lines of telegraphic communication, the best that can be done is to tell what will probably be the weather to-morrow. Success is sure to none. We see a young man fully equipped for life, starting out with high hopes and flattering prospects. He says, “I will put forth my utmost endeavours. Every nerve and muscle shall be put to the strain. I will deny myself. I will live by all the rules of temperance and morality, and I will be sure of success"-yet how often such confidence is shattered by failure! Even when he has gained success, how long he can retain it is uncertain. He may be one of the strongest of his nation in intellect, one of the most sagacious and learned; and he may climb, as did such an one of late, to the very pinnacle, and to-morrow a dastardly blow may stretch him at the bottom, crushed and dying. Our homes, where peace and hallowed joy reign to-day, may to-morrow be lying in the shadow of the death-angel's wings. I would not chill the happiness of any heart, but it is needful for us to think of these things. I never see one of my children when, steadied by its mother's finger, encouraged by the voices of the household, it takes its first few tottering steps, without thinking of the many snares and pitfalls into which that pathway just entered may lead.

A class of people has lately come into some prominence who call themselves Agnostics. They say, "We don't know anything. It is their creed that, outside of this present, material world, we can be certain of nothing. But there are I. THINGS IN REGARD TO RELIGION

OF WHICH ALL MAY BE CERTAIN.

1. We are certain that Christianity is in the world. We know that it has existed for nineteen centuries. We can trace back its existence with certainty, and we see the fountain springing up in the little realm of

Judæa. And we know that that fountain has swelled into a mighty river that is sweeping all barriers away. Through all the world the force of Christianity is greater than any other that is known among men.

2. We know that this old book, the Bible, has survived all revolutions. It has come down to us through the ages that have witnessed the rise and fall of nation after nation. It has stood the attacks of the fiercest criticism, and come forth unscathed. One philosophy after another has come and gone, but this book abides, and never, during the centuries of its existence, has it had a stronger grip upon humanity than it has at this day. Nowhere is its influence so powerful as in those lands which boast the highest civilization. We know that, even if it be untrue, it gives us the grandest conceptions of a God the world has ever known. Is Jesus Christ a myth? Whose was the sublime imagination that created such a character? It has been well said that such a creator would have been as transcendent a character as Jesus Himself. We know that this Bible reveals to man his own needs. and weaknesses as nothing else does. It sees the secrets of his inmost nature. It voices his deepest aspirations. It touches with a master hand the chords of emotion, and administers consolation for his most poignant griefs. We know that its precepts are the purest and wisest that have been given for the guidance of life. Then we know that, whatever this book may be, it satisfies human longings to the very uttermost. Like the rising tide that flows into every frith, and inlet, and bay, so the Bible fills each recess of man's nature, heart, and mind, and soul. And it is for all classes the child and the sage, the lowly and the exalted, the unlearned and the scholar. It reaches all and makes new creatures of them.

3. But the Christian may be cer

tain of much more than this. Paul had no doubt as to the Gospel. He had already entered upon a race, and he was not for one moment uncertain as to what the course was. Every man may have that certainty, and, if he will surrender himself to Christ, may be fully assured of the truth of the Gospel. And yet there are Christians that are troubled with doubt. I may be certain what road is the right one, and yet be uncertain whether I am on that road. I may be assured that Christianity is true, but not that I am a Christian. Paul was sure of both, and I believe every Christian may have all Paul's confidence.

4. Then, again, I may be sure of the right road, sure I am on it, and yet be doubtful whether I shall reach the goal. Unto such I commend the words of an old darkey whom I once met. I asked him how long he had been serving the Lord. "Fifty years,” he replied. "Well, uncle," I said; "after keeping the faith so long, you must feel pretty confident of holding out to the ·end ?" " Ah, massa," he responded, "it isn't a question of my holding on, its only a question of whether de Lord can hold on, and I reckon I can trust Him." It is the privilege of every Christian to have a like faith. "No one shall pluck them out of My hand," said Christ.

II. IRRELIGION ALSO HAS ITS CERTAINTIES.

1. That dim, undefined unrest of soul. Do what one may to conceal it or to crush it, it is still there, an enemy to peace, a destroyer of happiness.

2. The shadows of the future are certain. Laying aside the teachings of revelation, the realm beyond death is only a dark mystery. See the philosopher ascending the highest mount of speculation, and his only answer to questions of the future state is, "I don't know; I can only guess. Hear another as he

cries out, "I am taking a leap into the dark," swinging off into an unknown eternity. Could anything be more terrible?

