that turned spotless righteousness into an offering for sin, and infinite blessedness into a curse. From the cradle to the cross Christ's life was one of suffering, and, therefore, one of love. An irifant fugitive from Herod's sword; an exile from his own land ; stigmatised in life as a man gluttonous and drunken; associated with the wicked one as the basis of his wonder-working power; hated for his gracious words ; feared for his mighty deeds; they seek him as a robber and a thief; they deny him justice, the common right of man; and, though it sink their souls to hell, they plot and clamour for his blood. Briefly survey his sufferings; view him agonising in the garden ; the soldiers' butt and jest in the judgment hall. See him sinking beneath his heavy cross. See him nailed to it. Hear his piteous lamentation, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken

“ See from his head, his hands, his feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down.”

Jesus! Saviour! Never was shame, never sorrow, never agony, never death like thine, and, thorefore, never love like thine !

“The children of the rich have not their bread to win ;

They hardly know how labour is the penalty of sin;

E'en like the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin." But Christ, through his love, became poor to enrich us, burdened to relieve us, despised to cheer us, and slain to redeem us.

III. Does it not pass our knowledge, when we are assured these sufferings were endured to deliver all who believe from death and hell ? Wherefore this waste ļ said the thief who bore the bag ; and, Wherefore this sacrifice ? ask the thieves who would steal from Christ the glory of his titles, and from his blood the virtue of a ransom. This was the need. Sinners are declared worthy of tenanting the gloom of that pit which is bottomless; of becoming brethren in misery of the spirits which are accursed and lost. And from this prison-house of the condemned, this abyss into which the apostate angels have sunk; from these dark chambers, where no one dries another's tears nor heals another's anguish; Trom this hopeless hell, whero the worm never dies and the fire is not quenched, Christ died to make deliverance possible to all who hear his gospel, and certain unto all who make him their Saviour and trust him with tbeir souls.

IV. Nor has He died tò deliver those who love Him only from hell; He gives them a place in heaven. !

Grateful should sinners, worthy of death, have been for the least of mercies, never raising hopes for the greatest favours. But, “ Love divine all love excelling,” transcends all earthly precept and pattern. The love of Christ disdains comparison with the love of man. Our highest is lower than Christ's lowest. Christ's is the ocean, man's the dewdrop, which the wind scatters or the sun exhales. Amongst us! Pardon the wretch that, serpent-like, has stung the hand that fed him, and none will cry, Add

to your pardon wealth, and crown it with your love. Save one from fire flood, or ravenous beast, and we all exclaim, Enough! enough! yo need not make your house his home, and himself your son. But Chris shall in all things have pre-eminence. Those hands which ruthless Roma and demon-hearted Jew nailed to the cross, have shut the gates of he against, and opened the gates of heaven to, all believers. Majesty seeme sinking there in misery; omnipotence was there in weakness; the Lor of life in the article of death ; but his love, equal to his nature, mad him endure, and moved the right arm which got him the victory.

Once before, this love formed an Eden, a paradise, where man, mad in his Maker's image, plucked death and ruin with the fruit that was foi bidden; the garden perished through the sin of its keeper ; but the lov of Christ repeats and excels itself, in purchasing a kingdom that is incol ruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, of which He will be th glory and king. This kingdom, unlike the Paradise which the serpen could enter and be permitted to tempt, where life, innocence, and blis had no safer guardians than the untried and mutable man, excludes th serpent and all his brood ; Christ, its immutable king, will keep, by hi almighty power, what he has purchased with his own precious blood.

What amount of peace and joy, what scenes of bliss and love, eart had seen, had earth never seen sin, we cannot tell. Exempt from thistl and thorn, unburdened by the curse, her fields might have rivalled Eder -the world have been a Paradise. Loveliest things might have lived th longest, and material decay have lost half its evil, by losing its repulsive ness.

Less than this, indeed, can we tell what heaven is. This we know that the poet's soul being greater than his book, the benefactor bette than his gift, the architect superior to his building, Jesus will be bette than his word, and heaven, the substance, more glorious than Paradise the shadow. Of its happiness who can adequately speak ? Who car describe what eye has not seen, rehearse what ear has not heard, be ela quent on what has never entered his heart ? Of the happiness of bein free from sorrow, shame, and sin; of resting from temptation, conflic and evil, we may, without difficulty, conceive. But, to behold God's faci in righteousness, to wake up in the divine likeness, to possess a body liki the Lord's, to know even as we are known, to have the perfect love tha casts out fear, to be for ever with the Lord, denotes a bliss, which man in this world, can never comprehend. For all the scenes and symbols o heavenly glory-a sunless city, yet filled with light, where all áre priests but no temple ; all kings, yet one kingdom ; with streets of gleamin gold, and sea of glass, with hues of fire, and harp and song, and victors crown and palm, these hide the specific, the real, the spiritual, like thi gorgeous morning clouds, whose borrowed beauty proclaims, while it hides the greater glory of the luminary behind them.

