sive authority can choose the good and reject the evil, though interest plead, and temptation fascinate. In a word, his entire nature may be a temple of truth, of purity, of goodness, of God-majestic in moral strength and filled with the incense of praise. God has given man's will supreme control of his choice and conduct, and mournful it is, when the will is made the slave of ambition, of selfishnesss, of hatred, or of lust.

Though man's will has thus become corrupted and depraved, though his life has been an almost constant violation of the moral law, though "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," divine interest in man's condition has neither died nor diminished. He did not turn to be our enemy, though we had rebelled against him. He did not at once spurn us from his presence, nor condemn us to endless ruin. He pitied us in our lost estate. His compassions were deeply moved. "He thought upon us" in our self-caused accursedness. The penalty of the law was not at once inflicted. Justice stayed her hand. Respite was given. From behind the thunder-cloud, which our iniquities had gathered over us, grace shone refulgent. Kindness was shown where wrath was merited. Loving-kindness spoke of deliverance, when righteousness might have uttered a sentence of doom. Our treatment of the divine benefactor was not meted out into our own bosoms. The just sentence was not swift in its execution. Indignation lingered. The heavens did not become as brass nor the earth as iron. There were dews, and rains, and sunshine. God gave his enemies fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with gladness; and continued his kindness when it was met by more than ox-like or asinine stupidity. When all availed not to remove human suspicion and enmity, as well as human guilt, his love took a still higher form, and became mercy. God's thoughts toward man were thoughts of peace and of forgiveness. He had no wish to condemn, he sought to save. His desire for man's salvation became a purpose, and his purpose a plan, and his plan a series of stupendous acts for the recovery of the race from the ruins of the fall. Nothing was spared, nothing forgotten, nothing omitted that could be done. Love that seemed only to rise in proportion to the obstacles it had to surmount, gushed forth upon the race in the plenitude of its strength and purity. He loved the world: he "so loved it that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." What could he more? If among the cognitions of angels or men there is a loftier height of moral blessedness to which man can be raised than that which God contemplates, or if there is a greater sacrifice which can be made for the attainment of an end so transcendent and sublime, let them be named. But heaven, and earth, and hell give no answer to the challenge which proceeds from the throne of the Eternal, What more could I have done for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? And it remains for the whole race to prostrate themselves in lowly adoration and grateful confidence before the throne of God, saying: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins:" "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us :" Who, who is a God like unto thee!"

Now, if such representations of the moral character of God, in any

system, as are fitted to win confidence, affection, and gratitude, furnish proof that that religion is one of love and not of slavish fear, then such proof is furnished in abundance by the religion of the Bible. It teaches that God is love. It points out benevolence in all his wishes, beneficence in all his ways. It represents him as kind and gracious to the miserable, merciful to the wrath-deserving. Yea; it declares that "his tender mercies are over all his works." Why should infidels endeavour to darken the picture by turning to other passages as if they were inconsistent with these explicit statements? Can they not understand a "wrath" that has no feeling of personal vindictiveness, and a "vengeance" that is only a manifestation of governmental displeasure at sin? And are not such acts and processes of government as are described in the Bible proofs that, in true benevolence, God regards the greatest possible good of all his intelligent creatures? He who came to reveal God to man presents him in the endearing character of a Father, and a Father, too, whose interest is not confined to those of his children who obey and love him, but reaches the most wayward, rebellious, and prodigal. Will any one read the fifteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel, and tell us that there is nothing in that admirable portraiture of the compassion of God to move and thrill the soul of man? full of such representations of the heart of God? to condemn the world, but that the world though him might be saved." "He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.” commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.'

And is not the Bible "He sent his Son not

"God

And Christianity presents these facts as the highest conceivable motives to obedience. "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice; holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service." The highest and most heroic of lives have been formed under the influence of these sublime facts. The self-denying devotedness of Paul's life, the unwavering zeal of his efforts for the salvation of the world, his ardour and energy in prosecuting the enterprise with which he was entrusted, led many to look upon him as insane, to brand him as a fanatic. And what was his defence? "The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that if one died for all then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves." Here, then, we are shown the mainspring of religion. It is gratitude. The Christian works not for pay, but from love. His service is not that of the slave, but of the child. He moves not from the rod of terror held over him, but from the mighty magnetism of love. If he fears, it is because he loves. There is a principle within him restraining him from sin, constraining him to holy obedience. Love dwells within him, and he dwells in love. He is made free, and he will work. Truth has broken his fetters, and he will defend it. No fear crushes him, and he will praise his deliverer. He lives, he thinks, he loves, therefore he works. His whole nature is moulded after the divine model-ACTIVE LOVE. To cease to love would be to die morally and spiritually; therefore he lives by faith; for faith kindles love. " I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

THE TRUE LIFE OF MAN.

