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sins in his body on the tree.

He has bought

us, and paid for us with his own precious blood, therefore unto his name be all the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

THE TOOTH-ACHE.

Good and bad thoughts are the seeds of good and bad words and deeds: they multiply, also, our joys and our sorrows. Every day has its shine and its shade, and the same remark may be made of all our joys and all our griefs. Our pleasures are not exempt from inconvenience, nor are our pains unaccompanied with advantage. This ought to be borne in mind more constantly than it is.

No! no! It is not all shadow when we have the tooth-ache. Think of the luxurious feeling when the warm handkerchief, so wishfully regarded, as it hung airing at the fire, comes, at last, to be laid across your cheek, and tied in a becoming bow under your ear! Think of the liberty you enjoy, the cessation from all employment, the exemption from all complaints, but your own, and the kind attentions you receive! No one requires from you the smallest service: while one stirs the fire to make the room warm, another runs to fetch a pillow; a third toasts the bread

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for your gruel; and a fourth asks if any thing can be done to make you better? Then, how tenderly every one in the house speaks to you, and in what a subdued and soft tone of voice are you asked every ten minutes, "How are you now?"

Say what you will of the tooth-ache, but these concomitants, these gentle alleviations, are dear to us all. We soon find the difference in our position when we get well again, and we know this, and are not always in haste to proclaim our convalescence. No sooner is it known that our malady has subsided, than the handkerchief is withdrawn, and we must set to work again. No one assists us; no one speaks gently to us; and hardly any one takes notice of us. It is true that our tooth-ache is gone; but it is equally true that with it have disappeared a hundred sources of comfort and complacency.

Let us apply this to our afflictions generally, looking less at our bodily ailments, and more at the spiritual advantages that attend them. God's mercy can make even his judgments a blessing; and by wounding the body, he can heal the soul. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment," may lay a weight of gloom on our minds, but yet it may, by the blessing of our heavenly Father, "work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory," 2 Cor. iv. 17.

THE WHETSTONE.

On the top of a hill which forms the boundary to the west of a narrow glen called the Kettles, about a mile to the west of Wooler, on the Scottish border, there are some remains of an encampment. The crag at the south end is called the King's Chair, because a king is said once to have sat there, while his army fought in the glen below. A little to the north of this, is a large stone, which might well be looked on as the parish whetstone, inasmuch as it is worn on every side, just as though a whole neighbourhood had there sharpened their edge tools. But what think you is reported as the real cause of the wearing away of the stone? Why this that the soldiers of one of the contending armies retired there to sharpen their swords for renewed combat, after they had blunted them so much, in hewing down their enemies, as to have rendered them unserviceable.

We see how soldiers will fight for a little praise, or a piece of money, blunting their weapons against the bodies of their fellow-men, and then sharpen

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ing them again to plunge once more amid the bloody strife. How great their toil and danger,

and how little their reward! Now, if those who live in strife and contention take such trouble to fit themselves to injure others, how much more should Christians exert themselves in doing good! Let us, then, look more closely to our whetstones, where we may rub up and renew our kindly affections one towards another. The house of God, and the throne of grace, should be more diligently sought by us, that an edge may be put on our zeal for the Redeemer's glory, and that our desires may be sharpened after every good word and work.