thine." He listens with complacency to such language, and will speak peace to your hearts in return.

After the Service.

The act with which Mary accompanied this address calls for your imitation. You are allowed not only to touch the Saviour by the hand of faith and love, but to lean on him; and this is permitted not merely for a moment, but during the whole of your pilgrim, age. "Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness leaning upon her beloved?" How safe and how happy is the soul while it leans on the Saviour!

Be ready to communicate for the benefit of others your delightful views of your ascended Lord. Mary came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things to her. Your Christian experience may give a devout tendency to the affections and pursuits of your friends, and may be of great use to those who are walking in darkness. It may revive that hope which seems to be giving up the ghost, and bring back that joy which they imagined would never return; it may encourage the dying to trust in the Saviour's mercy, and make the scoffer know assuredly that God hath made that Jesus whom they oppose Lord of all.

Let your garments be always white, and keep your. selves unspotted from the world. Think it not enough to avoid what, in the judgment of the world, would be a blemish to the character, but every thing which the voice of conscience, and the word of God, warn you to shun. Imitate the angels in their ministrations. Give to Jesus, who is the head of the body, the church, the

glory that is due, and on him let the blessings of your hearts come. And condescend to them of low degree. Angels came into the dark abode of death to minister to him; and you must not refuse to go into the mean dwelling of sick poverty, nor count yourselves degraded in joining the humble mourners who carry the poor saint to his grave. The meaner the place is where charity ministers, the more lovely does she appear in his eyes whose spirit she breathes.

How animating is this scene in the prospect of death! The presence of the angels in white in the sepulchre attests that its nature is changed. If we view it by the eye of faith, we will perceive kindness in its summons, mercy in its stroke, and a home of peace and rest in its dark abode. When you think of the body in the grave corrupting in its shroud, anticipate the time when angels shall come, and call it forth to immortality. Think not that you are too mean and obscure to hope for a resurrection, for " of all that the Father hath given him he shall lose nothing, but shall raise it up at the last day." Then angels shall descend with the trump of God in their hands, and where ever the dead are lying, they shall hear its sound, and shall come forth. And when the dead in Christ arise,

they shall be caught up to the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we be for ever with the Lord."

ADDRESS XXXIV.

1 JOHN III. 1.

"Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God."

CHRISTIANS, you are now in your Father's house, and are about to partake of the children's bread, and it becomes you to reflect with devout wonder, and with fervid gratitude, on the kindness of God to you in receiving you into his family. I trust it is your wish to contemplate this marvellous grace in the humble and affectionate spirit of the disciple whom Jesus loved.

How wonderful does this adopting love appear when you consider your state and character by nature! We had lost the image, and rebelled against the authority of the Being that formed us, connected ourselves with the family of the devil, and were the slaves of corruption, and the children of wrath. That such creatures should be rescued from destruction was great love, but that God should make them his children is grace that passeth knowledge. You see how unwilling men are to take those into their families whom they consider as beneath them in station, or unworthy of them in character; but behold God raises the outcast from the fearful pit of guilt and wretchedness to a place in his house, and makes the language of enmity, terror, and despair, to be succeeded by the cry, ba, Father."

"Ab

This love will appear wonderful, if we consider the glory of him who adopts. How vast is the distance

betwixt Jehovah and the highest creatures, betwixt the infinite and eternal God, and beings finite, derived, and dependent! He needed not our services for his glory and happiness, for he could have formed by one. effort of his power beings nobler in nature and qualities than men, and have placed them round his throne; yet did he look with pity on the sinner lying in his blood, and while he never uttered one expression of mercy to fallen angels, addressed to us this language, "I will be a Father to you." "Seemeth it," said David, 66 a small matter to be son-in-law to a king, seeing I am but a poor man, and lightly esteemed;" but the most splendid alliance which mortals can form, is not once to be compared with that which connects the children of the dust with the Lord of all,

This love will appear most wonderful, if you consider the manner in which this privilege was procured. Infinite wisdom could alone devise a method for conferring it consistently with the glory of his character, and the demands of his law for vengeance on us; and the plan it formed was this, that the Son of God should assume the likeness of sinful flesh, and the form of a servant, endure the curse which we deserved, and purchase every blessing which could render us holy or happy. Sweet, O Christian, is your Father's pity, but not one gleam of it visited your suffering Lord. Your afflictions are a Father's corrections, but the sufferings of Christ were the vindictive strokes of incensed Omnipotence. Your glorious liberty was obtained by his being bound as a criminal, and nailed to the cross; and he was a homeless wanderer that you might dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Men, in their folly and caprice, may give what is of great value for the attainment of a trivial object; but when he, who is infinitely wise and just, sent forth his Son, born of a wo

man, and made under the law, that we might receive the adoption of children, we may rest assured that this interposition was worthy of his character, and that the end accomplished by it shall be to the praise of the glory of his grace. Behold the value of this blessing in these agonizing sorrows, and in that broken heart of your gracious Saviour, and admire the generosity of his love, who, so far from regarding your adoption with jealousy, or scorning you as a dishonour to his Father's house, suffered "in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy, and unblameable, and unreproveable in his sight."

The privileges of this relation render this adopting love wonderful. Angels share with you in your name, but you have privileges which they cannot possess. Your adoption connects you with the Lord Jesus by ties more close than those by which he is connected with angels. God is yours in a fuller sense than he is theirs. You have a place in the covenant which they cannot occupy, feelings at the communion table which they connot participate, and a song of praise which they" cannot sing. It is true that they have no experience of your sorrows, but they know not the comforts of that mercy which heals the broken-hearted, nor the renovating power of repentance unto life. There is not a blessing in the great salvation which he will deny you, nor a moment of your being which is not marked by his bounty. "If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ."

How wonderful does this love appear in the manner in which adoption is bestowed. Glorious and blissful as this privilege is, ye were unwilling to receive it, and were altogether unqualified for its duties and enjoyments; but by his Spirit God conquered your aversion, effaced from you the image of Satan, and formed