grovelling motives, and likely to yield in a thousand ways to the temptations which Satan so well knows how to adapt to their disposition. The Pharisees were such religionists; and we see that, when the Lord of glory appeared among them, they crucified and slew him. This profession will be smothered and destroyed by the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches.

All these uncertain foundations which I have just referred to will give way, like the house of which our Saviour speaks, against which the rains did beat, and the winds blew, and the waves arose, and the fallt hereof was great. There must be, therefore, true gospel principles to ensure the steadfastness of a Christian profession.

There must be deep repentance towards God-a searching view of sin in its nature and odiousness, not so much grounded upon the fear of punishment, as springing from a sense of love to him against whom we have ungratefully rebelled. We shall never behold sin in its true colours unless we carry it to the garden of Gethsemane and the cross of Christ, and perceive that it was its bitterness which filled the cup he dreaded-its burden which pressed upon his spirit when he groaned out his expiring cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The wounds which sin has made in us must not be healed slightly: they must be probed to the very bottom: we must have the conviction which the Holy Spirit works-that deep, clear perception of inbred guilt which St. Paul had when he felt it a body of death. It is no doubt painful thus to search the heart, and try the reins; but for inveterate diseases painful remedies alone will avail: else they will break out afresh, and bring on, when little looked for, the worst misery and death.

There must also be strong and appropriating faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not enough to credit the facts recorded of him: it is not enough to know that he shed his blood for the sins of the world-this belief, this knowledge must influence our conduct. The cleansing stream may flow, but, if we wash not in it, it flows for us in vain. The banquet may be spread, but, if we feed not on it, our hunger will be unappeased. It is the real close union, cemented by a lively faith, with the Saviour, that is the spring of the believer's stedfastness. When the branch is grafted into the vine, connected with the root, and receiving its sap and nutriment therefrom, then it germinates and grows, then its leaf withers not, then it bringeth forth its fruit in season. No other connexion can last. You may tie a branch to a living tree, but, because that branch has no actual union with it, you will see how, after a little while, day

by day its greenness will depart, and it will become dry and rotten. Let it be our care to dwell in Christ, and that Christ may dwell in us-to be one with Christ, and to have Christ one with us. Let us rest satisfied with nothing short of this; for in this alone is the principle of perpetuity. We must actually bring our transgressions to the Saviour. We must throw ourselves upon his covenanted promises, his finished work, his powerful mediation; and we must not be content till we have seen, through him, the Father smiling forgiveness and love upon us: "These my sons were dead, and are alive again; they were lost, and are found."

We shall hence obtain a strong and unremitting principle of love to God. All the other principles, of which I before spoke as but temporary, were selfish; but that love which rises responsively in the believer's soul, because God hath first loved him, that, though in this world imperfect, is yet disinterested. A man who is actuated by it will, for Christ's sake, resign father, mother, wife and children, houses and lands, yea, and his own life itself. This love will gain strength by exercise: its influence will thus be more and more powerful: it will subdue one after another all the faculties of the man, till body, soul, and spirit are laid, a holy sacrifice, upon the altar of the Lord. It is thus, labouring with a glad heart in the service of his Redeemer, that the Christian becomes more and more filled out of his fulness. He receives grace after grace: he goes on from strength to strength: he advances through all the varied stages of increase and blessed attainment, even unto the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Shall he fall back? The thought is agony to him. Shall he deny his Saviour? "To whom else," his soul responds, "shall I go? thou hast the words of eternal life." Who then shall separate him from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things he is more than conqueror through Christ that hath loved him. These, I conceive, are the principles on which Christian stedfastness must be based.

I would now enumerate some of the motives which may be taken to urge us to it.

1. One great motive we shall have is a view of what God hath already wrought in us. When a traveller is scaling the mountain's brow, and is wearied with labour, and stops half fainting with fatigue, it inspirits him for further exertion if he casts his eye downwards and sees how high he has already ascended. Shall his past toil go for nothing? No, surely not; and therefore with fresh zeal he presses forward. And so the Christian

THOUGHTS IN SOLITUDE.

BY JOSEPH FEARN. No. XIt

THE LAST WORDS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT.

WE have lately been commemorating that, season, which the church in her wisdom has directed her children to observe in which we celebrate the love of that Saviour who "died the just for the unjust, to bring us unto God." Very sweet is the recurrence of each revolving period of the "Christian year." But a short time since we were summoned to the cradle of the Redeemer, and, as we saw him lying in the manger, we were reminded of his humbling himself to "the form of a servant," and his "making himself of no | reputation;" and but as yesterday we saw him in the wilderness, hungry and tempted by the devil; in Gethsemane, and sweating great drops of blood; on Calvary, crying with a loud voice and yielding up the ghost.