Satisfied we may be that Christ, for the happiness of the redeemed will do far more abundantly above all we can ask or think ; but satisfied we must not be if we feel not this love begetting hopes, that purify w

even as Christ is pure. Hearing of this love is not enough ; momentary delight, casual admiration, will not suffice. The despisers hear and perish: those who wonder may die unsaved. We must know the love of Christ; know it with a delight that as far surpasses all other joys as the sun in glory transcends all other lights; know it as an influence that hushes all murmurings and repinings into the silence into which Christ hushed the roar and shriek of the storm on Galilee. It is to feel it as an everflowing and mighty tide, on which you are borne exultingly wherever duty calls; to feel it as a constraining power that bends and binds you to the will of God, making you equally willing to suffer as to do, to die a victim on the altar as a soldier in the field. It is to know it as an antidote that enables you to breathe unharmed the tainted air of this wicked world ; to walk amongst sin and sinners as a physician amongst the sick, as a ghepherd amongst infected sheep, or as Aaron amongst the dying and the dead. It is to know it as a treasure, which to enjoy through all eternity, you can account the gay glory of the world as being darker than the shadow of death; its music and dancing but as a prelude of mockery to the weeping and wailing of the lost. Yea, it is so to know it that the name of Christ shall rise high above your toil, your sorrows, your joys, as an arch of triumph on your way to immortality and bliss; that the whole man, filled with all the fulness of God, shall exclaim, “For me to live is to honour Christ; for me to die is gain.” As the heart to the body, the sun to the earth, should the love of Christ be to us : the fountain and force of our spiritual life; the source of our spring joys, of our summer and autumnal glory.

May the ignorant find this Christ as their Teacher ; the lost as their Saviour; the man in bondage as his Redeemer, and taste the earnest of heaven in the knowledge of his love. May the Christian leave the shore, and dare the ocean, exploring the lengths, breadths, and depths of the love that passeth knowledge. Whilst beautified with a tenderness that will not break the bruised reed, it is crowned with the immutability that the everlasting hills fail to parallel. The heavens cannot symbolise its permanence. They shall perish, but this love shall endure for ever. No comparison can indicate its strength. It overcame death that overcomes all. It shall live longer than sun and moon. Like eternity, it can never end. Like himself, it can never die. It passeth knowledge now. It will surpass it for ever. Intellect will never reach its height; never plumb 1ts depth. Happy he who having it, finds it brings him the quiet bliss of enjoyment, and the rest of heaven !

HOW A PINE-TREE DID SOME GOOD.

FOR THE YOUNG. IT was a long, narrow valley i pine-trees live a long time, and this Where the Pine-tree stood; and per one was not very old... haps, if you went to look for it, you The valloy was quite barren; nompat find it there to-day. For thing grew there but a few scrubby bushes; and, to tell the truth, it was. So the Pine-tree was very lone about as desolate a place as you can some, and no wonder. "I wish well imagine. Far up over it hung I knew of what good I am," it said t the great, snowy caps of the Rocky the gray rabbit one day. “I wish Mountains, where the clouds played knew, I wish I knew ;” and i hide-and-seek all day, and chased rustled its branches until they a each other merrily across the snow. seemed to say, “ Wish I knew, wis There was a little stream, too, that I knew." gathered itself up among the snows, “0, pshaw !” said the rabbit; “ and came running down the side of | wouldn't concern myself much abou the mountain; but for all that, the that. Some day you'll find out.”. valley was very dreary.

“But do tell me," persisted th Once in a while there went a large Pine-tree,“ of what good you thin gray rabbit hopping among the sage I am ?” bushes; but look as far as you would,