My friends, the great things in life are the things which men live by, and must have from day to day. They are not the things that he desires merely to minister to his factitious tastes. Anything a man is living for is merely a condition of his being; it is not the essential thing of life. One man is living for fortune. Day by day he accumulates; but that fortune is not essential to his life-it is not the essential thing in his existence. Another man is living for some bright object of ambition, which through all the clouds of present circumstances he has borne steadily before his star-lit eye; and his endeavour, through all the long nights of study by the dim lamplight, is to gain intellectual eminence, and by availing himself of slippery combinations or of dexterous political arts, to become a statesman. Another is trying over the red field of war and over prostrate men to climb upward to some high path of imperial ambition. But these things are not essential to life. All the good things of life are they which we must have-so to speak-from day to day, and which we must live by. We must have bread and drink-to come down to material life-to live by, day by day. How we all feel it from time to time when we look up at this season of the year on the face of the earth and on the face of the sky! How we watch the wheeling circuits of the winds, and the cisterns of the rain, and feel that all our prosperity rests upon the simple idea that the earth itself will bring forth its fruit in due season! How helpless men must feel in spring time, when the bare earth cannot bring forth a single germ or a single blade without higher agency! Men can sow the seed-they can cleave open the furrow-they can endeavour with patient watching to nourish the little germ which comes up, but they cannot make it grow. How dependent we all are! We build our ships of commerce, and our warehouses of brick and stone, but we have, after all, to look up and ask God for the sunshine and the rain, and those mysterious agencies which bring forth the fruits of the earth in their season: for the air we breathe, and for the light which fills us with life we are dependent on God, as well as for the water by which we live. Many men are heard now in our midst complaining of the enactment of what they think an unjust law, which provides against the production and sale of certain drinks. Suppose it were so that the living stream which gushes from the hills were sealed up, how differently would the community feel? Now the blow falls upon one class only, which is affected by this matter-upon those whose property is involved in that traffic-while others are rejoicing to think that the fountain of death shall not come up to pollute their lips any longer-to think that homes shall not be desolated by it any longer-to think that their hearth-fires shall no longer be quenched by it. These are thanking God for it; and I say, what a difference it would be, if on the other hand, all the great springs which rise among the hills were sealed up! Or suppose that God, instead of water, should rain down upon us that beverage which men think it is such a glorious liberty and privelege to drink. Suppose that instead of the crystal stream, he should cause the noxious liquor which men seem to prize so much to gush on us from the founts, what a cry would rise from humanity! And if it had been this glorious thing, God would have made his own distillery among the hills, and would have supplied it; but not a drop has been given, unless what man, by his perverse ingenuity, has produced. You cannot find it anywhere supplied by nature. On the other hand, what has God given us? See how it trickles down from the pine blades on the tops of the hills; how it gushes forth a pure spring where the tired hunter laves his brow; how, enlarging, the pilgrim dips his lip in it as it flows along by rural homes, and, becoming a little river, turns the wheels of industry, and makes men glad with the power of mechanism; how, swollen into a great river, it floats navies on its bosom, and then pours itself

into the reservoir of the sea, whence it is again brought into the clouds. God gives us thus the necessary circulation of the water, because water we must have and must live by. Or, to rise from material things to intellectual things, we do not get knowledge merely as a thing to live by. The very fact of knowledge possessing the largest power of expansion shows that a man not only knows that A is A, and B is B, but there is in knowledge a spiritual force which lifts its possessor higher and higher, until he begins to feel that he can grasp almost the highest facts. So is it with the heart; it lives by its affection; it does not live merely for some outward thing. O, what a changed world this would be if the deep affections of the human heart could be bribed-could be bought and sold! It is the glory of love that its existence rejoices in its own excellency, and its own beauty clings to and rejoices in itself, clinging to that which it loves alone. In life or in death, it lives by its own affection; it clings to the object of its devotion iu the depths of its own holy and blessed nature; and when that object is taken away affection endures; it burns by the gate of time through the long night of death, and will live for ever, because it is of the very nature of God; it is an excellence pertaining to divinity. The heart lives by affection; it makes no difference to the mother that the boy whom she nursed and rocked to sleep on her breast fondly and with such care, has turned out a ruffiau, whom the world scorns and despises; she loves him still, and her love is unchanged. I say, therefore, that to live spiritually we must live by Christ-we must not live for the material things of life, or for anything but the heart--not things which we live for, but things which we live by, day by day. The spirit must live by Christ, not merely for Christ, or to see Christ, as a great many think they will see him when they get to heaven. If we are true Christians we are living by him; living by his spirit day by day; living by our religion, not using it for our ends; not taking hold of it as a burden or a framework by which to get to heaven, and then get rid of it. A great many people think that when they get to heaven they can get rid of their religion which they are dragging through the world. But, my friends, religion is its own reward, and its own excellency; and I apprehend that it is not known until we feel that we live by it day by day: until we feel that we live by the faith, which conquers all earthly things, and overcomes death--until we feel that we live by the love which retains us as slaves, and takes hold of all things, and clasps all things in the might of its self-sacrifice. We are to live by communion with God; not that by doing so we may get to heaven, but that our spiritual existence may be maintained. Christ said he was sent by the Father, but was he separated from the Father? Did he speak as if God was far off in some distant locality, while he was down on this little earth of ours? No, he was sent by the Father, but he lived by him still; he was in contact with him: he was in spiritual communion with him. So I say we must be conscious of God's presence with us if we are truly religious. We are not to say that by and bye, when we get to heaven, we will be with him and live in spiritual communion with him, even were we to consider it supposable that there ever should come a time in the sphere of existence when we could see, could take in, by any possible organism, the infinite presence, the Almighty holiness. We may feel a conception of what God is, that glorious life may appear to us easier to comprehend as we walk in our spiritual existence through the golden streets of heaven, but we never can see God by any physical or outward contact in this world or in eternity. But, on the other hand, we can live by God, we can have communion with him, we can be in contact with him now as in heaven; and the man who is truly religious is not merely living for communion with God by and bye, but is living with a consciousness of the presence continually. The remark is sometimes made of men that they have got a good religion to live by, but not a good religion to die by. I never heard such a contradiction in my life; and when a

