be remarked that it seems they sincerely believe that Christ and his apostles spoke very unguardedly; otherwise they would not labour so hard to show that they do not mean what they seem to mean, and what the great mass of the Christian world have always understood them to mean. Let us now turn to a very numerous class found in all nominally Christian lands, namely, those who receive the Scriptures as a revelation from God, and profess to believe the doctrines which they teach; and yet live in sin, impenitence, and unbelief. They profess to have no piety; and they are sincere, and even boast of their sincerity; while they throw out the most unsparing insinuations of hypocrisy against professors of religion. Let us look now at this sincere irreligion, and see how it appears. God commands you to repent, but you do not repent. You love sin too well to part with it, and you are sincere! God commands you to believe on his Son Jesus Christ; but, as you love sin, you are unwilling to be saved from it; and, therefore, you reject the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world," and you are sincere! God commands you to love and obey him; but you do neither. He commands you to strive to enter in at the strait gate; but you strive not. In short, God requires you to be everything that a Christian ought to be; but you are no Christian; oh no, you are far from it; and you are no hypocrite! Oh, what horrible sincerity! Are you not ashamed of it? Does not conscience thunder an alarm in your ears while you think of it? Can hypocrisy itself be much more displeasing to God than such sincerity? On earth Satan plays the hypocrite, and "is transformed into an angel of light;" but in hell he appears as he is, a devil outright, all malignity; and his hatred to God and all good is sincere. Is he any the better for his sincerity? And are you any the better for yours? Does God love you because you are sincere in not loving him! How strange that sinners should boast of their sincerity! Men But if you are sincere, much more is God sincere. may lie, God cannot. You would be offended, if anybody should doubt your sincerity. Offend not your Maker, therefore, by doubting his. You are sincere in being unholy, impenitent, unbelieving. God is sincere in saying, "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord."- "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."-" He that believeth not shall be damned." You are sincere, and God is sincere. What then must be the result? It will be seen in that "day when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ," 2 Thess. i. 7, 8. The Judge will then be sincere in pronouncing the final sentence, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels," Matt. Will your sincerity in sin save you then? No. You must go away into everlasting punishment. xxv. 41. "Down to hell, there's no redemption, Every Christless soul must go." Oh, as you have been sincere in your impenitence, be sincere also in your humiliation. Repent of your wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. But boast no more, while you live in sin, that you are no hypocrite." 66 THE DYING PATIENT. WHEN a very young man, I passed some years of my life in a place which of all others is perhaps the one most likely to impress us with the vanity and folly of all earthly hopes and desires. My father being a surgeon, it was thought fit that I should follow his profession, and I was therefore placed as a pupil in a large hospital. The sights of pain, anguish, and misery, I there saw, were at first unspeakably dreadful; and to me the necessary operations appeared more fearful still. During my first few weeks of residence there, often had I to leave the wards with a pale countenance, a cold, clammy sweat pouring down my brow, and my limbs hardly able to carry me from the room; often have I rushed out into the fresh air with feelings impossible to describe. When it was my duty to go into the wards of an evening, many sad thoughts would arise in my mind. Imagine a long room, lighted by a single candle, with thirty beds, each containing some suffering mortal. As you walk down the middle, from yonder dark corner comes the stifled groan of a strong man, impatient under a fearful accident; close by you is the heaving chest of some poor sufferer, dying insensibly, with no kind child, no sister or friend, to close his eyes; whilst the low moaning of a poor waking child, mingles with the sharp, short noise made by one suffering from inflammation, and breathing rapidly. Frequently at night I would go out into the court-yard, when all was still, and looking up at the dimly lighted windows, think of the hundreds enduring agony within. Alas! I then knew not, and never had been taught of One who uses pain to humble and to bless his creatures. This lesson in faith I had to learn, and my first teacher was a patient in the hospital. Not very long after I became a pupil, a woman was admitted with a broken leg, and injury of the head, caused by her husband having, when drunk, pushed her down stairs. She was a thin, pale-faced person, and had plainly been labouring under ill health long before her accident. Her countenance was mild and gentle, and she bore her sufferings, which were very great, so patiently and calmly, and was so grateful for any little kindness shown to her, that I was glad to pay particular attention to her. When I told her that I was pleased to see how well she bore her accident, she said, "No praise is due to me, sir. I pray to God to give me strength to bear whatever it may please him to afflict me with.' This was language new to me, I did