Blessed, thrice blessed, are the services of our church! wherein we are continually stirred up by way of remembrance: our languid faith is animated, our cold love is warmed, our dark understandings are enlightened, and our expiring hopes are fanned into an immortal flame. Blessed indeed are these occasional seasons of special service, when we are taken to the very scenes of our redemption, and when Bethlehem, the garden, and the cross, are presented to our view. O! then it is no wild enthusiasm which prompts the feeling, but it is the result of a calm and settled conviction which causes us with glad sincerity to exclaim, "Blessed, thrice blessed, are the services of our church!"

The person whose name is affixed to my present paper, occupies a conspicuous place in those deeply interesting events which we have recently been commemorating-"Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him" it is of this individual that I intend to speak; and they are the last words of this unhappy traitor which will afford material for my solitary hour.

There is something peculiarly interesting which men are wont to attach to the last words of one about to depart from this earth. As they stand around the bed of a dying friend or relative, how eagerly they catch the faint expressions which the departing one syllables forth, expecting each successive word may be the last; and then how anxious and how ready are they to note down the final utterances-dear and precious records which shall serve as mementoes when the dying has ceased to breathe, and long years shall have rolled away since he went to his grave! Some are privileged to hear glorious "last words" from the lips of those they love-bursts of rapturous exultation and the kindlings of an eternal joy: others are the spectators of a calm and heavenly scene, resting, like the soft rays of the sinking sun, upon the brow of the expiring saint, as he whispers the "sure and certain hope" of a blissful immortality.

The blessed scriptures contain several instances of the last words of God's children. Jacob exclaimed, ere he "gathered up his feet into the bed and yielded up the ghost," "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord." Joseph, before he expired, said, "I die, and God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob;" and thus "by faith made mention of the departing of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bones." The last words of Moses were rife with blessings, and, ere he went up to the mountain to die, assured the Israelites that "the eternal God was their refuge, and underneath them were the everlasting arms." Joshua, the son of Nun, before his death, called for all Israel and for their elders, and said-"Behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth, and ye

know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you all are come to pass to you, and not one thing hath failed thereof." Very touching are the words wherewith the parting language of David is introduced by the sacred historian-"Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel said, Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire." And O, what "good and comfortable words" were uttered by David's Lord, among his last conversations with the disciples—“ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." And what thought can measure the wondrous comprehensiveness of those last words of Jesus-" It is finished?"

But I am about to consider the final language of a character very different from any to which I have just alluded. They are not the last words of the patriarchs, nor the final blessings of Moses, nor the retrospective sketch of Joshua; it is not the melting and beautiful language of the "man after God's own heart," nor the divine utterances of the blessed Redeemer ere he died on Calvary, that are now to occupy our thoughts; but I design to devote the remainder of this paper to the brief but solemn contemplation of the last words of Judas Iscariot.

It is the evangelist St. Matthew alone to whom we are indebted for the record of the last words of the traitor disciple. Mark, Luke, and John are silent respecting them, as also with regard to his subsequent act of suicide. We learn, however, from the firstmentioned evangelist, that when the morning was come in which Jesus was led away and delivered to Pontius Pilate the governor, that "then Judas which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." These are the last words which dropped from the lips of Judas; and, doubtless, the act of self-murder was very shortly afterwards perpetrated: for St. Matthew adds, " And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself;" from which it would appear that a brief season must have intervened between his utterance of the words and his fearful self-destruc

tion.

Of the circumstances of his wicked betrayal of our Saviour, it is needless for me now to speak, as they must be fresh in the recollection of every Christian reader: it is with the traitor's final scene that we have to do. We are told that "when he saw that Christ was condemned, he repented." O, what compunction must have seized his breast: there must have come over him the memory of the day when his divine Master went up into a mountain to ordain his twelve disciples, and himself among the rest: the blessed words of Jesus must have rung in his ears"Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils; freely ye have received, freely give:" he must have been haunted by the after-saying of Christ to the apostles-" Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you hath a devil?" and he must have thought of "the large upper room ready furnished," when Jesus testified, being troubled in spirit, and said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me;" and then he must have remembered the sop being delivered by him who had read his heart, and knew who was the traitor; and the dark night in which he went out to do a deed as dark. O, well might he repent himself as he now gazed upon

the condemned and insulted Redeemer; well might he exclaim, "I have sinned!"

Truly the crime of Judas was of a most heinous character, and one which has branded him with the blackest stigma down to the present hour.

