to "season." "How will you manage or contrive to restore its sapidity or saltness?" It is implied that such a process is impossible,-i.e., to man himself, or any other finite power. The salt of moral goodness is a fine thing where it is possessed; but when it is corrupted it is worse than useless; and the man who has thus lost it has but one alternative— he must either be salted with the fire of divine wrath and his own eternal torments, or with the renewed salt of divine grace and his own regeneration. Immortality without the hope of blessedness, which gives it all its value, can be only an eternity of wretchedness. Here, then, the bright or cheering side of the whole subject is presented, not by violent transition, but by natural association, introducing easily the following exhortation: "Have salt in yourselves;" i.e., take heed that the principle of conservation, which is to secure your endless being, is not that of wrath, and justice, and punishment from without, but that of grace and goodness in yourselves. It is not the method of salvation that is here presented, but the bare fact, that, in order to secure it, men must have principle of life within them; and the Scriptures abundantly teach elsewhere, that this principle can only be implanted by divine grace, through the operation of the Holy Spirit. By a perfectly natural but masterly recoil, he then reverts, in conclusion, to the circumstances which led to this remarkable discourse-their strife for the pre-eminence-and exhorts them to demonstrate their possession of this spiritual salt, which is to save them from the salt of everlasting fire, by cherishing that peace among themselves (literally, in one another) which is elsewhere, so expressly represented as among the invariable "fruits of the Spirit" Gal. v. 22; Eph. v. 9)—Dr. J. A. Alexander.

LOVE AND JEALOUSY.

Does love become more intense from being exclusive? or, in other words, do those who only love few love those few with more intensity than those whose affections flow to numbers? Is this an attribute which loses by exercising? Surely not. Is it not of divine origin? Does not God love all His creatures? and is He not Love? But is it wrong to desire to be loved best of all? In one sense, it is; in another, perhaps not. We must bear in mind the love due to relationship. God is good in being a "Jealous God;" He has a right to our supreme affection : Christ has a right to the love of the church He has bought with His own blood. So in the various relationships of life; the husband and wife have a claim upon each other's best affections, but must the new-made wife take her love from her parents, brothers, and sisters to give to her husband? must the love lavished upon each new-born babe be taken from others? We think not, but believe much pain might be spared sensitive minds by dwelling more upon the expansive, elastic nature of love; it is even as the Giver thereof, sufficient for all our demands. We must guard against a selfish, narrow-minded view of this subject, or we shall create for ourselves many trials. But we own many are truly and undeservedly wounded in this respect, and "a wounded spirit who can bear?" Oh! let not such try to bear in their own strength: we have a sympathising high priest, one who knows our sorrows; let us go unto

Him; we are not suffering as He has done; He knew their hard thoughts, and He still knows our thoughts. Are we loving Him as we ought? We need not fear our love being returned, for He first loved us. 'Let us cultivate a loving spirit to all our fellow creatures, and be less exacting in demanding or expecting a return, but let us beware of the nature of our love; that only can be pure that is founded upon love to Christ; if the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, surely our chosen friends will be those who also love Him. It is probable that our Lord's disciples suffered from an improper spirit of jealousy towards the disciple whom our Lord loved. Oh! that we may be more fitted for that state where this self-created sorrow shall no more torment us, where we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

Selections.

