THE FAITH OF ABEL. Pray to God to raise up others like him, and graciously to give you one. 5. Take heed of liking no preacher, now he is gone. This is a usual fault among many that have had excellent preachers; nobody can please them. But God may bless weaker means, and make your souls live and thrive under them. 6. Hold fast that which you have; it is the advice given to Philadelphia, the best of the Churches. (Rev. iii. 11.) Keep that good thing which is committed to you, that savouriness of heart, that love to Christ and to saints, to all saints, that knowledge of the truth. Keep to his sober principles. Remember his dying counsel" Follow peace and holiness." Have these things always in remembrance. Take heed of falling off; take heed of falling away. The world will draw you, and Satan will tempt you, and your own busy hearts will be apt to betray you, but go on humbly and honestly in the strength of Christ, and fear not. Be not like those Jews who turned aside, when John Baptist was dead. (John v. 35.) The Lord keep you from being such, and give you to go on to his heavenly kingdom!-Philip Henry.. THE SAD STATE OF THE WICKED. They do not enjoy the friendship of God.-By their own consent it is that they have it not. How often would He have blessed them with all the treasures of His love, but they would not! They turn a deaf ear to His entreaties; they disregard His warnings; they reject His offers. God is not their Father; He is not their friend; they enjoy not His love; they bask not in His smile. How sad is their state! By their very nature they need a Friend. Man is not a self-supporting plant; he needs something around which to cling. His condition here, so full of wants; his journey through life, with all its labours, all its trials-its dark and wintry days-its wearisome nights; the spiritual adversaries to whom he is exposed; above all, the eternity upon which he must shortly enter-all proclaim that he needs a Friend an almighty Friend; and that friend is Jehovah. But, alas! this friend the wicked have not. They are not at peace with Him-with Him who is their Maker. O fearful state! even though no other ingredient entered into their bitter cup. But, secondly 297 But it is not God "Many hath ceased to notice their evil ways. THE FAITH OF ABEL. IIIs birth was in the infancy of the world. The thorns and briers of the earth's curse had scarcely yet broad-cast their seeds upon the face of the ground, the decay of death had hardly touched the animate creation, and the world scarcely yet felt the blasting influence of sin, when Abel gave joy to the hearts of our first parents. But, though born into a world of new-born beauty and glory, it was only comparative innocence. It differed far from the well-watered garden of his father's first estate. It was not indeed so blighted, or sin-stricken as it afterwards became, but it was a sin They have made God their enemy.-There is no middle state. We either enjoy His favour, or dwell under His frown. We must either receive the blessings of His grace, or suffer the fruits of His displea-stricken world. But, though born too late for sure. Many think, because they have cast off God, that He hath cast off them; because He is not in all their thoughts, that they are not in all His. Awful deiusion! God will never cast them off. If they will not have Him as a loving Father, then they must have to do with Him as an avenging God. Sinners think, because judgment is deferred, because they are | alowed to go on in sin from year to year, either that God does not care about their sinning, or that he the innocence of Eden, Abel was not born too early for the promise of a Saviour; and in that gracious promise the simple-hearted shepherd found, from sin and misery, relief and consolation. We know not the amount of the revelation which God made in that early age. Whether Abel knew more of the plan of redeeming mercy than the simple declaration of a Saviour to come, and the command to typify An his future death by bloody sacrifices, it is at soon cast down. But the holy inhabitants now least certain that his faith embraced this much. saw one of a rebel race reclaimed, regenerated, The more excellent" offering, which proved and renewed in holiness, ascend up into the hill acceptable to God, was offered" by faith;" be- of God, where none but he that hath clean lieving that it was a commanded duty, relying | hands and a pure heart can ever enter. upon the benefit which should follow his obe- angel's sword had kept Adam and his sons from dience. Whatever was the character of that Eden, and now all the angel bands saw a son faith itself, or the object which it regarded, it of Adam welcomed to the Paradise of God, and seemed to Abel the blessing of eternal life. He with amazement, yet doubtless with joy at the obtained witness that he was righteous. There command, they joined their anthems to swell was an evident respect paid by Jehovah to his the first welcome of a redeemed soul to glory. offering. Perhaps