haste to shed innocent blood; the good still enjoy the gratulations of conscience, and the evil writhe under the premonitory inflictions of coming wrath.

Abels still die; and Cains still live! But Abel's religion lives! yes, and, blessed be God! lights many an altar, and is transforming many a soul into the re-created image of its God! So, too, does Cain's religion survive. Reluctant as some may be to admit, painful as it is to reflect on this fact, it cannot be denied. Cain's unbelief, Cain's selfishness, Cain's diabolical malevolence, still live! ever causing lamentation and woe; scattering firebrands, arrows and death !"

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They who are absorbed in their own schemes, and respect not the rights and interests of others; they who serve God in a way that he has not appointed, or reject the sacrifice which he has provided for lost sinners; they who envy and hate the righteous, and violate any of Heaven's statutes to gratify unhallowed passions and compass selfish ends, are, at heart, even as Cain was, though, in the infatuation of their self-love, they are blinded to their real moral character.

In fact, there is but one Scriptural division of the human family, the Cains and the Abels; the wicked and the righteous; the rejectors and the followers of the Lamb! This division is most serious. It denotes a radical difference in men, though they are all "by nature children of wrath;" a difference in the character of their affections, in the nature of their faith, and in the foundation of their hopes; a difference which will fit them for totally different conditions and employments in the world to come; and which, as in the case of the brothers, betokens a final separation, wide as the gulph between heaven and hell.

Men may deny this division; but they cannot obstruct this approaching separation. Sin lies at the door of every man who has not done what he ought to have done, ready to come upon him, and overpower him, and hand him over to the judgment !

THE PATRIARCH'S DEATH-BED.

HAVING heard that Jacob was sick unto death, Joseph, taking with him his two sons, hastens to his father's bed-side. Years of absence, with all the corrupting influences of prosperity, had not impaired the filial regard of the one, nor had the paralyzing weight of years deadened in the bosom of the other his paternal affections. Let him live,' is the language. of Joseph's heart; O God of my fathers! let him live until I can reach him. Let me and mine receive his parting benediction. If his days be numbered, let me at least have the melancholy satisfaction of closing his eyes in death!'

He arrives in time, and meets with a cordial reception from his sick and dying parent. And "Who are these?" inquired the old man. "They are my sons," answered Joseph, "whom God hath given me in this place." "And Israel said, Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them:" God's goodness has not only prevented my fears, but exceeded my hopes. He has been indeed gracious to me: "Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face; and, lo, God hath showed me also thy seed." "And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk; the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh." 1

This scene represents the Patriarch to us in an engaging light his irrepressible emotions of joy on beholding Joseph 1 Gen. xlviii, 15, 16, 20.

and his sons, his tender solicitude for their spiritual welfare, his grateful sense of past mercies, his serene confidence in the Divine promises, and his tranquillity in view of his approaching dissolution.

Surely, He whom the patriarch devoutly acknowledged as his God, was not an ideal, much less a material being. To his eye God must have had a distinctly personal and spiritual existence. He was the God before whom his fathers had walked, and whom he would have his own children obediently and reverently follow; the God who had sustained and guided and guarded him all his life long, and to whose providence and grace he would commit their interests for time and eternity.

How remarkable that at so early a period of the world, long before the era of speculative thought, that old man should have had such a clear and definite conception of the only living and true God; such an intelligent belief in his providence, and so firm and cordial a reliance on his faithfulness! And how does it tend to confirm us in the truth of our own theistical sentiments, when we reflect that He whom we call God, is the same gracious Being whom all holy men of old worshipped; that He who fed Jacob, has by the same providence ministered to our wants, and that the "Angel which redeemed Jacob from all evil," is the same angel of the covenant who, in the fulness of time, came into our world to redeem us to God!

