wise above what is written, we may be as well assured as of any revealed truth that God carried on his purposes of mercy towards us not merely through these established laws of nature, but by the ministrations of these glorious, though invisible spirits. And while there may be no sin, there is surely a loss of consolation in forgetting all this. The mysterious truth of the omnipresence of God is too transcendental or occult to our feeble comprehension to afford us all the consolation we need in those seasons of sorrow when God really seems to have forsaken us. We feel after Him and do not find Him. Then even a human presence or voice, seen or heard in the dark night of life, gives us rapture, and even more of joy there would be if we apprehended, as we should, this revealed truth of angelic ministries, so that in " entertaining angels it should be not unawares."

In many cases the old saints were aware of the visitation. Surely, we need not envy the saints of former times. We used to do so. When with childish fancy we read the sweet stories of these heavenly visitations unto men, we envied them the bright visions. Thirsting and faint we walked in the wilderness, and cried, "Would God we could find Hagar's angel revealing the spring!" Restless and alone in the still and solemn night, we cried, "O, for Jacob's bright vision of shining angels descending to Our pillow ! "

Broken-hearted, we went forth to the grave whereinto had gone down all that made life beautiful, and lifted up the voice in a deep and bitter cry, "O Lord, send, as unto Mary, a mighty angel to fling heavenly glory through the glooms of our grave!" So foolish and ignorant were we to envy those men who had their spiritual life amid shadows, when of all those most favoured servants of God there

was not one who would not gladly have exchanged his angels for ours. "Hereafter," these are the words of true prophecy, "hereafter ye shall see Heaven open and the angels of God descending"--and we live in that hereafter. Those patriarchs could come only to the "mount that burned." But "we, we have come unto Mount Zion and to an innumerable company of angels." "We have come to them." They are here, in our paths, in our dwellings, beside us, all around us! In this only we come short-in the strong, abiding, exulting faith that keeps us aware of their presence. It would exhort us to higher frames of Christian life; for if it be a blessed thing, it is as well a solemn thing, thus "to entertain angels." "To entertain" is a strong word. It signifies more than to receive and treat hospitably; it implies such treatment as is agreeable and affords delight to the guest-a courtesy in every way adapted to the tastes and habits of the visitor. The same hospitality extended to an Esquimaux and a Parisian would not equally entertain them.

Now we must presume that an angel's taste is very holy, and his habits very glorious.

If we were preparing for an angelvisit, there would be many things modified in our houses and our hearts. Our daily walk and conversation would rise into higher frames, our hearts would be as heavenly instruments attuned unto hallelujahs, and our lives as fair trees laden with the flowers of love, and the fruit of the Spirit would fill all the air with a richer, heavenly fragrance, and the very lowest cottage of humble piety would be radiant and rapturous as Bethel, "the very house of God and the very gate of heaven," if with wise and fitting preparation we would entertain angels."

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There is in the text an earnest exhortation to the moods and ministries of a higher Christian life. It would tend to purify the Church of many foolish and worldly things, and to restore to piety those old qualities whereby 'faith waxed valiant in fight," if we lived daily under the power of the solemn truth. And beyond this, as indeed its higher meaning and power, it would greatly comfort us; for who, rightly thoughtful, would class it with wearisome duties ? Who would not rather accept it, and glory in it, as a surpassing privilege, "to entertain angels." And we do entertain them. It matters not that we cannot see them. We do not see this air we breathe, yet how our hearts bound as its blessed breezes fan us! All the tremendous forces of creation that are at work above and around us-light, heat, electricity, gravitation -though they hem us in and press upon us, yet we never see them; and yet our eyes flash and our hearts bound as we rely on them and glory in them. And surely the eye should flash and the heart bound with greater rapture at the thought of this more glorious ministry that surrounds us.

It is our own faith only that is at fault. If God assure us of any truth, we should rely on it more surely and gladly than in all truths demonstrated by our reason or objective to our senses. If a resplendent spirit should descend visibly from heaven, and cross my threshold, and stand in my presence, its very glory and beauty would confound me, and I should cry out in distrust. But now when God tells me that He has sent His mighty angels to be my ministers, then surely I can believe Him, and believing, how fair and bright and blessed this life and world ought to be! I may be in adversity, forms of suffering and sorrow may surround me, as in Daniel's

