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of the vastest epochs of time can neither lessen His power nor exhaust His resources, for He inhabiteth eternity. All material things that He has made will fulfil their purpose and pass away. The race of man will finish its earthly course. The clouds and sky will become the winding-sheet of a dead world; the stars will fade and fall as the figtree casts her untimely fruit. The sun will burn itself into blackened ashes, but the infinite Christ will sit supreme above all created things, untouched by the mightiest forces of dissolution, guided by the power of an indestructible life. As the apostle declares concerning Him in this very epistle: "Thou, Lord, in the beginning, hast laid the foundations of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: they shall perish; but thou remainest, and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail." II. We may now see how perfectly adequate this power is to effect man's eternal redemption.

We are standing on the threshold of eternity. Our life on earth has great interests; we have now great capacities for suffering, or for joy; but that which gives solemnity and dignity to the present life is the relation it sustains to the unending life beyond. In a sense more profoundly true than the great philosopher meant we are like children playing on the seashore, while before us there reaches out the unmeasurable and unfathomable ocean of eternity. But there has come into our lives an awful discord. A mystery terribly dark in its present aspect, and infinitely darker in its prophecy of future evil--the mystery of iniquitybroods over the soul. We have sinned. Memory tells one of sin, and conscience tells one of sin. Sin is the most perplexing and the most obvious fact of human life. "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' Sin has brought death, and death is a terror, a grim foe, whom no man can bribe or resist. Death is mighty and relentless. Famine and pestilence are his servants. He kindles the fury of battle and riots in the field of slaughter. He wings the forked lightning and expands the jaws of the devouring earthquake. The air we breathe, the elements by which we are sustained, and the food on which we subsist may become his instruments. And always,

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even when tired nature is worn out, death is a terror-must be a terror. We put it out of our thoughts, for if we think of it apart from the hope of the gospel we number ourselves among those who, through fear of death, are all their lifetime subject to bondage. And to man naturally death is a terror, because he thinks of what may be beyond it with dread foreboding. In the words of our great dramatist,

"To die-to sleep;

To sleep-perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come."

No; no dreams. Life is a dream, and death will be the awakening, and conscience whispers what an awakening! Man's natural immer

But

tality, his highest distinction has been transformed by sin into his direst curse. It has put an eternal separation between his soul and God. It has quenched his hope and made eternity an appalling terror. Christ has come, the great High Priest of humanity has made atonement for sin; He has bridged the gulf between the conscience-stricken sinner and the righteous God. Through His divine redemption sin may be forgiven, and then death becomes disarmed, and eternity an immortal joy. The gospel of Christ is the source of man's highest well-being on earth, but its full significance can only be seen when we consider the tremendous issues of man's eternal destiny. Christ has abolished death: He has transformed it into a blessed sleep, from which redeemed men will awake into the light and fulness of eternal day. He who was girded with the power of an indestructible life, entered into the prisonhouse of the grave that He might break its bonds asunder; that through death He might destroy the power of death, that is the devil. Death stung itself to death when it stung Christ upon the cross, and from that moment man's dread enemy became the harbinger of immortal life. When the storms and temptations of this life are ended, when the believer shall have finished his earthly course with all hindrances and disquietudes, our divine Priest, having proved Himself able to keep us from falling, will present us "faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy."

What the redeemed spirit may need, or what may be the fulness of that power and blessedness into which it may grow in the eternal world, we cannot tell. "We know not what we shall be." But this we know, the great High Priest will be the unfailing fountain out of which all the sources of that eternal fulness will come. We shall be evermore guarded by the might, and sustained by the grace, which have their root in the power of an indestructible life. And we know this further that He will make us the sharers in the blessedness of His own immortality; for He has declared, "Because I live they shall live also," and "we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is."

Such, brethren, is the dignity of that divine Redeemer who is evermore making His great appeal to the conscience and the heart of humanity. His infinite grace measures our sin; His divine might condescends to our utmost need; His perfect redemption covers the whole breadth of our transgressions; and the gift He offers meets and transcends, in the divine fulness of its provisions, all our highest imaginings. In Him there is strength for our weakness, and comfort for our distress, and pardon for our transgressions, and eternal life for those who are dead in trespasses and in sins. In our acceptance of His great salvation there is involved our truest wellbeing in time, and in the world to come eternal joy. In our rejection of His salvation there is of necessity included the loss of the divinest blessings which even infinite love can impart, and utter banishment into the outer darkness where no ray of light or love can ever penetrate. The most solemn and momentous facts in the unfolding of God's infinite provi

dence the incarnation, the sacrificial death, and the triumphant resurrection of the divine Son of God attest the reality of this tremendous alternative, and add an overwhelming importance to the great challenge, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" Birkenhead.

WHAT CLOSED OUR CHURCH.

So it was talked over on all sides, and different conclusions reached. These are the facts about us. Upwards of thirty years ago, in the delightful seaboard town of G"beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole" county, the Home Mission assisted some twenty pious people to erect a small church and support a minister. The Lord favoured them, and they went on. They increased and multiplied until people who at first could not approve of their enterprise could not speak ill of it. Finally there came reverses-a change of pastor, a partial scattering of the congregation, a great decrease in the pew-rents. The few, who could not pay as large a salary as formerly, were obliged to be content with a less attractive preacher. He was a better man than the former, but did not have so many hearers. Why is it that oftentimes the poorest preachers are the best men, and the best preachers are somewhat below them morally? Does goodness lack enterprise? Or must virtue necessarily be inactive?