visible fire from God con- Abel died in faith. Many persons seem to sumed the sacrifice made by faith in his com- think that if they believe in the moment of mand and promise; while the unbloody offering death, all will be well, however they may have made by an unbelieving and presumptuous lived; and they would regard more the testibrother was disapproved. mony of a rapturous and rejoicing death-bed than the evidences of a life of calm, unobtrusive, and unexcited piety. There is danger of great deceit here: a death-bed may be the scene of rapture when the piety of the life was feeble, or even doubtful. Though it be indeed true that faith exercised only in the last hours of life may be saving faith, yet, does not the case of Abel, dying suddenly, amidst all the terrors of unexpected death, amidst all the horrors of murder by a brother's hand, does not the case of this first martyr, who died in faith, but in circumstances which seemed to forbid religious reflection or religious triumph, or the actual exercise of faith; does it not teach us -Faith is not simply an act, but a priaciple of confidence; a constant dependence in God, and trust in his mercy? Neither faith nor unbelief, neither holiness nor sin, consists in acts. A deed may be holy or sinful, believ ing or unbelieving, but its character depends upon the character and motives of the heart which conceived it. Our proper work is to get the heart right; and then, die when we will, or as suddenly as we may, it shall be said of us, as of Abel," He died in faith." Abel died in faith. The first he was of the long line of the redeemed from earth. Salvation by faith is no new thing. If Abel died in faith, and was saved by faith, then it is the oldest system of salvation for our race. Not the oldest system leading to eternal life proposed to man, for Adam stood for a time under a covenant of works, and perfectly obeyed, though not to the end of his probation, the law of God. If Abel died in faith, and was the first of men to stand in the heavenly Paradise of God, he furnishes the first of the examples which prove that only by faith can man be saved. He died in faith; so had he lived. His was the simple life of a shepherd. "Abel was a keeper of sheep," is the narrative of his life; which seems to tell us that in quiet seclusion and meditation he lived by faith. "Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof, an offering to the Lord," is the only incident recorded in his history. That act was a confession of faith, and dependence on the part of Abel, and as he looked upon that innocent victim, and the warm, gushing blood, and the ascending smoke of his rude altar, his faith rested for pardon upon the promised bruising of Messiah to come. He died in faith, as he had lived. His was no death-bed of lingering penitence or remorse. Without warning, unexpectedly, the unkindly stroke of a brother's hand laid him low in death. We know of no prayer like that of dying Stephen, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Regarding, as we ever should regard death, as an exchange of worlds, we read of no opening heavens, and the Son of Man waiting to receive him. But he died in faith, justified, not by works of righteousness which he had done, but by the mercy of God, and through faith in his truth. Yet there were, doubtless, open doors in heaven, to receive ascending Abel. It was a new scene in the celestial courts, and the beginning of a new era in the chronicles of heaven. Never before had a fallen being been permitted to stand there accepted. Satan and his hosts had stood there once in their rebellion, but were 66 "IT IS GOOD TO BE HERE." (From the German of Muller.) LORD, it is good to be here," exclaimed Peter, with the expression of the highest rapture and the most child-like simplicity. "Wilt thou that we make here three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias?" Here would they for ever linger, build tabernacles for the heavenly forms, and, absorbed in their vision, forget all the strife and all the trouble of earth. What can they desire besides ? What attraction can withdraw them from this holy place? Where Jesus Christ makes knowD to his friends his divine glory, there they partake of the deepest and holiest joy, such as the most costly goods of earth can never furnish. "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you." It is the most sacred experience of the Chris CONSCIENCE A PROPHET. tian life, it is the heights most resplendent, of which this narrative reminds us. It was in still retirement, when our soul was absorbed in musings on the wondrous way in which God had led us to his eternal salvation; or when in ardent prayer we sought consolation and help from the disquiet of our heart and the troubles of life; it was in the circle of very dear friends, when in conversation on the holiest themes, in reciprocal interchange of our views and experiences, our hearts overflowed, and the glowing sparks of faith and love uniting, suddenly burst forth into