"Thus armed, and thus prepared, my dear friend, we can only be, by praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, for grace to walk in the light, as God is in the light, so that we may have fellowship one with another, and that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son may cleanse us from all sin. Thus only shall we be prepared to receive our Lord at His second coming to judge the world, when before Him shall be gathered all nations, when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. May we so live now, that we shall meet Him with joy and not with trembling, and may we be among those to whom He shall say, Come, ye blessed children of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.'" L. S. R.

༦.

THE REST FOR THE WEARY.

ISA. xxviii. 12. MATT. xi. 28.

WHO, that has ever been taught by the Spirit of God, has not often been weary and heavy laden with the burdens which our sinful nature imposes upon us all? Who has not felt oppressed and overwhelmed when a sense has been given him of the deadly evil of sin, and an experimental knowledge of his own guilt and vileness? And who can look upon the holy law of God, which he is required to obey, and then upon his total inability, through sin, to do any thing that is good, without feeling a weight of responsibility and danger too heavy to bear, and yet impossible to shake off? Every one who is under the teaching of God's Holy Spirit has known these things, for they are among the first truths which "the Lord and Giver of life" impresses upon our hearts; "when He is come He will reprove the world of sin." Painful as they are to the mind, a relief is any where eagerly sought, but (such is the darkness and unbelief of man,) frequently sought every where but in the right direction. There is only one source of peace, and only one effectual remedy; but we have to bless the God of all mercy that there is one, so sufficient, so complete, so full of power and consolation, freely provided in the Gospel. Our Lord Jesus

Himself teaches that the remedy is summed up in one thing" Come unto me," "learn of me," " and ye shall find rest unto your souls." It is indeed most blessed to know that our salvation is to be secured by this one thing, and that we need no more ask, Where is the way? and, To whom shall we go? because our Redeemer has come to us, and He is "the way," and His "word is nigh unto us, even in our mouth and in our heart," that "if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." We may be afflicted and sorrowful under the grievances of this fallen world, but Jesus too has "suffered in the flesh," and by His voluntary suffering has taken away the evil of our suffering, and turned it into a blessing. If we believe this, the comfort of His word will more than outweigh the trouble of all our anxieties and distresses, and will form a complete "rest for our souls *.

We may be overwhelmed with a sense of our sinfulness and guilt, but if we believe that Jesus Christ was "raised from the dead," it is a sufficient proof that God loves and pardons us for His Son's sake. We know that He " was raised for our justification," or as a sure proof that our forgiveness was already obtained by His death; and therefore here also there is "rest for our souls." So again, if we fear that we can never please God in the remainder of our lives, because His holy law is so pure, and our hearts so wicked, the same peace is provided for us in coming to Christ. The Saviour's comforting words are, "my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.' He makes the commandments joyful to be borne, and sources of great happiness to the Christian in the performance. His grace will implant that love which He Himself declares "is the fulfilling of the law." So we come to Him for strength to obey, and our very coming, the sight of Christ we obtain by faith, gives us the strength we come for. Jesus Christ is therefore made all things to us; whatever our burdens may be, whatever our distresses, sins, or temptations, in Him there is a fulness of relief and com

Is. xxvi. 3.

fort, which our utmost necessities can never exhaust. To believe in Him is sufficient to remove all our fears for eternity, and to have genuine faith is to be armed against every affliction of life. This is the rest wherewith we may cause the weary to rest: and this is the refreshing. "Blessed are they that believe, for there shall be a performance of those things which are told them from the Lord." E.

PARAPHRASE OF THE NINETEENTH PSALM.

SIR ROBERT GRANT.

THE starry firmament on high,
And all the glories of the sky,
Yet shine not to Thy praise, O Lord,
So brightly as Thy written word:
The hopes that holy word supplies,
Its truth divine and precepts wise-
In each a heavenly beam I see,
And every beam conducts to Thee.

When taught by painful proof to know
That all is vanity below,

The sinner roams from comfort far,
And looks in vain for sun or star:
Soft gleaming then those lights divine
Through all the cheerless darkness shine,
And sweetly to his ravish'd eye
Disclose the day-spring from on high.