HEAVEN, THE HOME OF THE SAINTS.-Oh! how sweet that word! What beautiful and tender associations cluster thick around it! Compared with it, house, mansion, palace, are cold heartless terms. But home! that word quickens the pulse, warms the heart, stirs the soul to its depths, makes age feel young again, rouses apathy into energy, sustains the sailor on his midnight watch, inspires the soldier with courage on the field of battle, and imparts patient endurance to the worn sons of toil! The thought of it has proved a sevenfold shield to virtue; the very name of it has been a spell to call back the wanderer from the paths of vice; and, far away, where myrtles bloom and palm-trees wave, and the ocean sleeps on coral strands, to the exile's fond fancy it clothes the naked rock, or stormy shore, or barren moor, or wild Highland mountain, with charms he weeps to think of, and longs once more to see. Grace sanctifies these lovely affections, and imparts a sacredness to the homes of earth by making them types of heaven. As a home the believer delights to think of it. Thus when lately bending over a dying saint, and expressing our sorrow to see him laid so low, with the radiant countenance of one who had just left heaven, than of one about to enter it, he raised and clasped his hands, and exclaimed in ecstacy, I am going home! Happy the family of which God is the Father, Jesus the elder brother, and all the saints in light' are brethren-brethren born of one Spirit; nursed at the full breast of the same promises; trained in the same high school of heavenly discipline; seated at the same table, and gathered all where the innocent loves of earth are not quenched but purified; not destroyed but refined.—Guthrie. SIN PERPETUAtes Itself.—A man should either conyince himself that there is no such thing as a "law of sin" reigning in his moral constitution,— that the elements of his natural character are all pure and good, so that he may safely, as the philosophical Transcendentalists say, "fall back on nature," act freely out what there is within him, and brave the consequences fearlessly;-or else, he should confess that there really is a "law of sin" working in his soul as a fatal malady; and, while he deplores its power, should accept the only remedy that has been provided-the grace of Christ revealed to us by the gospel. Unless you ignore the very idea of sin, you must come to this conclusion: for all who discern the reality of

sin, acknowledge that it has in itself a progressive and self-perpetuating power; that where it has its way in any rational being, it must gain the supremacy; and that wheresoever it lives in any human heart, it reigneth unto death" changing all down its course each thing to one with its immortal nature." But, alas! we cannot so easily ignore the idea of sin, unless it be in some momentary fit of moral inebriation; for though the benumbing spell seem of long continuance, in due time it must be broken. You cannot entirely deaden your sensibilities to a perception of this fatal reality. The hour must come when the soul shall know and feel that its cherished tastes and passions, habits and aims, jar against the constitution of the moral universe; and then, wheresoever it may be, that whole universe will become to it a very HELL. All its memories and all its anticipations must then be elements of torture, preying upon its expanding capacities as consuming and eternal fires. For we need no Bible to teach

us the solemn truth which one of the world's "own poets" has thus recorded:

"The mind that broods o'er guilty woes

Is like to scorpion girt by fire;
The circle narrowing as it glows,
Till inly searched by thousand throws,
And maddening in its ire,
One and sole relief it knows:
The sting it nurtured for its foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang and cures all pain,
He darts into his desperate brain.
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like scorpion girt by fire.

So writhes the mind remorse has riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed to heaven-
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death."

When Lord Byron thus pictured forth, in flaming words, the interior state of the finally impenitent, did not exalted genius then pay a tribute, though unconsciously, to the worth of the gospel, and sound forth a call unto all men to give ear to the voice of mercy, which, through the lips of Christ, speaks unto us from heaven? Let not the warning be in vain; for every one of us must know the joy of true repentance, or be the victim of remorse for ever.-W. Hague.

HE that says, he will take care he be no worse, and that he desires to be no better, stops his journey into heaven, but cannot be secure against his descending into hell.

MAN must never cure a sin by a sin: but He that brings good out of our evil, He can when He please.

FOR a spiritual relation to challenge a temporal dignity, is as if the best music should challenge the best clothes, or a lute-string should contend with a rose for the honor of the greatest sweetness.

ZEAL sometimes carries a man into temptation; and he that never thinks he loves God dutifully and acceptably, because he is not imprisoned for him, or undone, or designed to martyrdom, may desire a trial that will undo him. It is like fighting of a duel to show our valour. Stay till the Kingcommands you to fight and die, and then let zeal do its noblest offices.-Jeremy Taylor.

EVENING IN RYDAL VALE.

BY JOSEPH TRUMAN.

"The blessing

Of these desiring eyes.'

T. LOVELL BEDDOES.

I ROAMED where I had roamed before,
In idle, and in musing hour,

In the green glens, by Rotha side,

Where Arnold lived, and Wordsworth died.

And lo! one early bold bright star
Shone o'er the shoulder of Nab Scar,
And Fairfield raised his forehead high
Into the sky's obscurity.