a clear flame; it was in the public worship of God, when the message of the gospel in the psalm, the prayer, the sermon, powerfully impressed us; or it was when the highest festival of divine worship-the supper of the Lord -poured over us the fulness of divine mercy; -how any one may have experienced these things, we know not; but this we know, that whoever has experienced one such holy hour, can never forget it again. Was it not as if heaven had been opened to the enraptured gaze; as if a higher, holy world would receive us into its eternal repose. We thought that a happier experience could never befall us in eternity, than that this feeling should evermore endure. All the pains and cares of earth were absorbed in the single emotion of the most child-like acquiescence. All sin appeared to us inexpressibly odious, contemptible, and pitiful; we could not imagine how it should ever have seduced and fettered us; and it seemed to us impossible that it should hereafter gain power over us. Far below lay the world; we were conscious of being citizens of the heavenly kingdom. On the eye of our mind beamed the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, who is the image of God; we saw his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. What had often seemed dark to us in the connection of his works, now shone distinct and clear. What our thoughts had been wont to divide and scatter, now arranged itself into the most beautiful whole, as we recognised its soul to be the redeeming love of the Son of God to us poor and sinful men. Yes, poor, if we looked only at ourselves, but immeasurably rich in eternal possessions, when we recognised ourselves as the property of our Lord and Saviour, when we knew ourselves to be in fellowship with Him who is Lord of all heaven; O in such holy knowledge should we not forget the world with its pleasures and griefs. CONSCIENCE A PROPHET. 1. And one that will have a hearing. Other prophets have been denied this. People have stopped their ears, as in Stephen's case, or locked the prophet up in a dungeon, as in Jeremiah's case, that the senseless walls might hear his prophesying, and not they. But here is a prophet they cannot dispose of after such fashions. Not hear conscience! Meu have 299 tried it well; but the stern voice at mid-day, and the whisper at midnight, louder than the noise and bustle of the world, has taught them that conscience would have a hearing. 2. And a bold and plain-spoken prophet, too, is conscience. Some prophets have been timid and time-serving-more among the modern than among the ancient. They have dreaded to give their whole message. They have seen woe approaching, but have shrunk from giving the trumpet its full blast. But people have not to complain of conscience on this behalf. Conscience has a word to say to guilty minds, and says it. Herod and Felix shall hear, as well as the meanest of the people. 3. And here is a prophet who compels assent to his own predictions. Men who hate the prophets and their messages are very willing to disbelieve them, and succeed in making themselves believe such pro- | phecies falsehoods. But when conscience lifts up its prophetic voice, and tells what woe betides the guilty, there is an inward response to that alarming voice. The soul's own conviction of its own guilt makes the prophet's picture a painful reality. The warning voice cannot be disbelieved. Other prophets may be lightly esteemed, and their messages set at nought by a reckless unbelief. But not so a prophesying conscience. Its very voice is one of woe, and is felt to be a specimen of the approaching sorrows it describes. Its own words are sparks, and the hearer and sufferer cannot question that they portend a great flame that cannot be quenched. They are the murmurings of the coming storm. 4. And here is a prophet whose presence cannot be escaped. Men may flee from the voice of man, or drive from them the annunciators of evil tidings. Elijah flees from the fury of Ahab. But there is one who cannot be thus shaken off. Its victim is guilt, and guilt shall find it on its track wherever it may flee, or wherever it may hide itself. Rush to the theatre, the dance, the banquet, the intoxicating bowl. But conscience is there. If you can stupify the soul for a moment, so that its dreadful voice is not heard, it can be but for a moment, and then the louder and more terrible is its voice, from the fact that you wickedly sought to repel so kind a friend. The wave recedes far from the shore only to rush back with augmented violence. The attempt to flee from conscience is sure to make its presence, one day, more terrific. The effort to stifle its voice is sure to make it more terrific. Escape conscience! Can a man escape from himself? Where can he go from his own presence? 