3. Another certainty is the dread of judgment after death. The river of life is swift and smooth, perhaps, but the sinner, unreconciled to God, knows that there is a cataract over which he must plunge, and every moment is bringing him nearer to it. A conscience for ever reproaching, a soul that is never at peace, death with its shadows projected far ahead, and the dread of an awful judgment day-these are some of the certainties of irreligion.

P. S. HENSON, D.D.

From the Depths to the Heights.

PSALM CXXXx.

"Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord. Lord hear my voice; let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications," etc.

THIS psalm gives us what we may call the ascent of the soul from the depths to the heights.

It is "a song of degrees," a 'song of goings up." Whatever that very enigmatical phrase may mean, there is a sense in which this psalm, at any rate, is distinctly a song of ascent, in that it starts from the very lowest point of selfabasement and consciousness of evil, and rises steadily and, though it may be slowly, yet surely up to the tranquil summit, led by a consciousness of the Divine Presence and grace.

I. THE CRY FROM THE DEPTHS.

What depths? The psalmist thinks of himself as of a man in some pit, sending up to the surface a faint call which may easily be unheard. But he does not merely mean to express his sense of human insignificance, nor even his sorrow, nor his despondency. There are deeper pits than these. They are depths into which the spirit

feels itself going down, sick and giddy, when there comes the thought, "I am a sinful man, O Lord, in the presence of Thy great purity."

1. The depths are the place for us all. Every man amongst us has got to go down there, if we take the place that belongs to us.

2. Unless you have cried to God out of these depths, you have never cried to Him at all.

3. You want nothing more than a cry to get you out of the depths.

II. A DARK FEAR AND A BRIGHT ASSURANCE.

"If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord! who shall stand?" And then, as if he would not be swept away from his confidence, even by this great blast of cold air from out of the North, that might have come like ice and paralyzed his hope-"But," says he, "there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mightest be feared." So these two halves represent the struggle in the man's mind-the two poles of a thought. To "mark iniquities" is to impute them to us. The word, in the original, means to watch, that is to say, to remember in order to punish.

"But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared." No man ever comes to that confidence that has not sprung to it, as it were, by a rebound from the other thought. It needs, first of all, that the heart should have tremblingly entertained the contrary by hypothesis, in order that the heart should spring into the relief and the gladness of the counter truth.

Forgiveness!" The word so translated has for its literal meaning, 'cutting-off," "" "excision.' And so it suggests the notion of taking a man's soul and his sin, that great black deformity that has grown upon it, feeding upon it, and cutting it clean out with a merciful amputating knife.

God's divine mercy and infinite power and love, in the cross of Jesus Christ, separate between man and his disease, and cut out the one and leave the other more living after the amputation of that. which was killing him.

Men may say, "There cannot be forgiveness; you cannot alter consequences. But forgiveness has not to do only with consequences; forgiveness has to do with the personal relation between me and God. And that can be altered. The Father forgives as well as the judge; the Father forgives though He sometimes chastises.

III. THE PERMANENT, PEACEFUL ATTITUDE OF THE SPIRIT THAT HAS TASTED THE SWEET CONSCIOUSNESS OF FORGIVING LOVE, A CONTINUAL DEPENDENCE UPON GOD.

They that have tasted that the Lord is gracious can sit very quietly at His feet, and trust themselves to His kindly dealings, resting their souls upon His strong word, and looking for the fuller communication of light from Himself. A beautiful picture of a tranquil, continuous, ever-rewarded, and ever-fresh waiting upon Him, and reliance upon His mercy.

AN

IV. THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE BECOMES GENERAL, AND EVANGEL, A PROCLAMATION OF THE LORD, A CALL UPON THE MAN'S LIPS TO ALL HIS BRETHREN. "Let Israel hope in the Lord."

There was no room for anything in his heart when he began the psalm except his own self in his misery, and that Great One high above him there. There was nobody in all the universe to him but himself and God when he began the psalm. But there is nothing that so knits him to all his fellows, and brings him into such wide-reaching bonds of amity and benevolence, as the sense of God's forgiving mercy for his own sin. So the call

bursts from the lips of the pardoned man, inviting all to taste the experience and exercise the trust which have made him glad: "Let Israel hope in the Lord."

And then look at the broad Gospel that he has come to preach. "For with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is redemption." Not only forgiveness, but redemption-and that from every form of sin. It is "plenteous"-multiplied, as the word might be rendered. It is unexhaustible redemption, not to be provoked, not to be overcome by any obstinacy of evilavailable for all, available for every grade and every repetition of transgression. God's inexhaustible mercy, streaming down upon the lurid smoke pillars of man's transgression, is weight enough to quench the flame of man's, and of a world's transgressions. "With

Him is plenteous redemption; He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities." He was sure of that, and his soul was at " peace in

believing" it. But there were mysteries about it which he could not understand. "Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” That is the fulfilment, the vindication, and explanation of the psalmist's hope. Lay hold on Christ, and He will lift you out of the depths, and set you upon the sunny heights of the Mountain of God.

