impatience, said, "I can't help it, my son." The little fellow's eyes grew bigger, and as he turned to go out, he said, in a low voice, "Yes you could, you might have said 'Oh!'" There was a sermon in minature.

SUFFERING. There is seldom a line of glory written upon the earth's face but a line of suffering runs parallel with it; and they that read the lustrous syllables of the one, and stop not to decipher the spotted and worn inscription of the other, get the lesser half of the lesson earth has to give.

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peace; sin no more." Let us, too, "speak the truth in love;" walking softly over the tender ground that may be furrowed by convictions deeper than we know, that may be harrowed by the teeth of sharp sorrows which we have no opportunity to understand; and let us "be gentle unto all men, apt to teach," meekly sowing that "precious seed" which is the germ of life and peace equally for all.

Finally, He went forth to sow on a principle of universality and impartiality. The Sower, with the seed-bag slung over his shoulder paces the field with measured parallels and with a regulated step, and flings out the seed with a free swing of the hand that is kept in harmony with his advance; every movement of hand and foot being adjusted with the utmost care so as to secure equability of sowing all over the field. If there is any one thing in daily life more than another that is expressive of free universality and studied impartiality, it is the figure and attitude of the sower as he goes forth and sows. His very step has a vigorous tread, his very hand has a vigorous swing, his very eye has an unswerving glance all to secure this end. Anything short of this sustained attention and well-balanced energy, anything constrained, contracted or artificial, would mar the universality and equability of the distribution. Rather than this, let the seed fall on the beaten path, on the rocky ledge, or in the stony copse, if some of it should fail, or the cloud of birds over head should swoop down and pick it up; even as in the cosmical harmonies of our globe, the sun is divinely made to shine on the icy pole, and the rain to fall on the howling waste and the barren sea, rather than that influences so largely needed should not be impartially and universally supplied. Alas! that so many of the undersowers should have fallen, on this vital point, so far short both of their Master's example and of their Master's commission. Here, if anywhere, to falter is to spoil all. On a life and death concern like this there must be no ambiguity. The silver trumpet of Gospel jubilee must give forth no uncertain sound. We would rather hear grim-tongued Limitarianism speaking forth in its own tones, than something that pretends to be other than it is, speaking forth the universalities of the Gospel as through a scrannel pipe with subdued voice and timid, stammering tongue.

Even universal terms, yea, and some very particular terms, are oftentimes felt by the thoroughly aroused and conscience-stricken sinner to be barely universal enough, barely particular enough to make him see himself veritably embraced in the arms of Gospel grace. To such a one, in his self-diffidence, the faintest quaver in the joyful sound, the slightest discernible reserve, though far short of the above-named hard and grimvisaged ambiguities, might be a stunning blow in the face on the very door-step of the Gospel. "I thank God," exclaimed Richard Baxter,

"for that word 'whosoever.' If God had said there was mercy for Richard Baxter, I am so vile a sinner that I would have thought He meant some other Richard Baxter; but when he says whosoever, I know that includes me, the worst of all Richard Baxters." There is not a true stricken penitent on earth but understands and sympathizes with this shrinking sensitiveness. The watchword of all such is, ""Tis mercy all, immense and free, for O my God, it found out me." Then, as we would not have the blood of souls on our heads, let us have a care what freedoms we use with God's life-message to the perishing. The great universalities of Gospel grace-by these let us stand. To us they are dearer and ever dearer, the longer we exist. In the faith of them let us live, for the sake of them let us toil, in the defence of them let us strive, and in the hope of them let us die. In this spirit let us sow, with erect front, with firm foot, with full hand, and with free arm. "Preach the word; be instant in season and out of season." "In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand; for thou knowest not whether shall prosper either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good." (Eccl. xi. 6.)

And in this disseminating work let no one, not even the obscurest, not even the youngest, attempt to shoulder off his responsibility on ordained men or seniors, for the smallest creature can carry and ground a seed germ; and the annals of Sabbath Schools teem with cases in which the child has borne home from his class grains of truth, and dropped them into the mind of a careless parent with soul-saving result. "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings (and who could say more?) God ordains strength." "As every leaf of the forest," it has been well said, "and every ripple on the lake, which itself receives a sunbeam on its breast, may throw the sunbeam again, and so spread the light around in like manner every one, old or young, who receives Christ into his heart may and will publish with his life and lips that blessed name." Glasgow. JOHN GUTHRIE.

SYMPATHY.-An eminent minister sat in his study, busily engaged in preparing his Sunday sermon, when his little boy toddled into the room, and holding up his pinched finger, said, with an expression of suffering, "Look, pa; how I hurt it!" The father, interrupted in the middle of a sentence, glanced hastily at him, and with just the slightest tone of impatience, said, "I can't help it, my son." The little fellow's eyes grew bigger, and as he turned to go out, he said, in a low voice, "Yes you could, you might have said 'Oh!" There was a sermon in minature.

SUFFERING.-There is seldom a line of glory written upon the earth's face but a line of suffering runs parallel with it; and they that read the lustrous syllables of the one, and stop not to decipher the spotted and worn inscription of the other, get the lesser half of the lesson earth has to give.

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The Metropolis of New England.-No. 2.

THE charter of the Massachusetts' Company pointed to the establishment of a colony for temporal purposes. Nothing was said in it touching religion; but the colonists soon showed that they meant to use it for ecclesiastical ends. They had come to New England to worship God after a manner in which they were not allowed to worship Him at home. One of their first proceedings, therefore, was to institute a church. A church had been organized at Salem in July, 1629, by Endicott and others, much after the type of the church at New Plymouth-in other words, on a basis of independency, that being considered by them as the original plan of ecclesiastical order and discipline; and at the solemnity connected with the implantation of Independency at Salem, Governor Bradford, of Plymouth, was present, with other messengers, as they were called, who gave to the newly gathered brethren the right hand of fellowship. A like platform of government was adopted at Charlestown and Boston. At Charlestown, in August, 1630, provision was made for two ministers, and £20 per annum was assigned to each.

Boston resembled Charlestown in ecclesiastical arrangements; but by what steps exactly the Massachusett emigrants found their way into the independent form of government does not distinctly appear. Their fundamental idea was anti-episcopal and anti-presbyterian; they advanced beyond the point reached by the doctrinal Puritans of England and the nonconforming members of the establishment. They gave up the Book of Common Prayer, and adopted extempore devotion. On leaving the land of their birth they had, indeed, concurred in a manifesto which declared “ we esteem it an honour to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother, and cannot part from our native country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes." But it was impossible, under the circumstances, that they could be supposed to express in these terms an adherence to the Church of England as it then was; they must have meant some ideas of their own from which the existing condition of things had been abstracted, or, as a modern historian suggests, "the aggregate of English Christians, whether in the upshot of the movements which were now going on, their policy should turn out to be episcopal, or presbyterian, or something different from either." In either case it is probable that sentiments of respect and love for the Church of England, as established at the Reformation, with all its defects, lingered in their hearts, and twined round even all their determined nonconformity.

It appears that presbyterian inclinations were manifested by some of the colonists, but they found no favour with the majority. There was a good deal of disputation on the subject from time to time; presbyterian sway was stoutly resisted, but many years afterwards it came to be felt that the original scheme of ecclesiastical government in Massachusetts was capable of being improved by adopting some basis of union between church and church, and by deferring to some common counsel and advice for the avoidance of