5. Conscience is a prophet which will verify all his own predictions. No Jewish or Christian prophet could do this. They could only utter what must be executed by other hands. But here is one who executes his own prophetic declarations. It speaks of future woe for guilt, and inflicts it. It speaks of " a worm that dieth not," and is that worm; of "a fire that shall not be quenched," and is that fire. It tells the guilty that they "shall go away into everlasting punishment," and then goes with them to be the executioner of it. Conscience will never lose the prophetic office. Other prophets may retire from the work, or drop their inentle by a call to ascend on high, and so their prophecies cease. But conscience ever liveth. Never will it cease to prophesy to the guilty in hell, and it shall be of "wrath to come," wrath ever coming, and it vials never all emptied! Such is conscience as a prophet. How much every human being has at stake in the attitude taken by such a prophet towards himself! Reader, its prophecies concerning you, what are they?-New York Evangelist. A ROMISH FALLACY. ROMANISTS say, "The gates of hell were not to prevail against the visible Church; they have not prevailed against Rome; therefore Rome is the visible Church." It is no compliment to the reader, whose eye will at once detect the sophistry here, to dwell at any length on this famous syllogism. Would not the reasoning be equally sound to say: The gates of hell were not to prevail against the visible Church; they have not prevailed against the pyramids of Egypt, the sphynx, or the hieroglyphics; therefore the pyramids of Egypt, the sphynx, or the hieroglyphics, is the visible Church? Or thus: The gates of hell were not to prevail against the visible Church; they have not prevailed against the throne of the Almighty in heaven; therefore the throne of the Almighty in heaven is the visible Church? Or thus: The gates of hell were not to prevail against the visible Church; they have not prevailed against the invisible Church; therefore the invisible Church is the visible Church? The following passage from Chillingworth's answer to the fifth chapter of his Romish antagonist, will probably be read with pleasure in this connection, as entirely satisfactory and conclusive on this point. He is at least sufficiently liberal, a Imitting Rome to be a visible Church, and reasoning on that ground: "Whereas you say, that Protestants must either grant that your Church then was the visible Church, or name some other disagreeing from yours, and agree. ing with Protestants in their particular doctrine, or acknowledge there was no visible Church; it is all one as if (to use St. Paul's similitude) the head should say to the foot, Either you must grant that I am the whole body, or name some other member that is so, or confess that there is no body. To which the foot may answer, I acknowledge there is a body; and yet that no member beside you is the body, nor yet that you are it, but only a part of it. And in like manner say we, We acknowledge a Church there was, corrupted indeed universally; but yet such a one as we hope, by God's gracious acceptance, was still a Church. We pretend not to name any one society that was this Church; and yet we see no reason that can enforce us to confess that yours was the Church, but tween us, which is, that some Church of one denomination and one communion (as the Roman, the Greek, &c.) must be always, exclusively to all others, the whole visible Church. And though perhaps some weak Protestant, having the false principle settled in him, that there was to be always some visible | Church of one denomination, pure from all error in doctrine, might be wrought upon and prevailed with by it, to forsake the Church of Protestants; yet why it should induce him to go to yours, rather than the cession as well as yours, that I do not understand; Greek Church, or any pretenders to perpetual sucunless it be for the reason which Eneas Sylvius gave, why more held the pope above a council than a council above the pope; which was, because popes did give bishopricks and archbishopricks, but councils gave none; and therefore suing in forma pauperis were not like to have their cause very well | maintained. For put the case, I should grant of mere favour, that there must be always some Church of one denomination or communion free from all errors in doctrine, and that Protestants had not always had such a Church; it would follow, indeed, from hence that I must not be a Protestant; but that I must be a Papist, certainly it would follow by no better consequence than this-if you will leave England, you must of necessity go to Rome.”—Chillingworth, p. 355. WHO IS GREATEST? ADAM well observes: "A poor country parson fighting against the devil in his own parish, has nobler ideas than Alexander had." Men of the world know nothing of true glory: they know nothing of the grandeur of that sentiment, Thou, O God, art the thing that I long for.-Cecil. THE QUARRELSOME. Ir a man has a quarrelsome temper, let him alone. The world will soon find him employment. He will soon meet with some one stronger than himself, who will repay him better than you can. A man may fight duels all his life, if he is disposed to quarrel.