man truly says that, and truly means that, certainly it is not very uncharitable to say that he does not know what religion is. No religion is not good to live by which is not good to die by. Has my religion taught me that infinite beneficence covers everything with its blessed purpose-has it taught me to overcome evil with good-has it taught me to love a fellow-man-has it taught me to conquer the evil designs of my own heart-has it taught me the mighty truth of eternity-has it taught me to recognize the source from which all blessings spring-has it taught me how, when heart broken and bowed down with grief, I may believe in the promise of God, and how I may lay down my dead with their immortal radiance flashing back upon my brow-has it enabled me to do this and do you tell me that that religion is not good to die by? Is the religion taught by Christ, which will carry me through the vale of death into the haven of peace and eternal joys, a religion which does to live by but not to die by? Let us all, therefore, ask ourselves what is it which will do to live by? Let a man take up the cherished object of his heart, whatever that object may be, and ask himself, "Will this do to live by-right straight through ? "Here," he may say, "I have been accumulating 50,000 or 100,000 dollars; I have got it honestly, and without doing wrong to any man; I have worked morning and night and made all this money; I have spent all my time in doing it-I thought of nothing else-I thought little of home, little of intellectual pleasures, little of friends-will that do to live by? Will it do to live by when sorrow, sickness, or old age comes? Will it do to live by: if it does, will it do to die by?" Or another may say, "I have spent a life of pleasure; I have taken the cup of bliss as it passed. I have enjoyed myself socially and thrown aside the strict and puritanical notions which might have restrained me. I have allowed the blood in my heart to impel me to whatsoever it did, and I have not baulked my own desires. I have lived for pleasure. Will it do to live so always?" O, my friends, in the name of God I implore of you to ask yourselves that question. Will the things you have lived by in the past do for you to live by in the future? If so, then it will do to die by. The religion which is animated by the faith and the hope and the love of Jesus Christ, filling the heart of man and gaining victories over time and sense, will do to live by, clear through every trial, and not only does it do to live by, but, thank God, when death comes, it comes as a being whom Christ has conquered, and whom in the Spirit of Christ we can conquer. The Christian religion will do to die by. "He who eateth me liveth by me," and he who has the Spirit of Christ lives by Christ, and hourly by him from day to day; he is ready to live and ready to die, for he fulfils the great purpose of his being to which God called him. One word more. Let me entreat you to ask yourselves this question, and follow it out to a logical conclusion: What is it which it will do to live by And that which will do to live by, cling to with all your hearts and with all your souls.-Rev. G. H. Chapin, New York.

WHICH WAS FIRST?-A DIALOGUE.

SCENE. A first-class carriage on the Mulbery and Bilbery Railway. PERSONS.-John Quite Sharpe, Esq., a gentleman farmer, and atheist; Ephraim Tranquil, a Friend; and the Rev. Dr. Clearhead, a clergyman. Railway-whistle-train off.

Eph. Tran." Good morning, friends-a charming day; the crops look well. Providence promises us a bountiful harvest."

J. Q. Sharpe." And, pray sir, may I ask, what or whom you mean by Providence?"

E. T.-"By Providence, friend, I mean the great Maker and Preserver of all; that God whom we acknowledge as our Creator, but who allows us in