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SCRIPTURAL SELECTIONS.

FOR every high priest, taken from among men, is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins:

Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.

And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.

So also Christ glorified not himself to be made a high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee. Heb. v. 1-5.

But Christ being come a high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building;

Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh;

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.-Heb. ix. 11–15.

CLINGING TO JESUS.

"Seeing then we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession."-HEB. IV. 14.

HOLY SAVIOUR, friend unseen,

Since on thine arm thou bid'st me lean,

Help me throughout life's varying scene,
By faith to cling to thee!

Blest with this fellowship divine,

Take what thou wilt, I'll ne'er repine;

E'en as the branches to the vine,

My soul would cling to thee!

Far from her home, fatigued, oppressed,
Here she has found her place of rest;

An exile still, yet not unblest,

While she can cling to thee!

Oft, when I seem to tread alone

Some barren waste with thorns o'ergrown,

Thy voice of love, in tenderest tone,

Whispers, "Still cling to me!"

Though faith and hope may oft be tried,

I ask not, need not, aught beside;

How safe, how calm, how satisfied,

The soul that clings to thee!

Blest is my lot, whate'er befall:

What can disturb me, what appal,

Whilst as my rock, my strength, my all,
Saviour! I cling to thee?

IV.

CHRIST THE KEYHOLDER OF THE ETERNAL

WORLD.

"Fear not;" "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."-REV. I. 17, 18.

VERY clause of this sublime declaration, coming as

EVERY

it does from our glorified Redeemer, is pregnant with assurance and consolation to his believing people, and is specially fitted to banish those fearful and anxious forebodings which oppress their minds in the prospect of dissolution.

"I am he that liveth," or rather, "I am THE LIVING ONE," the first and the last, without beginning of days or end of years, self-existent, and, therefore, independent of every outward condition, and incapable of change. He asserts his supreme divinity as a reason why his disciples should not fear;" and, surely, to every Christian mind, the fact, that the Son of Man, in whom they have trusted as their Saviour, is "the Living One," may well furnish a ground of unshaken confidence, since it assures us, that, happen what may, our trust is reposed on one, whose existence, and whose power to affect our welfare, cannot be destroyed by any event whatever, and that our interests for eternity are absolutely safe, being placed in his hands.

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But how much greater ought to be our confidence in him, and how much sweeter the consolation which his words impart, when he adds, "I WAS DEAD." He appears to the Apostle not simply as "the Living One," the self-existent Son of God, but as God manifested in the flesh, the Son of God in human nature, and even in his glorified state, like unto the Son of Man," whom the beloved disciple had ofttimes seen and followed as the "man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." Let us attempt to conceive of the feelings with which the beloved disciple must have looked on his glorified Master; let us remember that he had companied with him on earth, that he had leaned upon his bosom, and that he knew the sad history of his crucifixion, and we cannot fail to perceive how the mere fact, that the same divine Redeemer now stood before him, and spoke with him of the decease which he had accomplished at Jerusalem, must have served to annihilate in the mind of the Apostle the fear of death, and to open up to his view such a glorious prospect into the invisible world, as would strip the pathway that led to heaven of its terrors, however dark and dismal it might otherwise be.

And to every Christian, the words of our Lord, «1 was dead," will suggest reflections that should serve to fortify the mind against the fear of dissolution; or, at all events, to rebuke and mitigate the aversion with which it is usually contemplated.

Did the Redeemer die,-a Being who claims to himself the dignity of the Living One,"―a Being not

only of infinite dignity, but of spotless purity, and who, from the beginning till the end of his existence on earth, was the object of God's supreme complacency and approbation? And shall we complain that death is allotted as our portion also? we, who, as created beings, are insignificant,—by inheritance, mortal,-by actual guilt, polluted and debased? To us, death comes as wages earned by guilt; but even were it otherwise,-did death come to us as an accident of our being, how should we complain of the hardness of our lot, when Christ himself declares, "I was dead?"

Did the Redeemer die,-as the surety and representative of sinners? was his death a solemn expiation of our guilt, and an adequate satisfaction to God for the penalty which we had incurred? Is there no reason, then, to suppose, that dying, as he did, in the room and on behalf of the guilty, death met him in a more formidable shape, and put into his hands a bitterer cup than can now fall to the lot of any of his people; and that their dissolution will be greatly less terrible than it would have been by reason of his enduring in their room the heaviest part of it? For what is it that mainly embitters death, and surrounds it, even when viewed at a distance, with innumerable terrors? Not surely the mere pain with which it is accompanied,―for equal or greater pain we have often endured-not the mere dissolution of the tie betwixt soul and body,-for if that were all, however our sensitive nature might shrink from the shock, our rational nature might enable us to

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