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D.

Three Temples of God.

1. COR. iii. 16.

"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?"

THE three different meanings of this phrase, "the temple of God," mark very distinctly three different eras of God's dealings with His Church. In the Old Testament it is applied without variation to that stately sanctuary of marble,

and gold, and cedar-wood which Solomon built in the zenith of his power. In the Gospels, on the lips of our blessed Lord, we find it used in a new sense, which filled the unaccustomed Jews with amazement. He spoke of the temple of His body. In the epistles, and especially in those of Paul, the term temple receives a significance yet more marvellous, for it is applied, as in the text, to the mortal body of every Christian man,

Let us glance at these three temples, which mark three mighty dispensations in religious history.

I. THE TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM.

The Most High dwelleth not_in temples made with hands. Lo, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, how much less any house that man can build? If that mighty cathedral whose dome is the body of heaven in its clearness, whose pillars are the mountain summits, and its cresset lamps the sun, and moon, and stars, be yet too mean for His dread magnificence, how shall any perishing structure of human toil be deemed sufficient for His abode ? Yet out of that mercy which knew and provided for the spiritual wants of man, He Himself directed the fashion of this earthly tabernacle, and deigned to place the symbol of His presence between the outstretched wings of the golden cherubim.

Through dreary ages of darkness and error that temple stood as the visible witness against all idolatry of God's creatures-that God was sitting King forever, ruling in righteousness, not indifferent to the sorrows and sins of men, but an infinite and merciful Father, yearning in love for the souls of His sinful children, who willeth us to give of our best and richest to His earthly temples, as a proof alike of our love and reverence to Him; and a witness. of His everlasting presence in the

After a thousand years our Lord spoke of the temple of God in a manner unheard of before. "Destroy this temple," He said, when asked for some sign of His mission, and in three days I will raise it up." "Forty and six years was this temple in building,' answered the indignant Jews, "and wilt Thou rear it up in three days ?" But He spoke of "the temple of His body. His use of the word made a deep impression. It was turned into the main charge against Him, was hurled as the bitterest taunt against Him as He hung upon the cross, and was remembered as the key to His most mysterious prophecy after He had risen from the dead.

It was full of awful significance. Thereby, indeed, the veil of the material temple was rent in twain, and access was given to God, by a nearer and truer way. God Himself had reared His tabernacle in mortal flesh; the tent of His eternal spirit had been made "like ours and of the same material." And though that temple of Christ's body lasted on earth, not for many centuries, but only for a few short years, yet let us not forget that it still lasts eternal in the heavensthat forever and ever a face like our own face looks down upon us in pity from the throne of God; and that He who loved His own on earth shall love them to the end and fold them safe, amid the universal ruin, in the bosom of His everlasting love.

III. THE TEMPLE OF EVERY CHRISTIAN MAN.

It was through the temple of Christ's body, as through some glorious vestibule, that the Spirit of God passed into the temple of every Christian heart.

It was the promise wherewith our Lord had comforted His trembling disciples, and very soon after the temple of His mortal body had been taken up into heaven was the new living temple filled with the glory of His presence, and the brows of the assembled Apostles were mitred by the cloven tongues of Pentecostal flame. Since that time the mortal body of every one of us has been a temple of God, a temple of the Holy Ghost; and the Spirit of God has loved

"Before all temples the upright heart and pure."

There is no doctrine on which the apostles dwelt with more insistency than this, alluding to it repeatedly in their epistles as to a mainspring of spiritual life. Nor were the early Christians backward to realize the same high doctrine-a doctrine too mysterious for the heathen world to understand.

The true "Shechinah, then, is man," and "there is but one temple in the universe and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high form." Truly, in the words of the Christian poet,

"We are greater than we know."

Try to realize the thought. God within us!—not only ever with us unseen; not only watching us in our secret moments, and reading the very thoughts of our hearts; not only covering us with the shadow of His wings and lighting us with the light of His countenance; but within us, our bodies His temple, our hearts His home! What a glorious dignity! What an imperial inheritance! If we could but grasp the thought, we should live lives nobler and more beautiful; we should breathe a purer, a sweeter and a calmer air; time would present to us a richer aspect. That eternal life is hid with Christ in God.

F. W. FARRAR, D.D.