It is this scene to which Paul referred when he said: 66 By faith Jacob, when he was a-dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff." Hence, it might be observed, that in our approaches to God, it behoves us to draw nigh unto him with reverence and godly fear. He is great and "greatly to be feared." Girt with majesty and strength, his holiness is as pure as the inaccessible light he inhabits. Dwelling in the effulgence of his own uncreated purity, before him the angels veil their faces, and bow in profoundest adoration. Who can think of that Being who comprehends in himself all that is great and pure and excellent; who sits enthroned in all space, and through all eternity; at whose fiat the regions of immensity were filled with suns and stars and systems; on whose arm the universe hangs, and 1 Heb. xi, 21.

in whose hand are the lots of all beings, and not be well nigh overwhelmed with feelings of awe!

The Patriarchs were characterized by the reverential feelings they cherished toward God; and thus Jacob, aged as he was, and drawing nigh unto death, rose upon his knees to worship, though he was obliged to lean on the top of his staff. What a spectacle of godliness! and what a reproof to those who, though God has blessed them with health, do never assume the attitude of devotion even during the solemnities of the sanctuary. How little reverence is oft times visible even in the house of God! and why is it, but that there is often no sense of God's presence, no feeling of our sinfulness and wants, no heart for devotional duties. Every thing in God's service should be expressive of godly fear; and if we do not reverence Him in the day of health, shall we be able to worship Him in the hour of mortal sickness?

But the patriarch's death-bed scene gives rise to reflections which require more particular note.

The blessing of a dying Christian parent is more to be coveted than the legacy of the richest worldling. The latter. like the poisoned arrows bequeathed by Hercules to Philoctetes, may become the means of the inheritor's destruction. Often does the inheritance of riches which a godless father spent his life in accumulating, result in wretchedness and ruin to the son. With such a bequest, and from such a source, come temptations to self-indulgence, without the counteracting principle of personal responsibility to God. But the blessing of a dying Christian parent, though he may have no worldly goods to leave behind him, "maketh rich, and hath no sorrow added."

It is the inheritance of a good name which, next to personal worth, is more to be prized than all "the wealth of Ormus and of Ind." Memento of a parent's virtues, it will be dearer to the heart, should right views be taken of life, than any inheri. ted titles could have been. With the treasured blessing, which is, as it were, the seal of a parent's faith in God, he need not envy those who pride themselves on ancestral renown. He can ever say to himself, though excluded by his birth from the circles of worldly rank: My father was a Christian, which is "the highest style of man." He did not walk with the

great on earth, but with the greater in heaven; with the greatest and best of beings. He was not surrounded in his dying moments by the rich and the noble of this world, but angels ministered at his couch; and he now stands clad with undecaying honour before the throne of God and the Lamb.'

It is moreover the inheritance of wisdom. We may have gathered the sayings of the ancients, or pondered the precepts of the Bible; but no words have such influence over the heart as the last words of a dying Christian parent. They may have been heard before, but the circumstances in which they are now uttered, invest them with fresh interest, and give to them spirit and life.

To see a father stretched upon the bed of death; to know that the eye which had so long beamed on us with affection, will soon be closed; that he who had provided for our wants, counselled us, borne with our waywardness and follies, been our best friend from earliest childhood, must in a few brief hours be consigned, a pale and stiffened corpse, to the dark grave; with what emotion do we watch his changing looks! with what solicitous intentness do we bend over him to catch his dying words! Do his lips move? does he counsel his children? does he bless them? Those feeble accents are not un

heard, nor will they be unheeded. They have sunken deep into hearts which the warmth of a parent's dying love had malted. Deepening our natural attachment to the memory of a parent, they have made an impression which cannot be erased.

Perhaps the youth who had grieved his parent's heart by his dissipation and vices, is moved by this last scene to give his own heart to God; for he who disregards the living parent, may heed the dying one: or, perhaps, after the interval of natural grief, he revisits his former haunts; but the night watches are full of remorse and bitterness to his spirit. The obtruded remembrance of a parent's dying words reproach him. To his excited imagination, that face which death had shrouded, seems to be now looking down upon him with a mingled expression of love and sorrow. 'Tis more than he can bear: Forgive me, sainted spirit,' he exclaims, forgive me, O my God!'

Often have the last words of a dying Christian parent come