and to deliver the beautiful and royal maiden, TRUTH, from wearisome captivity!

But this is not and cannot be the meaning of our "nightthoughts." It has not entered the minds of men who rejoice in the light of a doctrine which is all sunshine, that their financial arrangements for 1880 will be much improved by giving up the periodical that has afforded them so much help and comfort in past years. So far from that, many of them will aid and circulate their favourite Magazine more heartily than ever, because the doctrine is priceless and the time is short!"

The import of the dream, therefore, if it was not all nonsense, was historical, not prophetic. It was a confused retrospect of past troubles, not a warning of future difficulties in contending earnestly for the faith of the Gospel. We have borne too much to be dismayed by trifles now; we have gone too far on the King's highway to turn back at the roar of any lion; and we mean to go on, swerving neither to the right hand nor to the left, until the good and loving MASTER bids us go to sleep, or come up to meet Him.

For what are the facts which justify this confidence respecting the future-a short future of course it must be-and make us morally certain that the Lord's servants will not allow the RAINBOW to disappear until it shall have accomplished its mission and finished the testimony for which it was providentially-ay, and mysteriously-called into being? They are these :

1. The value of a Journal that is absolutely independent of every party in the state and every sect in the Church. This is the grand characteristic of the RAINBOW. It is fervently loyal to Scripture, but owes no allegiance to Tory or Whig, Church or Dissent. It knows no master but One; it has no object but the diffusion of His truth, and it seeks no reward but the appreciation of those who reverence that Master, and whose religion is too healthy to need the bandages of any human creed. This distinctly independent position is chosen not simply as a matter of personal preference, but also as a means of enabling brethren who are tired of the ecclesiastical bondage that builds up churches at the expense of individual liberty, to speak their minds freely under no restrictions but those that belong to fear towards God and charity towards

men.

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Of course this position has serious drawbacks. It offers no attraction to the multitude, who are either too indolent or too ignorant to think for themselves, and too insensible to the high purposes of life to feel the weight of personal responsibility. What is called popularity," therefore, with its accompanying profit, offers no aid to hold up a standard of whose intellectual and religious value it has no conception. But upon the other hand, the enlightened few are, in "the wars of the LORD," infinitely better than the untrained majority, who turn back in the day of battle. The times in which we live demand honest, intelligent, noble-minded men, taught of

God-men whose Christian principle, based only on Divine Revelation shall be firm as eternal rock, and whose practical life shall be pure as a sunbeam. We want a few hundred more brave souls of this stamp as light-bearers, for the darkness in many and many a region of so-called "Christendom " is dreadful!

2. Another ground of confidence that the testimony will be continued is the fact that it is valued by those to whom it comes. Of course it is needless to use many words upon this point, as many letters, extracts, and other sources of evidence have abundantly shown during past years. Our esteemed readers require not to be reminded of what many of them have written, and all of them have seen in these pages testifying their high appreciation of the teachings of this Magazine. We assume no self-praise here; we have done what we could to commend the truth we love, and as the humble servant of our constituency; and that constituency has itself borne spontaneous witness that our labour has not been in vain in the Lord.

3. The favour with which the sublime doctrine of a Divine immortality for mortals as the gift of God in His Son, is being received by all who have the common sense to lay aside their prejudices and look it fairly in the face, is a sure proof that the Journal that first taught this truth in England cannot be dispensed with. This wonderful truth-the very essence of the Gospel-so long lost under the stupid delusion of man's natural immortality, is making way amongst thoughtful Christians. It must make way! The light of its glory must pierce the darkness which has veiled the nations for ages, and burdened Christian theology with a weight that Christ never put upon it! But the publication that risked the penalty of extinction-and very nearly paid it-to bring this glorious truth before the Churches has a moral right, of the very highest kind, to look for the co-operation of those who have been delivered from bondage by its teaching, to send the light to others who are still in darkness. We ask this, not as a personal favour-although, of course, it would be gratefully received as that— but as an evidence of the practical sympathy which the spirit of truth puts into the hearts of the "sons of light." We must work together for the glorious Master, the blessed Life-Giver-" our Life." His worth is inexpressible! To promote His glory is our glory. Let us tell men about this life which Christ came to give to all who receive Him (John i. 12, 13), without which they must perish for ever, cease to be, and never even "see" any of the glorious things which are to take place in our world when it becomes transformed into the Paradise of God.

