"HOME, sweet home!" gaily sings the school boy, as he throws down his satchel in his father's house, and hastens to embrace his parents. Home, sweet home!' cries the husband as he crosses the threshold of his own habitation, and is met by his wife and merry children. "There is no place like home!" sighs the wanderer, as he casts his thoughts back, upon the happy fireside he has left, and longs to rejoin those who encircle it. "Sweet home!" murmurs the hardy mariner, as he mounts the rigging of his homeward bound vessel, and peers out to catch a glimpse of the welcome shore. How his heart bounds, as he descries dimly the dark line of his native land, along the distant horizon.

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So the wanderer on earth pants for the happy home on high; so the traveller on time's ocean looks out anxiously towards the shore, which is to end his journey. This world is not my home," triumphantly breathes the Christian, as he views the evil that surrounds him, the wickedness of those who make not God their choice. As he sees earthly hopes perish, friends one by one fail, and expectations disappointed; as he becomes sickened by the deceitfulness of those in whom he has confided; he, almost impatiently, waits for the time when he shall be free from all these troubles, and be gladly welcomed home, "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." Approach the child of God under any circumstances, and whisper to him a thought of Heaven, and you awake a chord that thrills back upon your own soul with delight. If he be poor, this word assures him of a treasure above, "where moth doth not corrupt, nor thief break through and steal," There, want and poverty are never known, but he will be filled with all his most ardent desires could wish or his capacious powers contain. Is he despised, and cast out by men? there he shall walk among the elite of the city; there, his companions will be those who have been redeemed out of all nations. Is he afflicted? there sorrow and suffering are not known.

Do you address one in prosperous

circumstances; happy in the enjoyments Providence has spread around him? to him, also, heaven is home. He is as the child away from the parental roof, who is receiving time after time, mementoes of a father's affection; and these, but make him love that father, and that home, the more. With a beaming eye he will tell you, he expects to strike a constant harp in praise of God. Tell the young disciple heaven is the reward of fidelity, and he boldly presses forward to win the prize. Tell the aged soldier of the cross, burdened down by the trials of four score years, of a heavenly rest, and he forgets his weariness-and rejoices with joy unspeakable. Ask him who is calmly leaving earth, why death has no terrors, and he replies, it takes me home, it is the pathway to bliss.

But why this longing desire; what is it that causes all to look so earnestly, so joyfully forward to the time, when they shall be permitted to enter that place? It is because of its attractions, because it is a place of rest, because it is a glorious place. All our most exalted conceptions of glory and beauty are infinitely exceeded by that which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, to conceive." It is because of what it contains, There God resides, the infinite, omnipotent, holy God. There is Christ, the Saviour, he who meekly bore the griefs and sins of his people, now in glory, and loveliness, surrounded with majesty. There dwells the Holy Spirit, whose office here is to convince, to restrain, to comfort and support. There are angels and archangels, and spirits of men made perfect. Among them are our loved ones, such as have left earth before us. Their hands, which so lately clasped ours in friendship, now hold palms of victory, now strike harps of gold. Their faces which looked affection on us, now glow with the radiance reflected from Him, who sitteth upon the throne. Their voices which pronounced our names, and rung upon our ears, now unite in that "sevenfold chord of harping symphonies," that swells with rapture through heaven's eternal arches. There

the throne of God stands, all glittering with sapphire, all radiant with the light of Godhead.

These are a few of the attractions of that place. But how can mortal tell of unutterable glory, the far more exceeding, the eternal weight of glory? These to us are lovely, for we have known something of them on earth. God's presence is felt here-Christ's intercession has produced its fruits here-the Holy Spirit's constraining influence is displayed here,-heavenly visitants have watched around us here, -holy men have worshipped here our friends have clustered here-the throne of God has been accessible here, -and men have approached its foot to worship Him. To see these, which here

faith has kept in view, to look upon God face to face, to walk with angels, to bow really at the throne, to enjoy the glad fruition of what is here, prospective:-this is what we look for in heaven.

Thus have we given a very few thoughts on home-childhood's-manhood's-and the Christian's final home. Around these, cling all our recollections of past happiness, our consciousness of present joys-and our hopes for future bliss. As we can, with pleasure, look back, and recount early days, as we feel now the calm delights of present home, so may we be able to enter finally the peaceful, the glorious, the eternal "home of the soul."