The heart in sensual fetters bound,
And barren as the wintry ground,
Confesses, Lord, Thy quick'ning ray—
Thy word can charm the spell away;
With genial influence can beguile
The frozen wilderness to smile;
Bid living waters o'er it flow,
And all be Paradise below.

Almighty Lord! the sun shall fail,
The moon forget her nightly tale,
And deepest silence hush on high
The radiant chorus of the sky:
But fix'd for everlasting years,
Unmov'd amid the wreck of spheres,

Thy word shall shine in cloudless day,

When heaven and earth have pass'd away.

HOW TO BEGIN A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

"CHARLES, my boy, why lookest thou so grave, so thoughtful?" said a father to his son. This father is a

farmer in easy circumstances, lives in peace with all his neighbours, is industrious, punctual, upright in all his dealings; the land he tills is his own; he is not a hard master, and as far as a good moral character goes, few men stand higher in his rank of life than John Sandby. But the Lord seeth not as man seeth, for the Lord looketh on the heart ;" and John's heart, though he often used to boast of its goodness, must have been found wanting in "the one thing needful," if brought to the test of God's Holy word. He has for many years been blessed with an excellent and Christian wife; but from the very beginning of their married life, she had mistaken an entire submission to her husband's will, in cases where obedience to a far higher authority was her higher duty. She had been religiously brought up, had never failed to attend her parish church, had never willingly been absent from the blessed sacrament of the Lord's supper. Her first fault was in marrying a man, who cared little for any of these Christian duties, or, as I should rather say, privileges, (for surely they are great privileges) and after their marriage, she very passively consented to his favourite maxim, that they would each go their own way. Margaret, however, soon began to lament this want of union of desire to serve the Lord. She often thought, with great comfort, that they never had a single dispute, and though such a woman could not but feel that this one want was a great one, and many of "his ways," as he called them, gave her pain, yet she never had the courage to remonstrate with him, or so endeavour to persuade him, as it was her bounden duty to do," to think on these things," so necessary to every one who desires strength to support them under the trials of this life, or to attain to that faith in the atonement of Christ Jesus, which can alone give them hope of happiness in the life to come. When their only child could read, and Margaret had the comfort of taking him to church with her, she feared it might lessen his respect for his father, to see that he went not too, and she felt more and more strongly on the subject: but still her courage failed her, though she often determined that she would speak to her husband on the subject. Generally speaking, it was John Sandby's

way to go to church in the morning, because, as he would sometimes say, his father did it before him; he thought too, that he ought to set a good example, and wished that all his work-people should attend the morning service, as it served to keep them in good order to appear clean and steady at church; but in the afternoon, he left them to do as they pleased, as he himself did, and his pleasure was to have an old friend to dine and pass the afternoon with him, enjoying their pipe and their mug of ale together. On a fine bright afternoon in August when his fields were rich and ripe for harvest, Margaret felt a stronger wish than usual, that her husband would go with her to the house of God, the author and giver of their abundance.

"It is a lovely afternoon," she observed, as she took his hand, "Oh! do, for once at least, my dear John, go with me."

"Go with thee, why what new fancy is this? No, no, my dear; if you like to go again to your church, go, and welcome; you take your way, and leave me to take mine."

His gentle wife was about to answer this, but he gave her a hearty kiss, put his hand upon her shoulder, and fairly turned her out of the room.

Well," thought Margaret, with an involuntary sigh, "he is a dear kind man, that is certain, and I must e'en let him have his own way," and taking her little boy by the hand, she pursued her way to church. Charles was their only child; towards him Margaret Sandby had faithfully done her duty fortunately her husband had old fashioned notions in regard to children; he had not strong feelings, but he loved his child, and wisely thought he proved his love by training him to entire obedience and respect towards his parents; his word was a law to Charles from his childhood; it might perhaps be said with truth, that fear was a stronger feeling towards his father than love: but for his mother he had the strongest affection, and tenderly as Margaret loved him, she had from the first considered herself as a steward, entrusted by her heavenly Master with the care of an immortal soul; of a treasure, for which she was awfully accountable. The solemn words addressed to the prophet Ezekiel, in the 3d ch.