terrible trial-fierce monsters from the desert crouching for the spring-but then, as if a shining form rose between us, my joyous cry would be, "God hath sent His angel and shut the lion's mouth." Is there a vacant place in the home and the heart of some dear one passed away, and do I, like the desolate Mary, go forth with all life's precious spices, to pour them in love's torturing sacrifice into the pitiless grave; why, then, having faith in God's Word, it should be only to find the sepulchre all ablaze with uncreated light, and to feel the brokenhearted swelling with unspeakable joy at the angel's words, "He is not here! He is risen!" Nay, hath the form of terror sprang upon myself— death! death! is its cold breath on my brow? its mighty hand on my heart-strings? Yet even then it would be only as unto Elijah on the far side of Jordan, and the living spirit would spring forward with more than a conqueror's rapture, as the chariot of fire, with its angelic convoy, rushed in glory to the skies.

CHARLES WADSWORTH, D.D.

violence of strangers, instead of being garnered for the use of those who had tilled the soil; and the sickle is the sword. The population is thinned, like the trees in the waning part of the year. Only that the wrath of man, unlike the severity of Nature, has no benevolent purpose in it. The comforts and blessings of life are shaken down as faded leaves. Only it is without any sign from experience, that they shall be replaced by a new spring. A desolated prospect rises before his sight. "Two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough; four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof." It was not that the patriotic seer was too easily alarmed, as the event proved,—nor that he had pleasure in foreboding. The word of the Lord was a "burden " in those days, and he felt its weight upon his own heart as he held it over the heads of his people. But he must needs speak. He must show what he saw. He was in hope, too, that he should do them service by what he said; that, by representing the coming distress as the consequence of their sins, he should lead them to repen

tance.

Their lies in the text, apart from its historical reference, and from everything of a merely local interest, this general truth.

THAT CIRCUMSTANCES OF DECLINE AND DESTITUTION ARE SUITED ΤΟ WEAN THE HEART FROM ITS VANITIES.

They awaken self-examination. They direct the thoughts towards the sober realities of our being; to duties and hopes instead of pleasures; to the objects that neither are consumed nor decay; and to the Author of all, Whose it is to give and to take, and to appoint every successive dispensation through which we pass. In the day of adversity men "consider." And in the days that need not be called

adverse, but when time and fortune have made the enjoyments of the world fewer, and thrown a longer shadow and a paler tint upon those that remain, the soul naturally remembers its truer and more enduring portions.

These occasions are continually recurring. Sometimes gradually, as the withering of the beauty of the year, and sometimes suddenly, as a hostile inroad, they come on. No one is exempt from them always. Few escape long without some touches of their power.

In one form or another

Some

Some Some

among a great multitude of forms, diminishing changes are dealing with us, or are not far off. Some things are leaving us, that we should be glad to hold longer. Some are altering, that we would keep always as they are. Some bloom is passing off. Some branching fancies are left bare. enjoyments have dropped. affections have suffered a chill. cherished things are dead. This is the inevitable lot of our humanity. Instead of sighing over it, instead of reaching backward after what cannot be regained, instead of desponding at the issue of events, instead of murmuring at the heavenly Providence, the true "6 man " will "look to his Maker." He will meditate the wise designs that are folded up in earthly appointments. He will endeavour to learn the sober thoughts and noble virtues which destitutions and trials impress. He will study to make himself more ample, as helping accidents decrease; and yet not himself, but the inward resources which the grace of God has accorded to him. He will try to make the little that is left more blest to him than the careless abundance that was at first bestowed. He will exchange the flush of the summer for the fruits of the harvest, without thinking he has suffered any wrong

thereby. He will hope to be braced to resolution by the times, that have lost their young looks and more genial inflences. He will commit the present and the future trustingly to the Lord, with whom "there is no restraint to save, whether by many or by few"; and who delivers as easily through the resources that seem the least, as through a whole army of physical strength and mercenary supplies.

The language of the text leads us to reflect on

THE DIMINUTIONS OF LIFE.

This is the subject that is painted to us in its descriptive words; and it is made more impressive by the corresponding season, at which we have now arrived,- -a season not of entire desolation, indeed, but of fading and scantiness. The experience of one and another will show various respects in which these diminutions have come to take place.