Although St. Mark, Luke, and John do not allude to the compunction or suicide of Judas Iscariot, yet we find the second of these evangelists, to whom is ascribed the authorship of the book of the Acts, furnishing an account of the appointment of St. Matthias as the successor of the traitor disciple; and he then gives us the language of Peter, who, alluding to Judas, said to the hundred and twenty that were gathered together-" Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before of Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus; for he was numbered with us, and had obtained part of this ministry. Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity, and falling headlong he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out." Here we have, it is clear, a corroborative evidence of St. Matthew's record of his fearful suicide.

Now there are many who would feel strongly offended if we were to charge home upon them the horrid crime of Iscariot, but it would be well were each one of my readers, as well as the writer, to analyze the last words of this traitor apostle, and see how far they may not be appropriate in their own case. Who amongst us cannot take up the language wherewith Judas commences his acknowledgment? "I have sinned;" "it was for my sin the Saviour suffered and died:

"It was for crimes that I had done,

He groaned upon the tree." Nothing but the precious blood of Christ could satisfy the claims of offended justice; and therefore what power it throws into the confession "I have sinned," when we bring into the account the immense cost wherewith the sinner was ransomed!

And cannot many of us add, "I have betrayed the innocent blood?" Have we not often proved traitors to our Lord, even when most we seemed sincere to the eyes of our fellow-men? Have we not then dissembled," and betrayed the Son of man with a kiss?" Have we not approached him with "Hail, Master!" while our hearts have been far from him, and thus have brought a scandal upon the holy religion we professed? O, I fear that there is many a Judas in the Christian church; that many are numbered with the true disciples of Christ, and obtain part of his ministry, who in reality are none of his, but are rather base traitors to his blessed cause. Let us examine ourselves more closely than ever we have yet done; and, as we hear our Saviour saying, "Verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me," may we each rejoin, with the sincere desire to be laid open before the Searcher of hearts, "Lord, is it I ?"

Let us retire from this subject full of gratitude to that blessed Saviour who died for the chief of sinners, in that, although the language of Judas is applicable unto us, the despair and end of Judas may yet be averted from us. We need not become the subjects of like fearful feelings with the conscience-stricken apostle, which led him to commit the dreadful crime of murder upon his own body and soul; but we may quit the spectacle of the Redeemer's condemnation, sufferings, and death, full of hope, albeit our sins were among the causes of that sacrifice-the hope that those sins shall be cancelled, and that "our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed in his most precious blood."

Thus, by the sovereign mercy of our God in Christ, while we adopt the last words of Judas Iscariot, and say, "I have sinned and betrayed the innocent blood," we are also privileged to add the words of that other disciple whom Jesus loved, and to exclaim-"The

HAD man never been enabled to contrive any other instrument to assist his vision than the telescope, it might, plunging as it does into the depths of space, have crushed him under a sense of his own infinite littleness, compared with the vastness of the systems revealed to his view. He might have exclaimed, under a humiliating conviction of his comparative insignificance," Lord, what is man, that thou art so mindful of him!" But the "paragon of animals," in the exercise of those powers with which an all-merciful God has endowed him, has discovered another means of studying the Creator's works, which,, inverting as it were the powers of the telescope, leads him to the knowledge of the infinitely small, as that does to acquaintance with the infinitely great; showing him that in the smallest monad which swims in a drop of water, there is as much evidence of creative art, of adapting power, as in the harmony of a planetary system. The invention of the microscope has been attributed to different individuals-to Drebbel, a Dutchman, to Fontano, a Neapolitan, and others: its first public appearance was about 1621*. The laborious and patient investigations of the illustrious and pious Leeuwenhoek first gave philosophical celebrity to the instrument; but, though time has only confirmed the wonderful correctness of his discoveries, the brilliant imaginations of other labourers in the same field, who fancied what they did not see, and the clumsiness of others who would not or could not perceive what he had announced, combined with the inherent difficulty of microscopical observations, and the very imperfect state of the instrument itself, threw the microscope into discredit, and for a time it was only known as the amusement of amateurs. The improvements which Dolland introduced into the telescope have been now adapted to its sister instrument; and it has become a powerful means of philosophical investigation, and at the same time a far more fertile and delightful field to those who love to study the wisdom and goodness of God, as shown forth in this visible world.

It is not my intention to attempt to give a complete or general view of microscopic science, or to afford any instructions as to the use of the instrument itself; but only to indicate some few of those wonderful operations that are going on constantly in the objects with which we are surrounded, and which, it may be hoped, will supply to many fresh food for reverential wonder, and increase the conviction of God's minute providential superintendence, by beholding such prodigal expenditure of skill and design on objects comparatively trivial and worthless.

Baker's Microscope made easy. London, 1743.