not understand it. After a few moments I said to her, "You should not think in this way, you know that this was an accident. Why should God afflict you? Your life I am sure has not been a bad one." "Sir," she replied, "God has been pleased to bless me by affliction before this. It was by means of a severe illness, from which I have never quite recovered, that I was brought to a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. Before I had that illness I used never to think of these things; I worked hard for my husband and children, paid every one what I owed them, and as I used never to lie, swear, or steal, I thought I was as good as any one. When I became ill, and was lying in bed alone, and awake at night, I thought much about my past life, and I began to fear whether it had been so good as I imagined. Soon after this I was led by the grace of God to see that my only hope of salvation was not in my own merits, but in those of my Saviour; and that even my best deeds were but evil in the sight of God." As it was fatiguing to her to talk much at one time, I soon left her and went away, thinking that there must be some truth in what she said, for never did a human being bear up against affliction better than she did. The same evening I was not far from her bed, when I heard her repeating in a low tone of voice some lines of poetry. I tried to listen, and found they were these "Here we suffer grief and pain, Here we meet to part again, Joyful, joyful, joyful; Oh, that will be joyful, When we meet to part no more." That night I went to rest more truly impressed with a sense of the value of religion than I had ever before experienced. I thought that to-morrow I would go and learn more about the grace of God and the Saviour from this poor woman. But alas, before the morrow's sun rose, the wounds on her head had become inflamed. I had to leave the hospital for some hours, and when I returned in the evening my first inquiries were about her; the nurse answered me, "Oh, sir, she is light-headed, and talking nonsense.' I ran to see her, and found her lying on her back, with her eyes looking upwards. To keep her head cool, all her hair had been cut off, whilst one of the under nurses was holding a bag of ice to her head. She muttered something about her children; and every now and then with a sweet, low, musical voice, she sang, "Oh, that will be joyful." I saw there was no hope, and turned down the ward with eyes full of tears. I saw her again late in the evening, she was then sinking rapidly; her face wore an expression of calm happiness, whilst her lips moved silently, as if, had she possessed strength, she would have still chanted her favourite hymn. The next morning her bed was empty. "How A short time after, one of the patients said to me, happy that woman died in No. 13!" (In hospitals the beds are numbered, and the patients are frequently called by the number of the bed.) "She must have lived a good life to go off so quietly." At that time the light of the truth had by the grace of God just dawned upon my mind. I then knew that her own good deeds had not produced her quiet resignation, and her happy end; but that she died happily in full confidence of eternal salvation, because she had faith in the blood of Him who died to cleanse us from all sin. May all who read this true narrative, pray for the same grace as was obtained by this woman, recollecting the promise, "Ask, and ye shall receive;" so that even when the awful change of death is coming close upon them, they may think upon it calmly, and even call it as she did," joyful.' But may all remember that the approach of death can only be joyful to those who, knowing their own sinfulness, look for salvation to Him who humbled himself even to the death of the cross for us miserable sinners; to the end that we might come unto him, and not perish, but have everlasting life. Years have rolled away since my first teacher (even this poor afflicted woman) left this world; but the lesson she taught me has never been forgotten. By her means I first learned that God "will surely give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him." Through her I first learned to prize the unspeakable love of Him who came into this world to bear our sins and punishment. Many a time since then have I walked during the still and solemn hour of night, in the court-yard of the hospital; but though I still know that misery is a fearful thing, yet I no longer look upon it as I used to do. I now know well that it is often blessed, to show us how weak and uncertain are our health and strength, and to lead the soul to Christ as the only refuge. And I also now know that even to those who have sought God with all their heart, sickness and pain are often blessings. "Those whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth." These chastenings, these afflictions, send our thoughts more to God; they teach us to rely on his providence, and to look forward with hope and faith for that time when, through the merits of our gracious Saviour, we shall enter into that place where sin and misery, pain and sickness, are no more. THE GOSPEL ALONE. W. T. Ar a missionary meeting two facts were related, which, in their similarity, prove that various false systems of religion teach the same lies, use the same observances, and reach the same result. All is vanity. But the gospel is alike supreme and efficacious against every system of false religion throughout the world. A missionary wrote from Calcutta, (in December, 1838,) that among other Hindoos who were brought to the knowledge of Christ, was a fakeer, whose conversion was as |