SEVERAL theories have been advanced by those who are at all inclined towards speculation. Others, who have less to say, perhaps think more, and go steadily on with their secular employment as though interposition demanded too great an effort. Those outside of our church, and inside of the most popular and influential ones in town, are generally inclined to take a charitable view of the cause of our decline. They say we struggled hard and were very devoted to our churchwork, and were, considering our meagre worldly status, generous. But fortune, they say, is against us. Some deal with facts, and say, "They began thirty years ago, and to-day they are not one whit stronger than they were then. Sometimes it seemed as though they were making great advancement, but in a few years the tide would flow out and leave them almost stranded. Once they lost a good minister and got a poor one, and all they had gained seemed to slip away to our churches. And so ever since they started their first prayer-meeting down in Deacon Well, we have had very good and L's back-parlour, thirty years also very indifferent preaching; a ago, they have only acted as mis- fluctuating congregation, and sionaries for our larger churches. Sabbath school that ranged from They are a devoted people, and half a dozen to nearly a hundred. pay more liberally, according to Twice for a series of years the house their numbers and means, than our has been closed. Then again relarger churches, and show in their vivals and ingatherings gladdened daily walk and conversation better and encouraged us. Recently we evidences of genuine conversion. have experienced another of those Yet they seem designed, under declines, until the congregation has Providence, to be 'hewers of wood dispersed and the house been locked and drawers of water' for the larger-perhaps for ever.

churches."

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As I was absent from home at

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the time, I did not know the par- I made inquiry, and found it had ticulars; but I thought I had the been many years since the godly solution to what closed our church farmer let the fires upon his family the other day when Deacon K- altar go out. His children were told me the last pastor "was not members of the church, but such just what he should be;" that members as he. Thus in a neighwhile he remained the congre- bourhood where there were Chrisgation gradually drifted away. But tian people enough to sustain a "sober second thought" reminds weekly prayer-meeting (and there me that no pastor is "just what was need enough for it if souls are he should be," and it was not precious) there was not from one Mr. -'s fault that two of his most week's end to another a prayer wealthy members died, and that offered, either for their struggling when he buried them he buried pastor, or failing church, or the those who had been the Aaron and perishing souls sbout them. And the_Hur of his prayer-meetings. so the interest fell, and the church As I spent a few days with a well- was closed, and "Ichabod" is writto-do farmer, who is a member of ten in cobwebs on the windowour church, and the head of a large panes, in moss upon the door-sills, family grown up and settled about in mould upon the pulpit Bible him, and yet who lives four miles covers, in dust upon the organ-case from the church (an excuse for in the once jubilant singers' loft, and never attending prayer-meeting) I in silence in the belfry tower. was deeply pained to hear so much Would it not be well to call said detrimental to the character of every person when he is baptised the last servant of God who la-"Aaron 66 or Hur," and give him boured among us in all good con- a card beautifully engraved and science, and not to hear a word of framed fit for the walls of his dwellScripture read or a prayer offered ing containing the seventeenth during my stay. I could not but chapter of Exodus, and instructions wonder why Aaron and Hur went that he is to go three times a day up with Moses and sustained his into his chamber and pray for the aching hands during the fight at prosperity of the Redeemer's kingRephidam-if it was really neces- dom; if he have a family, that he sary-if he could not have succeeded is to maintain the family altar; just as well with them down in the that he is always to speak well of camp deriding him. However it those who are over him in the Lord; may seem, the Scriptures imply to encourage them by word and that their standing faithfully by presence, and to invite all strangers Moses was necessary for Joshua's he may meet to their preaching success. Either God could not or God would not give them victory otherwise; for we see that when they wearied of their watch, and let their hands fall, Amalek prevailed over Joshua.

د,

and prayer services? Such a course on the part of every professed Christian would open every closed church, and fill its pews with eager followers of the Lord. What part shall the reader perform?

VISIONS AND VOICES FROM THE HOUSE OF

PILGRIMAGE.

BY THE REV. R. H. ROBERTS, B.A.

V. THE ARK OF GOD TAKEN.

"And the ark of God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain."-1 Sam. iv. 11.

THERE are very few darker chapters than this to be met with in the whole Bible. Calamities are heaped up in quick succession. The nation suffers a double and most crushing defeat upon the field of battle; the head of the Government, both in the Church and in the State, is removed by a sudden and violent death. Already his two sons have been slain in the conflict, and now the wife of one of them dies in childbirth, wailing out the ominous name " Ichabod" with her departing breath. But the climax of the catastrophe is that which is related in our text: "The ark of God was taken." This it was that broke poor Eli's heart. He heard the messenger tell his sad news without giving way up to this point. The man said, "Israel is filed before the Philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the people,' and thy two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead." And if he had stopped there, I fancy the good old saint would have bowed his white locks and answered as he did to Samuel, even whilst his voice faltered into sobs, "It is the Lord: let him do what seemeth him good." But when the excited fugitive goes on to add, "And the ark of God is taken," he is stunned by the blow, and falling heavily backwards, he becomes immediately a corpse. And the message which kills him is re-echoed in the cry of the dying woman, to whom the capture of the ark is the loss of the divine glory—a loss which she will not survive. Under any circumstances we could not fail to be touched by the tender pathos of such a scene as is here delineated. But our interest must be very much intensified when we remember that these men and women are our spiritual ancestors, that under difficult circumstances, consciously or unconsciously, they are working out the same problem and identified with the same cause as those which still test the faith and call for the consecration of the people of God. We may be either repeating their failures under conditions which render the failure far more guilty, or learning from their mistakes and calamities the lessons which God's Spirit dictates. We shall find nothing in the words that is particularly new or extraordinary; but I do hope that that which is old may, in connection with the circumstances which surround it, come home with fresh interest and practical power to our hearts. I wish to speak upon three points.

I. The text exhibits the terrible consequences to which ungodliness in the Church and the weak or sympathetic toleration of it will

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