1. With some the change relates to their worldly goods and the general prosperity of their affairs. Their substance has become less. Their projects have been disappointed, or their enterprises have miscarried; or else, while they have been planning nothing and attempting nothing, but only thinking to hold fast what they had, loss has followed loss. Dishonest hands have made themselves busy with the gains of an upright industry. Or a sudden misfortune has swept away the slow accumulation of many patient years. Or gradual reverses, that have neither man to blame nor the fire nor flood to complain of, have reduced affluent circumstances to straits. Demands have increased faster than supplies. Exigencies have arisen that will not be put off; or causes that seem unaccountable are wearing away the resources of a once flourishing estate. It would take long to tell of all the ways

in which the prudent and the active fall behind in the competitions of the world, and riches spread their uncertain wings and are away. But what need of telling? Enough that the fact is so.

Many find their means compare but slenderly with those of the former days. They must measure carefully. where they used to scatter with a free hand. They must refrain from accustomed indulgences. They must contract their desires. They cannot do as they would, and that may appear hard : or they cannot do as they did, and that is still harder, But they can do what is better. They can show that they "know how to lack." They can show that narrowed finances bring their peculiar opportunities, as well as those that are most expanded. They can show how far they are superior to the accidents of their lot; and by the side of the old proverb, "All is not gold that glistens," they can set up their illustration of a higher truth, that there is glistening far above that of gold. This example of theirs may be rich wit with incorruptible treasure. They can show themselves above every artifice and dishonest subserviency, above repining, above despair. They can be content with a little, which integrity makes sweet and humility makes enough. They can take it cheerfully when their sunshine is less, and be steady among tottering fortunes. They can prove themselves friendly, and make themselves serviceable as effectually as ever.

2. A second class of diminutions concerns the bodily ease and health. Look about you as you walk through the streets, and you will be at no loss to discover the invalid. The cough, the languid step, the wasted form, the eye too heavy or too bright, reveal the ravages of an enemy within them, You may see them lifted into coaches,

yet scarcely see them, they are SO closely wrapped up. Or if it has not come to that, you may observe them, as the weather roughens, choosing the sunny side of the way. If you went within doors, you would find much more of the same complexion. And even where your sight can detect nothing,-under round limbs and gay garments, and moving with an alert air,-disease is carried about, and the consciousness of decaying powers, and the monitor pain. Without stating this evil in colours beyond the truth, we must own that it is widely spread and strikes deep. And now, you may say, what is left for those who have lost a possession like this? What is all that money can buy, that the whole bounty of nature can communicate, those who are not well? There is no bribing the keen officers of distress. A gold cup will not recommend a bitter potion. Tapestry and the eider's down have made no treaty with repose. What are luxuries to the feverish lip, but one disgust more? What is the parade of life to the distempered or failing eye? What are the delights of the senses when "the whole heart is sick"? But when you ask, "What is there left?" you are pressing me with a degrading exaggeration. What you represent as a loss is a diminution only, and not an utter ruin. There is less comfort but there is some. "Two or three berries yet, in the top of the uppermost bough; four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof." Nay, the root may be as hearty as ever in the life-giving soil. Sickness may be but a transient disturbance, that will by and by cease; and if it is mortal, it will have its alleviations and intervals of rest. The flesh refuses to suffer always. Hope refuses absolutely to depart. The spirit will rise, through maladies that admit of no

cure,

into states of delight; forgetting or despising those hurts, and even re-acting with a feeling of satisfaction against the worst they can do. It is not true, in the lowest physical sense, that there is no enjoyment without health. Nature is a kind mother over her infirm child,—breaking the blow, tempering the draught, compensating for the deprivation, soothing the anguish, throwing in gracious respites, and giving "songs in the night.

What, then, when we look above Nature to a more benignant Guardian still? You must go to the bedside which all earthly expectation has forsaken, if you would behold the full beauty of faith. The heavens bend close over that forlorn scene, and display their all-sufficiency. "Did you sleep last night?" was the question to one, surrounded with the humblest circumstances, torn with frequent pangs, and knowing there could be no recovery. And the answer rested upon the memory, and shall not soon be dismissed: "No, nor for others before it. My eyes are held watching, but I have enjoyed my thoughts." What thoughts? There was nothing to suggest those of joy in that mean chamber, in those destitute vigils, in that wasting life. No dream of am bition was there, such as sometimes kindles the fancy of expiring men, to excite that lowly head. No. With her, they rested nowhere short of the skies. At that day she "looked to her Maker."

3. The third instance of diminutions to which our attention is called is found in the encroachments of age. Here is no question of more or less property, more or less health, which are distributed without reference to periods of life. It is of those periods themselves that the discourse comes to speak. The years that remain are felt by many to be a lessening sum. Felt to be so;