The tapers twinkled through the trees
From Rydal's bower-bound cottages,
And very soft the river's flow,

Like Love's own whisper sweet and low.
One held my arm will walk no more
On Loughrigg steeps, by Rydal shore,
And a sweet voice was speaking clear,
(Earth had no other sound so dear).
No learned guile was in the tone,
The holy heart was heard alone,
And gracious-good it was to be
Made wise through her simplicity.
Soft spake she, as we passed along,
Of noble sons of Truth and Song;
Of Arnold brave, and Wordsworth pure,
And how their influences endure.

They have not left us-are not dead;"
(Those earnest sister-accents said)
"For Teacher high and Poet sage
Are widely working in the Age.

"For aught we know they now may brood
O'er this enchanted solitude,

With thought and feeling more intense
Than we in the blind life of sense.

"On us and others (who shall tell?)
May be is breathing here a spell,
From Arnold's kingly spirit free,
And Wordsworth's own serenity."
Gently we stepped o'er turf and stone,
The clear voice-current rippling on,
I answering little, loth to stay
That stream of silver on its way.

CLAUDE CLIFTON'S STORY OF HIS LIFE.

CHAPTER VII.

AFLOAT.

"There is a tide in the affairs of man,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries."

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SHAKESPEARE.

I must now ask my reader, whosoever it occupied in preparations for the arrival of be, into whose hands this manuscript has the coach; but the youthful pair are not fallen, to pass over a period of five years unnoticed. Janet keeps popping her head and go back to the "Shepherd and over the window-blind every few minutes Shepherdess." It is morning, a cold gusty to have a look at them, and when the morning in March. The sun has but ostler catches Janet's eye, the smile from recently risen, but he looks all the better near the horse-trough that answers the for his brief absence; dark angry clouds smile from over the window blind says, are chasing each other with furious haste "We know all about that sort of thing, across the hard blue sky; and the dust don't we? Doves must coo." Meanwhile rolls and drifts along the turnpike like the the coach rattles up, and off jump the sand of the desert in a storm. There passengers glad enough to stretch themis something of stir and expectation selves awhile, and having a keen appetite at the "Shepherd and Shepherdess." for breakfast, for they have been traJanet is spreading a sumptuous break-velling all night. One of these passengers fast upon the snow-white table cloth that covers the old oak table in the large room. The ostler is bringing out four brisk fresh horses, and getting things in readiness for the arrival of the mail from London. He has just heard the horn of the guard, a blast of wind brought the shrill sound to him and seemed to box his ears with it, and he is quickening his steps, blowing all the time through his teeth like a very son of Eolus. In the square open space in front of the inn, somewhat sheltered from the wind, a young lady and gentleman are pacing to and fro apparently engaged in earnest conversation. The lady is without doubt very youthful, but her appearance is womanly, and she is very fair withal. Her pretty little travelling-hat does not bury her face out of sight, and her lovely features do not lose any of their beauty by being hidden far down in the depth of an absurd piece of costume. The wind toys freely with her light auburn ringlets, and the bright radiance of the morning shines forth from her soft blue eyes. She walks with queenly grace by the side of her companion, and leans with an easy bashfulness upon his arm. He appears violently enamoured of her. Apart from his dandyism he is by no means an unintelligent and disagreeable looking young gentleman, but the tailor has certainly done his best to set him off to advantage, and with the usual equiVocal success. Everybody at the inn is

as soon as he alights attracts the attention of the young lady of whom we have been speaking, and they simultaneously advance to meet each other, look surprised, shake each other by the hand warmly, the young lady as might be expected blushing slightly with the sudden excitement, and the passenger, as was natural under the circumstances to a young man of about twenty-one, being rather tremulous and confused. I need scarcely say that the young lady was Helen Graceford, and that the passenger was the writer of this story. I was on my way to Guysmore after an absence of five years, about to go, as I expected, to the East Indies on a matter of business for my new master; and she was returning to Laurelton Villa after a visit of a few weeks at Mr. Westbourne's, the country Justice before whom I had once appeared. The young gentleman who had escorted Miss Helen to the coach was Laurence Westbourne, a son of the Justice, and on my being introduced to him he bowed with an air of proud superciliousness and then retired a short distance from us, impatiently waiting until the many enquiries which were exchanged between his fair charge and myself had come to an end, and vainly trying to divert himself by rattling at the top of his silver-headed cane the gold ring that glittered upon his finger. When I went into the inn he cast after me, as I thought a haughty sneering glance, and with com