en “Well,” answered the rabbi you would find no more inhabitants. sitting up on her hind paws an Poor, solitary little valley, with not washing her face with her front ones even a cottonwood down by the in order that company shouldn't se stream, and hardly enough grass to her unless she looked trim and tidy furnish three oxen with a meal! “well,” said the rabbit, “I can' Poor, barren little valley, lying al exactly say myself what it is. 1 ways for half the day in the shadow you don't help one, you help another of those tall cliffs, burning under and that's right enough, isn't it? A the summer sun, heaped high with for me, I take care of my family. the winter snows, lying there year hop round among the sage-bushes after year without a friend ! Yes, it and get their breakfast, and dinner had two friends, though they could and supper. I have plenty to do, do it but little good; for they were assure you, and you must really ex two pine-trees. The one nearest the cuse me now, for I have to be off.” mountain, hanging quite out of reach “I wish I was a rabbit,” mutteret in a cleft of the rock, was an old, the Pine-tree to himself. “I thin! gnarled tree, which had stood there I could do some good then, for for a hundred years. The other was should have a family to support; bu younger, with bright green foliage, summer and winter. It curled up . Then he called across to the littl the ends of its branches, as if it stream, and asked the same questio would like to have you understand of him. And the stream ripple that it was a very fine, hardy fellow, along, and danced in the sunshine even if it wasn't as old as its father and answered him, “I go on errand up there in the cleft of the rock. for the big mountain all day · Now this young Pine-tree grew | carried one of your cones not lon very lonesome at times, and was ago to a point of land twenty mile glad to talk with any one who came off, and there now is a Pine-tree tha along-and they were few, I can tell looks just like you. But I must ru you. Occasionally it would look along, I am so busy. I can't tel lovingly up to the father pine, and you of what good you are. You wonder if it could make him hear must wait and see." And the little what it said. It would rustle its stream danced on. branches and shout by the hour, but “I wish I were a stream,” though it only heard him once, and then the the Pine-tree. “Anything but bein words were so mixed with falling tied down to this spot for years; tha snow that it was really impossible to is unfair. The rabbit" can rul say what they meant.

around, and so can the stream; bu

I must stand still for ever. I wish I After a while there appeared threó was dead !"

people. They were a family of In

dians-à father, a mother, and a little By and by the summer passed into child. They, too, went straight to autumn, and the autumn into winter, the tree. "We'll stay here," said the and the snow-flakes began to fall. father, looking across at the snow“Halloo !" said the first one, all in covered bed of the stream, and up at a futter, as she dropped on the Pine the Pine-tree. 'He was very poorly tree. But he shook her off, and she clothed, this Indian. He, and his foll still farther down on to the wife, and his child had on dresses of ground. The Pine-tree was getting hare-skins, and they possessed novery churlish and cross lately.

thing more of any account, except a However, the snow didn't stop for bow and arrows, and a stick with a all that, and very soon there was a net on the end. They had no lodgewhite robe over the narrow valley. poles, and not even a dog. They The Pine-tree had no one to talk were very miserable and hungry. with now: the stream had covered The man threw down his bow and himself in with ice and snow, and arrows not far from the tree. Then wasn't to be seen ; the rabbit had to he began to clear away the snow in & hop round very industriously to get circle, and to pull up the sage-bushes. enough for her children to eat; and These he and the woman built into a the sage-bushes were always low round, low hut, and then they lighted minded fellows, and couldn't begin a fire within it. While it was beto keep up a ten minutes' conversa ginning to burn the man went to the tion.

stream, and broke a hole in the ice. At last there came a solitary figure Tying a string to his arrow, he shot across the valley, making its way a fish which came up to breathe, and straight for the Pine-Tree. It was a putting it on the coals, they all ate it lame mule, which had been left be half raw. They never noticed the hind by some waggon-train. Ho Pine-tree, though he rattled down dragged himself slowly on until he at least a dozen more cones. reached the tree. Now the Pine, in | At last night came on, cold and shaking off the snow, had shaken cheerless. The wind blew savagely down some cones as well, and they through the valley, and howled at lay on the snow. These the mule the Pine-tree, for they were old enepicked up, and began to eat.

mies. 0, it was a bitter night! But "Heigh-ho!” said the tree, “I finally the morning broke. More never knew those things were fit to snow had fallen, and heaped up eat before.” .

against the hut, so that you could "Didn't you?" replied the mule. hardly tell that it was there. The "Why, I have lived on these things, stream had frozen tighter than beas you call them, ever since I left the fore, and the man could not break a Waggons. I am going back on the hole in the ice again. The sageOregon trail, and I sha'n't see you bushes were all hid by drifts, and the again. Accept my thanks for break Indians could find none to burn. fast. Good-bye." And he moved off Then they turned to the Pine-tree. to the other end of the valley, and How glad he was to help them ! disappeared among the rocks.

They gathered up the cones, and "Well !” exclaimed the Pino-tree, roasted the seeds on the fire. They that's something, at all events.” cut branches from the tree and burned And he shook down a number of them, and so kept up the warmth in cones on the snow. He was really their hut. pappier than ever he had been be- The Pine-tree began to find himself lore, and with good reason, too.

I useful, and told the rabbit so one