IF the sanctuary have the presence of God, in a sense in which ordinary scenes have it not, reverence is due to that sanctuary. We use not the word sanctuary as allowing any local and inherent sanctity to the place of worship, under the new dispensation of our Saviour. If the gospel allows to mere place no special sanctity, it may be asked, why rear houses specially for worship? From the largeness, then we answer, of many assemblies, places would scarcely be found of sufficient spaciousness other than those erected especially for the purpose of worship. Why, it may be asked, reserve them exclusively for religious uses? Because man is very much the creature of associations, and were the house of worship made also the scene, at other times, of worldly traffic, political discussion, or public amusements, the associations suggested would distract the mind of the worshipper. and mar the effect of the devotions. And if, as we have shown, God, though not sensibly, yet really, is present by a special and gracious presence in his courts, is not at least the same reverence that we would show to a distinguished earthly guest, benefactor, or ruler, due to the Invisible, but Mighty, and Holy and Gracious Ruler of the Universe? Is it fitting to gaze irreverently, to whisper, to smile, to read, to weave the web of

our vain imaginations, or even to slumber in the presence and under the gaze of those blazing eyes, too pure to look upon iniquity? Trifle, if you choose, with wealth, and character, and worldly education, and health, and this bodily life itself, but trifle not with God's house, and day, and worship; for it is to squander your hopes of heaven, and to fritter away the staple of your salvation, and to commit suicide upon your souls. The mere habit of association should teach such reverence. If we look with interest and respect on the observatory where science has toiled to read the starry pages of the unrolled heavenswhere some eminent astronomer, like Herschell, lifting his telescope, has looked off from the edge, as it were, of our solar system, far into the azure depths of space, how much more regard and solemn interest should invest the christian sanctuary; the observatory of faith, where taking her stand, she has looked beyond the flaming bounds of stars, and systems of stars, into the eternal depths of heaven or hell. Here souls have been renewed, and here sealed to perdition. Here, for a time, it has seemed as if the fiery pit had its covering lifted off, and its smoke went up as the smoke of a great furnace, and the wail of its unremitting and immitigable anguish arose, piercing all hearts and shaking all

IN another paper on this subject I endeavoured to show, that those false views of the character of God, included in the doctrine of Calvinistic election, and its inseparable concomitant, reprobation, had done serious damage to the moral character of Shelley; and that the infidelity he is generally charged with, and which is avowed in his writings, gave no distinct idea of his views of the God of the Bible. The fire of his genius scorches the arbitrary, partial creation of men's ingenuity they call God, but which is not. It is to be feared that he perished, from a misplaced and sinful confidence in the opinions of fallible men. There is lamentable evidence furnished in his life that he was an infidel, in the most correct sense in which that term can be applied, he obeyed not the gospel. Happily, however, he has not left in his writings, so far as I know, any. thing that would lead an un-prejudiced mind to believe he intelligently reject ed the revelation God has given of himself in Jesus Christ; it is more than probable he knew nothing at all of it. This is the position of thousands who boast of their infidelity; they know not what they do.

Alas, for the world! and alas for himself! Burns's gigantic intellect expanded under deficient parental training, and in the withering atmosphere of Scotch Kirk theology. Discordant and repulsive must its bold hard creed have sounded on the exquisitely strong

chords of his sensitive soul. How his big heart would pant for the real and the true in the character of the Deity he had been taught to worship; and, as he gazed with a poet's eye upon the field of nature, eloquent of a universal

benevolence, and thought of the disparity between its book and that of revelation, as expounded by his church, turn away in disappointment and disgust from its contemplation. He was too inquiring and independent passively to adopt a system because the majority agreed to call it orthodox, or because it was supported by great and influential names. He writes to a friend to whom he gives the particulars of his life-"I used to provoke Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion, that I raised a hue and cry of heresy against me which has not ceased to this hour." Happily for many since his day, and for us, it is but a small thing to be judged of man's judgment. "The foolishness of God is wiser than men ; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." Burns was charged with little short of infidelity, because he dared to dispute the correctness of a system of theology which all good men will soon help to destroy. I am not now called upon to express an opinion as to his real character in the sight of God; would that he had given practical evidence of having caught the true idea of himself and of God, as revealed in the gospel. He expressed a great truth in reference to the Divine dealings with men when he wrote

"Sure thou, Almighty, canst not act

From cruelty or wrath!" He appears to have been frequently the subject of deep conviction of sin. How it would have enlightened and cheered his dark mind, and have eased his burdened spirit to have had the freeness of gospel grace-the universal provision made for sinners in the propitiation of Jesus-explained to him

"If I have wandered in those paths

Of life I ought to shun:

As something loudly in my breast Remonstrates I have done.

"Where with intention I have erred,

No other plea I have

But thou art good; and goodness still
Delighteth to forgive."

The state of mind here indicated is one favourable to a reception of the simple gospel. Affliction had prepared the ground, but the good seed was not cast into it. His church but uttered, in harsh, in forbidding tones, "He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy," and taught him to deduce, from this cheering assurance of God's free sovereign love, a special, arbitrary election to eternal life of a favoured select few. His own superior discernment, and more unprejudiced judgment, led him to resist the dogma-to see the absurdity of such a creed-and he sank into almost hopeless despair of arriving at any soul satisfying truth. Still he felt the importance of having some religious belief. Would that he had applied the giant energies of his tortured mind to the simple record God has given of his Son! There he might easily have found how great was God's delight to forgive; and have learned the true and the only plea he, as a sinner, could present why the guilt of which he was conscious should be forgiven. We find, however, that he arrived at the usual conclusion of perplexed minds, when they neglect the great salvation, and he thus expresses himself:-"I hate the very idea of a controversial divinity, as I firmly believe that every honest, upright man, of whatever sect, will be accepted of the Deity." Hatred of controversy, when engaged in for its own sake, and not for the attainment of truth, is commendable. But the belief here expressed was probably, in Burns's case, as it has been in many others, evidence of having become wearied in the search for a satisfactory answer of the important question, "How should man be just with God?"

