stratagems by which to regain the soul. For repentance is the soul going out in great bitterness and self-loathing from all unholy affections and thoughts while Faith is the same soul entering, with great desire and lively imaginings, into the Heart of Jesus, that it may bathe in His Holy Mercy, and be clean.

AIDS TO THOUGHT.

We are His

GOD chargeth Himself with the burden of His whole creation. He bears all, He provides for all, He does with all, as seemeth good in His sight. No creature can anticipate his own being: he must first have being. He forms every babe that comes into the world, but the babe that He is forming, knows not what it is to be. He forms the soul for His own eternal Presence, but it does not appear to any one of His heirs, what he is to be. We are blind; but God is leading us. blind. He will take care of us. We must trust, and not be afraid. If we have eyes, we must trust Him, rather than our eyes. Our eyes may deceive us, but God abideth faithful. He will lead us, not according to our seeing, but according to His own Fatherly purpose. We shall open our eyes in His Heaven some day, and be constrained to acknowledge, that though He led us by a way that we knew not, He brought us to the haven of our desire. And beholding our

W

own glorified form, how exceedingly we shall rejoice that He wrought in us, not according to the poverty of our thought, but according to the riches of His own Glory.

ST. JEROME says:-"It is as impossible for God to bestow Himself under the limitations of time, as it is for a stone to possess the wisdom of an angel."

"I am meek and lowly in Heart." In proportion as any Church obtains numbers, wealth, power, and dignity, she becomes arrogant and imperious. It would seem that as soon as the "grain of mustard seed" becomes a mighty world-tree, the prince of the power of the air and his legion "come and lodge in the branches thereof." It is the established policy of the devil to patronize any and every form of Christianity, as soon as it becomes popular.

The history of Romanism is not a history of meekness and lowliness; but of haughtiness and tyranny. The same charge may be brought against Protestantism, so far as it is a worldly, political organization. We ought not to speak

of the Romish Church, nor of the Protestant Church; but of the Church of the Lord Jesus under both these world-forms. For the genuine disciples of the Cross of Jesus, in both these organizations, are one, and filled with "One Spirit." Romanism has been an iron cage to her meekest and purest children. She permits none of her children to wear simply the yoke of Jesus Christ.

The Inquisition and the Bastile, with all their horrors, are signs for ever of the Heart of Romanism.

O all ye servants of a most subtle system, which you and the devil together have called by the Name of Christ and His Church; if you can hear one who loves you in the bowels of Jesus Christ, I beseech you to sit at the Master's feet and learn of Him, rather than at the feet of that mighty spiritual and physical organism, which, although calling itself Mother in God, has given fearful evidence that it is a haughty, heartless harlot, in the spirit and power of "the god of this world." Beware of a Religion, which, in proportion as it inflates the heart with the arrogance and cruelty of self-love, renders the same eternal heart incapable of the Meekness and Tenderness of Love, as it is in Jesus. Your persistence that you are His only Church, is one of the most striking proofs that you have ceased to be His, and have

become your own Church. When you are concerned to bring souls to their own Saviour, rather than under your authority, it shall be a sign to yourselves and to all men, that you are not spiritual tyrants, but servants of Christ.

THERE are atmospheres in which a candle will give very little light. There are also atmospheres which will extinguish any candle. The atmosphere about many souls quenches the Light of God.

But though certain atmospheres may quench the light of a candle, it is a candle for all that, and capable of being lighted again.

Man, thy spirit is God's candle, and the day is surely coming when the God-light will break out of darkness in thee, and shine through and through thee. Otherwise thou art no man. For "the spirit

of man is the candle of Jehovah."

Only let thy outer senses cease to occupy thee, and let the pleasing tumult of nature's affections subside, then, suddenly, not by thy will, but independent of thy will, the appalling Light will startle thee, and hold thee subject to its searching power.

Thou mayest be very far from wishing to be