Christ, there are mightier and more terrible energies than heaven can conceive, or hell could endure.

With the utmost adoration, and godly fear, I record the substance of Job's words as supremely applicable to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Out of Him comes Bread, the Universal Bread of Life; but within Him is the Source of all fire.

Let Him redeem us from sin and the devil,let Him subject our passions to Himself, and our humility and meekness will become the hiding-places of an energy which the powers of hell can neither dispute, nor resist.

"And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels." The latter prevailed not; but the former prevailed; for in them was the Life of the Lamb.

He is "KING of kings and LORD of lords."

AIDS TO THOUGHT.

"IN the declining age of a state," said Lord Bacon, "mechanical arts and merchandise do flourish." What! the nation waning, when mechanical arts and merchandise are flourishing? Nine men out of ten would say the very opposite. But unquestionably my Lord Bacon is right. In a truly great age, the souls of men are absorbed with great principles, they are stirred up to attack ancient wrongs and revered abuses, they are intent to sow the earth with truth and righteousness. Great faith makes great men ;-men who can in no wise sell themselves into world-slavery. Their souls are not at liberty for mechanical inventions, nor are they sordid enough to be ambitious for the profits of commerce. They are inspired with a divine idea of human life. In a truly heroic age, men have too much to do with God and Truth, to become distinguished worldlings. How can mechanics and merchandise be carried to their utmost pitch of perfection, unless men devote their whole souls

hereunto? But the representative men of a truly great age apprehend too clearly the vanity of the world and of mortal life, and the grandeur of the soul and its eternal destiny, to abandon themselves to the elements of the world.

But when the age declines, when there are few divine souls left, when a carefully worded theology takes the place of faith in the earth, when men forget that their souls have descended from God, and are returning to God, when men withdraw from the influences of eternity, to live under the influences of time; then are they able to give their whole souls, as well as their bodies, to the service of the present world; and then, (“Ichabod!”) the glory of God and of men departs, and the glory of the world is in the ascendant. The world becomes rich, luxurious, wonderful; and men, under the notion of being earth-kings, become poor, inglorious earth-worms. Their mastery of the world is the world's mastery of them.

I am not acquainted with the history of drinking healths; but I have no doubt that it originated in faith, as well as in good-will-A party of friends meeting together knew that when

their affections were exhilarated by intercourse and a generous beverage, they had the power of affecting and magnetizing their friends at a distance, with their cheerful, lively spirits. They believed, that the fulness of their health, and the overflow of their joy, under the direction of their will, would reach the absent, flowing in upon them, like a genial tide of health and comfort. Subtler and more active than lightning are the human spirits. flow of spirits must flow somewhither. mands them to flow to the beloved.

The over

Love com

And surely

none are more likely than they to be open to the influx.

In an age of no faith the custom becomes a mere ceremony. But rely upon it, in the beginning, it was no ceremony.

IF a thousand Red Seas threaten to drown us, we must " go forward." Our " Goshen" was delightful, but we must not go back to it. We must nobly resign our Egyptian paradise, and go through seas and deserts, believing that the land of God is before us. "Go forward.”

THE Beautiful Distress. As I have felt a tear-drop from a cloudless sky, and wondered whence it could come: so have I seen a fair countenance, full of openness, serenity and majesty, and the large, still tear standing in the eye. Yet no single muscle was distorted: it seemed to me like the stillness of intense emotion, like the sorrow of goodness, like a broken heart at peace with its own woe: as though one, whose hopes of earthly bliss had all vanished, were comforted from within, by the presence and assurance of Holy Love, saying: "It is well: Peace be unto thee."

We are overcome by the tyrant sin; but our Captain was not. "He was made sin for us," and overcame sin. We are under the curse, and cannot help ourselves against it: "He was made a curse," and turned the curse into a blessing. We must ask Him to conduct His process unto victory, in us. We must invite Him as a Refiner, to sit, and stir His Holy fires within the very vortex of our chaos, that He may transmute it into eternal gold. The process is terrible; but the end, thrice blessed.