The following plain, unmitigated a

of the most serious consideration ;

"O thou, wha in the heav'ns dost dwell,
Wha, as it pleases best thysel',
Sends ane to heav'n an' ten to hell,
A' for thy glory,

An' no for ony guid or ill

They've done afore thee."

I think this verse does no injustice to either" the high" or "the low" adherents of Genevan theology. It would be interesting to know in what those, who object to it, consider the injustice to consist. It speaks the same language as the extract from Shelly, and it shows clearly the precise idea these gifted minds formed of what so many blindly persist in calling "the Apostles' creed." Although it forms part of a withering satire on one of the Scotch Kirk clergy, and is put into his mouth in the form of a prayer-(which all good men will regret Burns should have written)-it accords with his previously expressed opinions, and affords some explanation-may I not say justification ?-of that scepticism with which the advocates of this forbidding creed charged him. With respect to such a creed who would not be a sceptic? Men must become infidels to such views of the Divine character, and of their own moral condition and destiny, before they can personally. realise an interest, and feel safe, in the propitiatory sacrifice of the Lamb of God.

The facts connected with the moral history of Shelly and Burns, and other men of genius, who like them, have lived in ungodlinesss, ought to be deeply pondered. A man's character will always take the complexion of the deity he worships. And if he be driven by the professed advocates of the gospel, to believe that the God of the Bible is such as, these two mighty intellects have contemptuously described him to be, can we wonder that-thus acquiring a distaste for Divine revelation, and neglecting its "more excellent way"-like a vessel without pilot or helm, they become the sport of the storms of temptation, and, eventually, moral wrecks?

The Apollyon of Socialism has found his most numerous and staunchest adherents in Scotland. It is against Calvinism, not the gospel, that its advocates ply their arguments, and direct the

shafts of their ridicule. It is among a people trained in a fantastic system, that saps the foundation of all right views of free agency and accountability among a people whose views are "nigh to Socialism"-that it finds its ready disciples. The ideas of men being "the mere creatures of circumstances," and " no man being responsible for his creed," are nearer akin to the doctrines of election and reprobation than their advocates seem willing to admit. Here the extremes seem to me to meet; and yet I doubt not that many truly good men are the unconscious agents of this lamentable union, and only require to

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see the true tendency of their doctrines to desert them for ever.

I have gained my object in these two papers, if I have succeeded in leading my readers thoughtfully to examine this proposition; That it is not generally against the God of love revealed in the Bible that infidel men of genius have directed their arguments and their ridicule; but against a false and an imaginary deity, whom the professed believers and advocates of the Bible have mistakenly presented to the world in the place of the only living and true God. G. C. N.

A REMARKABLE DREAM. In a sermon delivered by the Rev. John Jukes of Bedford, occasioned by the death of a venerable deacon of the church under his care, Mr. Thomas Kilpin, the following facts are mentioned in reference to an aged grandmother to whom Mr. Kilpin was much indebted for spiritual advantages in early life.

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She was originally a member of the church of which Dr. Doddridge was the pastor, at Northampton. The privileges enjoyed by her in connection with his ministry were much valued; and when in the course of time she removed with her husband to another part of the country less favoured with the means of grace, she deeply felt and much deplored her loss. But she sought, by the private exercises of religion, to make up, as far as possible, for the want of its public ordinances. She was much with God in secret, pleading for herself and for her family; and he who seeth in secret has since rewarded ber openly. On one occasion, after having been thus employed, she had a dream which afforded her much encouragement in after life, and appears so remarkable when viewed in connection with subsequent events that it not only deserves but demands a place in this brief narrative. She dreamed that whilst engaged in earnest prayer for her family, an angel appear

ed to her and said, 'What is thy petition ?' She replied, "Lord that my husband may live before thee.' The answer given was, 'What I do thou knowest not now, but shalt know hereafter.'

The question What is thy petition P' was repeated, and she then said, Lord, that my children may live before thee,' to which she received the gracious reply, All thy children shall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children.' Once more was the question, What is thy petition?' put to her, and she was emboldened further to ask, Lord, that my grand-children may also live before thee.' The animating response, 'Thy children's children shall be a seed to serve me,' was immediately added to those before received. The declarations thus conveyed to her mind, were all, in due time, literally fulfilled. There was satisfactory evidence of the decided piety of all her children and grand-children. Her husband also was converted, but not until after her death, so that she had not the satisfaction of knowing it on earth. No less than sixteen of the descendants of this devoted woman have been, at different times, in fellowship with the church assembling in this place. Oh, who can fully estimate the importance of female influence, when under the full control of religious principle? If all christian wives and christian mothers would strive to imitate the example