you, my reader, in this way? Are you walking in it? Or, to vary my phrase, are you trusting in the atonement of Jesus only? Do you plead in your prayers his name only? Do you live mainly for his service? Do you, in the counting-house, in the senate, on the field, in the shop, everywhere and always, seek first the kingdom of Christ and his righteousness, and expect that all other things will be added unto you? There are really and truly but two ways on earth there is one that comes from Satan, and that leads to Satan; there is another that comes from God, and leads to God. In which are you? Are you looking now for the whole weight, and pressure, and magnificence of heaven, for no other reason within you or without you than this, that the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth from all sin? Is this, not only a dogma in your head, but a vital truth, inwrought in your heart and conscience? There is plenty of theology in men's heads, there is too little religion in all our hearts. It is not so much to learn more, but it is to feel more that we should study God's word, and hear the preaching of Christ's gospel. If you are in this way, you are making progress. If you are seeking to be saved by a way of your own, however plausible it may seem, you will make no progress at all, you will be just to-day where you were five, ten, twenty years ago; but if you be in this way, you will make progress; that progress may be painful; it may be by discovering how poor, and blind, and naked you are or how good, how gracious, how loving God is but in either direction it is progress. He who seeks to get to heaven by his own merits, is like a man on the tread-mill he is ever moving, while he is never advancing; but the man who is in the right way, in Christ the living way, is ever moving, ever growing, ever advancing, till grace shall be merged and lost in everlasting glory. Why did Why did Let us see in this provision the love of God. this pathway spring from the heavenly side? God interpose at all? When I think of this and here science helps our thoughts about religion-that the stars above us are many of them a thousand times bigger than the orb we now tread upon; and when by the telescope we see the remotest of them all, and discover by inference that there are orbs, bigger, no doubt, than this world, from which light has been travelling at the rate of many hundred thousand miles in a second, and has not yet reached us; and when I reflect that these stars, and orbs, and clusters of worlds are but the straggling sentinels and outposts of that magnificent host which is encamped upon the plains of infinitude; and when I think of Him who made and rules them all, and receives glory from them all; I am amazed that he ever should have mercifully thought of this miserable moral wreck that criminally rent itself from heaven, instead of having expunged it from the sisterhood of worlds it has shamed. No more would it have been missed than a particle of dust from this earth we tread upon. I never can understand how God so loved it, that he made it a theatre for the manifestation of a love so great, that even an apostle who had been in the third heaven exclaimed, "Oh the height and the depth of the love of God in Christ-it passeth all understanding." I have read in Scottish story, that two chiefs, the heads of hostile septs or clans, were crossing from opposite ends between two hills, or rather mountains, along a narrow ridge or path that united the mountains, so narrow that only one person could walk upon it at a time. The two chiefs met from opposite ends in the middle of the narrow path, and it was necessary, in order to pass, that one should lie down, and the other walk over him; but neither the one nor the other would lie down, and rather than seem to yield, in the pride of their hearts they entered into mortal struggle, and the weaker was cast over the edge and dashed to pieces upon the rocks below. This is man's way; but when God met us, and might have demanded that we should lie down and suffer, and that he should walk on and triumph, he lay down and made and consecrated himself a Highway for sinners, that the greatest sinner might find a way to heaven, to happiness, to God. Truly his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts. There is always a church where God and a believer are. In Jacob's case the desert was the only aisle, the hard stone was the only altar, and the solitary heart was the only worshipper; and yet there was a church. It is not stones, bricks, rafters, still less rood-screens, shrines, and other things of that kind, that make a church a church is Christ the living God, in the midst of a living, worshipping, and believing people. Wherever God has met and blessed us, there is holy ground. That is not holy ground which a priest blesses, or a prelate consecrates, or a presbyter sets apart. That is holy ground on which God has met us, and where we have exclaimed, in the rapt enjoyment of our hearts, "How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God. and this is the gate of heaven." CHAPTER XXI. THE POWER OF LOVE. "No simplest duty is forgot; Life hath no dim and lowly spot, That doth not in its sunshine share; "And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her." GEN. xxix. 20. - may I SELECT Jacob's service of seven years for Rachel, not to illustrate the passion here strictly referred to, but rather to unfold what it teaches and types out, the love of God, which is the same passion purified and refined, transferred to a loftier and a nobler Being. The idea taught simply in the passage is, that love is never weary in the work "that belongs to it, is never fatigued with the toils that devolve upon it in pursuit of its object, and is, in short, the strongest impulse in the human heart, whether it be the love a child bears to a parent, the love that a wife bears to her husband, the love of a mother to a son, of a son to a mother, or of a patriot to his country, or of a Christian to his God, it is in all these the greatest and the intensest power that glows and burns in the human heart. - History alone is the record of its wonderful feats and its great triumphs. The martyrs that have perished at the stake, the patriots that have freely and nobly laid down their lives for their father-land, the parents who have suffered and sacrificed with a love that never faltered in the worst, nor wearied in the best of times, for those committed to their care, are all recorded in countless pages of history, as standing proofs, how strong is this passion when its object is purely human, how near to omnipotent- it is when it is the inspiration of the Spirit, and the great God our Father is its object. In such a case it has all the fixity of a rooted principle, and all the fervor of a burning and a glowing passion. Under its inspiration, as we read in history, years have seemed like days, heavy duties have felt light, the hardest yoke has been easy, and the heaviest burden comparatively as a feather. No stream is found so deep, that the foot of real and pure love will not wade it; no mountain so straight or so high, that under the inspiration of this holy passion it has not been climbed; and no years have been so many, and no time so weary, that they have not been short for the love that it bears to its object. Love can turn a hut into a home, plant the germ of Paradise in the hardest heart, and spread the sunshine of Eden over life's bleakest deserts, and the most waste places of our common humanity. We are told in the Bible that love is the fulfilling of the law, and that the whole law is comprised in that monosyHable, love. All hell is comprised in one monosyllable, sin; all heaven is comprised in one monosyllable, love. Hell is sin left full scope. and ample verge, and heaven is love, no longer the exotic in this cold, and biting, and frosty climate, but the indigenous plant, luxuriating in its own sunshine, and swept by its own pure air, and ever beautiful and ever green. That law which is the standard and the expression of perfect holiness, is the unfolding of love. Love is the B |