4. This witness to the doctrine that Christ is the Life of His Body, the Church, has also borne testimony from the very first that He is the appointed King of the nations, and that He is coming to exercise a Divinely-royal Supremacy over the whole earth, and "under the whole heaven." It was an earnest desire to promote

this grand truth that led to the first thought of issuing the RAINBOW. The persistent testimony to this wonderfully gracious arrangement for the government of the world which we have borne from month to month and year to year has gladdened thousands of hearts and taught many, who formerly understood it not, the important distinction between the Church and the Kingdom. This great subject, the coming of Christ for His Church and to His Kingdom must be repeatedly brought before men now. The time is shorter every succeeding day; the interests involved are unspeakably important; and those who are looking for "that blessed hope" will surely stand by us nobly while we proclaim the Gospel of the glory of the blessed God, the coming Kingdom of the Son of Man; and "to Him be the dominion to the ages of ages. Amen!" EDITOR.

OUR PART IN THE PROCESSION OF EVENTS.

T is so easy to moralise about "the flight of time, its rapidity, its uncertainty, the folly of wasting it, and the wisdom of redeeming it, that we almost shrink from touching the subject. We do not wish our readers to think that we mean to inflict upon them any of the poor platitudes and prosy preaching with which the last month of the year is usually burdened. We dislike platitudes as we dislike everything else that is insipid, whether in the region of literature or theology, and prosy preaching is one of the devices of the enemy against which all intelligent men should protest. don't wonder at people "nodding "under sermons delivered by men who are themselves half asleep, or who seem to have neither consciousness of responsibility nor sympathy with the grand themes of the Gospel.

We

A good story is told by Dean Ramsay. A clergyman in the North rebuked his drowsy congregation one hot Sunday, saying:"You should be ashamed of yourselves! You are almost all asleep, except that poor idiot," pointing to a half-witted lad in the gallery. "And I," said Jock, indignant at such personality, "if I wasn't an idiot wad be asleep too!" A keen thing like this does service at times. It must be confessed that the pulpit sometimes deserves smart retorts; for it is true, as a famous actor once said to a bishop, "We interest men because we deal with fiction as if it were fact, whilst you deal with fact as if it were fiction." Now we earnestly wish to see truth realised, that it may be dealt with in the right spirit, and not in that mechanical humdrum style which acts as a soporific. The Gospel, as we see it, is "GOSPEL." It is worthy of its joyous name. And it is as real, and important, and majestic as it is blessed. The inane homily upon the minor morals, read in a style which shows that the reader has no interest in his

subject beyond that which relates to the quarter's stipend, is a disgrace to the age. At the bar we find no such driveling, although the barrister may know that the cause he pleads is utterly worthless. The interest of his client rules his eloquence and fires his rhetoric, notwithstanding the qualification of that client for penal servitude.

And is it tolerable that the Christian speaker or writer,-whose theme, even in its humblest aspects, is far nobler than the best in which a pleader learned in the law can be engaged-should be a mere speaking machine, without heart, or a scribe without literary life? Surely we have had enough of this deep offence to the majesty of divine truth! The association of gloom, death, and the post mortem horrors of paganism with the word of life is so utterly incongruous, as to demand a protest both in words and practice. We, therefore, do not write lachrymose sentences about the flight of time. Let it fly! It is making room for a glorious era in which the surpassing treasures of divine love will be given in full possession to the royal family of God. No, no: our words to our friends are those of hearty and joyous gratulation. We are right glad that 1879 has gone to its ancestors; there is one year less between us and the kingdom of God; one year less for the reign of the prince of darkness and the groanings of creation; one year less for the false teachings of Christendom to tell lies about God, and for priestly impudence to present us with gross caricatures of the Church of Christ; and one year less for atheistic science to sneer at the cosmogany of Moses and the theology of Paul. Why should the flight of time trouble men who have been delivered from delusion respecting the nature of man and the character of God? We have everything to gain by its speed, and nothing to lose. Let it fly!

But you will share our gratitude to Divine Providence that 1879 did not find its way to the sepulchre of its fathers without a public testimony, in the great metropolis of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, to the sublime truth that everlasting life is the gift of God in Christ to believers, and to those doctrines which are subsidiary and co-related to this divine truth. The congregations were not counted by thousands; the place of assembly is a humble meeting-house, without sculptured saints, or dim religious light striving to force its way through scarlet-cloaked apostlespoor fellows! not one of them ever had so gaudy a garment ;-and the speakers were plain honest men, who fear God and reverently bow to His teaching, whether it lead them to fame or obscurity; yet the testimony was given, on the wings of the press it was borne to the ends of the earth, and those who gave it are deeply grateful that their Master gave them such signal honour. Indeed we all have reason to be "glad in the Lord." Our "creed" is all sunshine! We congratulate each other for the blessed light which has fallen. upon our path, and adopt the language of our "beloved brother Paul "Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say, Rejoice!"