glories we know not. Eye hath not seen any resemblance of them; ear hath not heard any description of them; nor have they in any wise entered the heart of man. We know not what heaven is; but we know that there is no night there, no pain, no sorrow, for God shall wipe away all tears from all faces; the wicked shall cease from troubling; the weary shall be at rest; yea, more, shall drink in pleasures for ever more at God's right hand.

THE SAINT AND THE SINNER.

If Christ should say to the wicked as to the righteous, on the last day, "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink," &c., they would not ask, "when saw we thee hungry?" &c. They would think themselves deserving of the commendation; for they always contended that they had good hearts and loved Christ. Just so it is now. His enemies most confidently and strenuously assert that they do love him, while his friends are very suspicious of themselves, often doubt whether they do love him, and are always slow to declare it, and when they do, it is always with regret that they love him so little.

Christians wonder why they should be saved. Sinners wonder why they should not be saved. The sinner asks, "What have I done?" The Christian, “What

have I not done?" The sinner says he does the best he can. The Christian knows he does not. Who was it that said, "Behold, I am vile?". Was it Saul, Judas, or Jeroboam? No. It was Job, a perfect and an upright man, one that feared God and eschewed evil."

The habits of the evangelically righteous man are holy; his sins are but occasional acts, contrary to his fixed habits; whereas, with the unregenerate, it is just the reverse. He may do good actions, but his habits are sinful. The Christian acts out of character when he sins; but when the other sins, he acts in character. With the former, sin is a digression; with the latter, it is the main stay. The one walks in the ways of obedience, though he is guilty of occasional aberrations; the other walks in the ways of disobedience habitually. Devotion is with the Christian a habit, though he be sometimes indevout; so is trust in God, though he sometimes distrust him; so is the strictest sobriety and the severest rectitude, though he may occasionally be betrayed into acts that are opposed to these virtues.

It must be acknowledged, that if the sinners are not out of their senses, the saints are. There is madness somewhere. If Festus was not beside himself, Paul certainly was. The one party or the other is dreaming. Who is it? Who is it?

Paul or Festus ?

REFLECTION.

I suppose one important distinction of the present world from the future, to consist in the power we have now of hiding from the truth-of selecting certain subjects of meditation, and excluding others—in short, in flying from thought. Hereafter it will not be so. Then thought will overtake the fugitive from it. An eternity of reflection is coming after this life of action. God, when man, thy creature, shall be laid under the arrest of his own thoughts, when thou, by the simplest action on his memory, shalt set all his sins in order before him, even as they are now in the light of thy countenance! * * * * I purposely leave the sentence incomplete.

Oh,

SENSE OF GUILT.

The sense of criminality, of which all men have. experience, the feeling of being in fault, of being to blame, is unlike every other feeling. Of all feelings, it is the most painful, it is the least supportable. Philosophy may assist the soul to bear up under other pains; but she affords no support to those who suffer

under this. And Christianity can afford no relief to the sense of guilt, but by that wonderful expedient through which she removes it. How different this feeling from the sense of loss, the sense of disappointment, the feeling of bereavement. These are painful. It is painful to be bereaved of good, to pass from prosperity to adversity, to experience in any respect, a reverse of fortune; but how inexpressibly more painful it is when one has to reflect that himself is the culpable cause of the change. How it adds to the weight of misfortune and calamity, when one is obliged to acknowledge that he has criminally brought it on himself. There is scarcely any thing that a man cannot have, if he may but reflect that it is not of his own procuring. But all support is withdrawn, when, of any evil he is enduring, it may be asked, "hast thou not procured this unto thyself?" and he is unable to deny it. The bitterest ingredient in the cup of perdition, will be the consciousness of its victim that he himself has mingled that cup. The thought of heaven would not be so painful to the hopeless inhabitant of hell, were it not for the accompanying reflection, "I too might have been there-that heaven was open to me, and I might have entered it-nothing kept me out of it but my own will-this wicked heart." There will be that feeling in every lost soul: "I am here, because I would be here; I am suffering the consequences of my own free choice; I am eating the fruit of my own voluntary doings."

THE IMPENITENT MISERABLE OF

NECESSITY.

It is no disparagement of God's omnipotence that he cannot make a sinner forever happy for two reasons. First, he cannot do what he cannot will to do, what his moral perfections forbid to will to do. He cannot make the depraved heart happy, while it continues depraved, for the same reason that he cannot lie. There is another reason why he cannot do it, because it is repugnant to the nature of things. He cannot make a sinful heart happy, for the same reason that he cannot make matter think, while it remains matter; for the same reason he cannot make his own nature mortal.

At the judgment, every sinner will be speechless, and confounded, and not from intimidation, but from conviction. That silence and confusion will not be produced by any array of terror, by any display of mere power, but by the clear exhibition of truth. Nor will the truth exhibited, be any thing new and before undiscoverable, but the very truth that now lies neglected on the pages of the sacred volume. But then it will be more distinctly displayed, and the attention of every mind will be fixed upon it, and it will make the impression of itself, which now, for the most part, it does not, though it be cursorily contemplated sometimes. The truth remaining the same, and the sinner the same, his misery will eternally be necessary. "Hell is the truth

seen too late."