— Ibid. Fragments. CHRISTIAN CONTENT.-That we may not complain of what is, let us see God's hand in all events; and that we may not be afraid of what shall be, let us see all events in God's hand. VOLUNTEERS. Other sinners serve the devil for pay; but cursers and swearers are volunteers who get nothing for their pains.-Boston. LIFE A STATE OF PROBATION.-Heaven is won or paration is here.-Baxter. only a part of it, and that one of the worst then (at lost upon earth; the possession is there, but the pre- ¦ the Reformation) extant in the world. In vain, therefore, have you troubled yourself in proving that we cannot pretend that either the Greeks, Waldenses, Wickliffites, Hussites, Muscovites, Armenians, Georgians, Abyssines were then the visible Church. For all this discourse proceeds upon a false and vain supposition, and begs another point in question be SAYING NEW THINGS.-A desire to say things which no man ever said, makes some people say things which no man ever ought to say. THE CHRISTIAN TREASURY. 301 THE CLOAK LEFT AT TROAS. ST. PAUL, in the dungeon of a prison, asks for Jesus Christ also, on the day of his death, spoke of his cloak and vesture. Would you have this passage erased from the number of inspired words? It was after a night of fatigue and anguish: infuriated men had been ruth'lessly hurrying him blindfolded about Jerusalem; from street to street, from tribunal to tribunal, by torch-light, during seven successive hours, and striking him continually on the head with their staves: ere sunrise the following morning, his hands bound with cords, they bring him again into the high priest's palace, and afterwards before Pilate, in the hall Pretorium: there, lacerated with rods, and streaming with blood, he is delivered to the ferocious soldiery to be put to death: they strip him of his garments, put on him a scarlet robe, spit upon him, place a reed in his hands, and, in mockery of worship, bow the knee before him: then, before placing the cross on his mangled shoulders, they cover his wounds with his own clothes, and lead him forth to Calvary; but when about to proceed to the last act of execution, they, for the third time, strip him of his raiment, and without garment or vesture, stript of everything, he suffers the death of a malefactor on the cross, in the sight of the immense assembly. Was there ever a man under heaven's canopy, who did not find these details soul-moving, sublime, and inimitable? Or one who, from the account of such a dying scene, would retrench, as useless or trivial, a notice of the vesture which was parted, and of the garment for which the soldiers cast lots? Has not incredulity itself said of the Scriptures that their majesty is astonishing; that their simplicity speaks to the heart; that the death of Socrates was that of a sage, but that of Jesus Christ of a God? And if divine inspiration had been confined to a portion only of the sacred book, would it not have been for these very details? Would it not have been for the history of that love which, after having sojourned upon earth, more destitute than the birds of the air and the foxes of the ñeld, had been willing to die yet more wretched still, despoiled of everything, even of his garment and his vesture-his naked body, stretched and nailed, like that of a malefactor, to the cross? Ah! be not anxious on the Holy Spirit's account! He has not compromised his dignity. Far from thinking it humiliating to transmit these facts to us, he has even hastened to relate them. More than a thousand years ago, in the times of the siege of Troy, it was the lament of the prophetic lyre of David: "They look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture." Well, it is the same Spirit who has shown to us St. Paul writing to Timothy, and requiring his cloak. Hear what is said. The apostle had lost everything. In his youth he was great among men; favoured by princes, admired of all-but he left all for Christ. During thirty years and upwards he had been poor; in labours more abundant than others, in stripes above their measure, and in prisons more frequent; of the Jews he had five times received forty stripes save one; thrice he had been beaten with rods, once he had been stoned; three times he had suffered shipwreck; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils in the towns, in perils in deserts, in perils by sea; oft in watchings, in hunger, in thirst, and nakedness. These are his own words. (2 Cor. xi. 23-26.) Let us hear him further. He is Paul the aged: in his last prison, at Rome, expecting sentence of death; he has fought the good fight, he has finished his course; he has kept the faith; but he is suffering from cold, as the winter sets in, and lacks clothing. Thrust into a dungeon of the Mamertine prisons, he bore a name so vile, that even the Christians of Rome were ashamed to acknowledge him; so that on his first arraignment, no man stood with him. Ten years before this period, when a prisoner at Rome, and loaded |