it inculcates such holy precepts; it breathes such a devotional spirit. In one place he seems distinctly to allude to the peculiar sin which probably was the first and leading cause of his defection. "I find," says he, as if he felt it deeply in his soul"I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands,” to bind her victim in his guilty degradation: "whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her."

Still, as has been observed, the Scriptures contain no explicit declaration on this interesting subject. It may have been the design of their divine author to cast a shade of obscurity over it, the more to guard us against the evil and danger of sin, and to warn us against the folly of putting off the great work of the soul's salvation to a more convenient season—to the beclouded restlessness of a sick-room, to the dark evening of declining years, or the gloomier shades of the approaching night of death.

We will leave, then, this distinguished and guilty monarch in the hands of his omniscient Judge, who has done and will do right with regard to him. As for ourselves, let us make a wise use of the present moment. It is all that we can call our own; and we can hardly call it so ere it has gone to swell the amount of our past minutes, hours, days, and years which have winged their way, as so many swift

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and sure witnesses at the bar of God, either for or against us. Of the future we have no security. Death may overtake us when we least expect it, and eternity reveal its awful retributions to our astonished gaze. Prolonged impenitence is all the while rendering the mind more impervious to the light of divine truth, and the heart more steeled against its influence. The acquired habits of sin will thus gain increased strength, and hold us more hopelessly in their iron bondage. Familiar temptations will become more seductive and irresistible. The world will gain a more despotic mastery over us. The voice of conscience will grow feebler and feebler, and the counsels of friends less and less impressive. The means of instruction and grace will be more neglected and slighted. The Bible will be closed and unread. Our closets will no longer witness our supplications for mercy. Sabbaths will be profaned, and the temple of God deserted. His Spirit, so often striving to lead us in penitence and faith, will be grieved, and grieved, till it quite withdraws its sacred influences, and we are left, irrecoverably left to the blindness, the sin, and the ruin of our own wretched choice.

Delay not, reader, if you are still unreconciled to God, the duty that presses upon you with so many affecting considerations. Arouse from the slumber of spiritual death. Open your eyes to your guilt

and danger, and your heart to the energy of divine truth and grace.

"Seek the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he is near."

"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”

“He that believeth on him is not condemned; but he that believeth not, is condemned already; because he has not believed in the name of the onlybegotten Son of God."

"Behold, now is the accepted time: behold, now is the day of salvation."

LIFE OF REHOBOAM.

CHAPTER LII.

ON the death of Solomon, his son Rehoboam, now forty-one years of age, was the rightful heir to the throne. He immediately went to Shechem, forty miles north of Jerusalem, afterwards the capital of the ten tribes and of Samaria, there to meet the rulers of the tribes assembled, as the representatives of all Israel, to make him king. But they were not ready to do this without certain stipulations on his part. They complained that the burdens imposed on them by Solomon had been too grievous, and were unwilling any longer to pay what they considered such an enormous tribute to the crown. They had sent for Jeroboam, who was then in Egypt under the protection of its king Shishak, whither he had fled to preserve his life from the vengeance of Solomon; for they looked to him as their leader in the intended conference with Rehoboam.

He promptly obeyed the summons, and was the master-spirit of the remonstrants. He came at

their head to make their complaints known to the king. "Thy father," said they, "made our yoke grievous now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee."

Rehoboam dismissed them for the present, telling them to come again at the expiration of three days, during which time he would deliberate on their demands. In the meanwhile, he sought the advice of the old men who had been high in office during the reign of his father, and his counsellors on subjects of weight or difficulty. As might have been expected, from their mature experience and wisdom, they recommended conciliatory measures. "If thou wilt be," they said, "a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants for ever."

Sage advice. The complaints of a people should be candidly regarded by their rulers, and their wrongs, if they labor under them, redressed, not as a matter of favor, but of right. It is the providence of God which places men in stations of authority. To him they are accountable for the exercise of this authority, and they are bound, in all their official acts, to do that and that only which will promote the cause of truth and righteousness, and the best good of the whole people. In this sense