turning from week-day studies and cares to the oracles of God; rest for the affections, in all the dutiful love wherewith we should serve God, and the warm affection wherewith we may cheer and gladden our brother; rest from worldly ambitions, in Gospel hopes; from worldly sorrow, in holy joy; from wayward wilfulness, in the peace of God, which alone can bring us into the Sabbatism of the believer; rest in the worship of God.

Let every Christian man strive to attain this rest, and to help those about and under him to the enjoyment of it; and then, though we may hear, sometimes, of glum Calvinism, and Scotch austerity, we shall be well able to bear it; for the day on the Mount will make the face shine all the other days of the week.

Thanks be to God for the Sabbath; precious to the believer, to him a delight and honourable; but proved, even to the unbeliever, to be necessary for man's welfare, for health of body, for family union, for worldly prosperity, for social well-being. Truly the Sabbath was made, not for the Jew only, but for man; as even an infidel socialist, Proudhon, has seen and shown. While man is man, the morality of the Fourth Commandment will assert itself; for (not merely the seventh portion of our time, or of a year, or of a month, but) the seventh day of the week must be employed by us in holy rest, under pain of disease of body and mind, dulness of conscience, deadness of affection, perversity of will; of disunion in families, confusion in cities, and demoralization of nations. Thanks be to God for the Sabbath.

Two objections to the moral obligation of the Fourth Commandment strike us as demanding consideration: one from Geology, the other from Chronology.

The Geological objection is, that God's six days were immense periods. We ask, in reply, whether God's seventh day was a short period? Why, it is enduring still! see the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. iv.). It continues until the creation of new heavens and a new earth, wherein shall dwell righteousness.

The Chronological objection is, that the Fourth Commandment specifies the seventh day. We ask, in reply, what spot on the earth's surface are we to select, as that whose seventh day shall be seventh day for all the world? Six o'clock on Friday night here, is six o'clock on Saturday morning in Australia, as Dr. Owen observed long ago. Are we to be bound to keep that portion of time which answers to the seventh day in the longitude of Sinai ? Nonsense; man is bound to keep holy one whole day in every seven as the Sabbath of the Lord. That is all. We need not mention the additional difficulties that would be met in attempting to arrange the calendar; it is not so very long ago since riotous mobs were shouting, "Give us back our eleven days again;" and, in Russia, they reckon still both by old style and by new. The whole objection is ridiculous, from every point

of view.

A PRESBYTERIAN CONGREGATION AND ITS WORK.

For what object is a Christian congregation constituted ? What end does it serve? What purpose does it fulfil? Why might not each Christian, as his religious life is a matter so personal-having so much of what most intimately concerns it hidden from the view of his most cherished friend, and common to God and his own heart alone-why might not each Christian transact all the duties of that life exclusively with God, worshipping him

exclusively in the sanctuary of his own soul? Why are Christians brought together and connected in a visible congregational organization?

One reason is, that the natural constitution of this world in which we live involves relationship and mutual influence amongst men. Under it no man liveth or can live to himself. He is dependent on others, and others are dependent on him; and this connection, indeed, widely ramifies through his own age, and descends to ages after his. The instincts of man, his many wants, his business, his obvious well-being, his nature and circumstances, in short, impel him into close association with his fellows. So is the earth planted in families-so are men everywhere found in communities, more or less fully organized, sharing in them a common family, social, or national life. And the same God, who is over all, has set the religious life of his people to be exercised under similar conditions of interdependence. Hence, as Christians, they too are found in the place of their sojourn in communitiesliving together as members of the household of faith. And, in passing, we might remark of organization and its advantages, that, as that system is the best and highest politically, so also is that the best and highest ecclesiastically, which secures at once effective government and individual freedom. Another reason for a congregational organization is, that it is Scriptural. Christians are to unite in the Lord. They are enjoined not to forsake the assembling of themselves together, and those so assembling are to be organized. They are to choose from among themselves rulers to be ordained over them, whose authority they are to respect. Laws, too, are laid down in Scripture for the admission, the union, the exclusion of individuals; laws also for the entire guidance, both of those that bear rule, and of the private members. Not only so, but as is evident from the record of the Council of Jerusalem, the decisions of the collective rulers of the Church, or their representatives duly convened in Synod, are to be observed by all its congregations.

For these reasons, then, as well as others that might be mentioned, Christians are to be formed into congregations, and congregations are to be united in one collective Church. But for what ends?

The members of a congregation constitute a Christian agency-a company of workers. A congregation is a company of fellow-labourers, having itself primarily for its field of labour. It is to cultivate itself as a garden of the Lord-to sow to the spirit, and to cherish with care and solicitude the fruits of the Spirit-love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance and sedulously to weed out all evil,-debates, envyings, strifes, back bitings, whisperings, and the like roots of bitterness.

The congregation is one body, but it is a body with many members, and each member has not the same office. In it each member, however humble, has a place and a specific function. Each has an office to fulfil to all, and all to each the edifying of the body in every part in love. A congregation is not a minister and people, but a people, all of whom are ministers one to another, each one contributing to the rest his peculiar service, and receiving a service from the others. Thus the body maketh increase in all its partsgrows up into Him in all things who is the head, even Christ; and he who faithfully performs his part receives the richer recompense from the others whom he thus has strengthened; while he who contributes nothing to the general good loses that which, had he been faithful, the others might have been enabled to render to himself. The rich and the poor, the brother of low degree and he who is more exalted, the strong and the weak, the sick and the healthy, the sons of sorrow and the sons of consolation, the man of thought or of prayer and the man of action,—all these are recipro

cally related the one to the other, and form but specimens of the ministries that devolve on the several members.

The members are to have a care of each other. They are to feel that they are their brother's keeper. They are to protect each other from surrounding evil. They are to provoke one another to love and to good works. They are to shed on each other the influence of a pure example, to comfort one another by their mutual faith.

And of those who occupy positions of special interest or danger in its midst, the congregation should take special care. Around the young in particular it should ever throw its shield. For their benefit it should put forth special efforts. In them it should feel itself charged with a very tender and responsible trust. For their godly upbringing, while it devolves primarily, does not devolve exclusively on their parents. Both they and their parents have a right to the solicitude and direct attention of the congregation, seeing that in the administration of baptism the congregation recognised the membership of the children receiving it, and so proved to them and to their parents not only its sympathy, but also its fostering care. How the congregation should manifest these whether by a periodic service, specially adapted to them-whether by addresses by the minister, in its name or in his own, at stated times, or in the ordinary course of ministry-whether by a Sabbath-school, specially recognised, and visited, and befriended as its own-whether by the use of means to make them acquainted with its general schemes, and to encourage and enlist their help in suitable ways in supporting them we say, how the congregation should manifest its sympathy and care, whether by any of the methods indicated or otherwise, the congregation itself must determine according to its judgment; but it is evident that, if no such measures be followed, there will be danger that the young will grow up unattached and uninterested, strangers to any real community of feeling with the congregation-of it, but consciously sustaining no part in it-without, rather than within its pale.

If the congregation be situated in a large town, the case of young men will no doubt also receive its special attention. Many young men who may be connected with such a congregation will, we imagine, be found in lodgings, and all, at any rate, will certainly be exposed to the peculiar perils incident to their years and situation. The congregation should cultivate kindly relations with such. In it they should find a warm and affectionate friend and counsellor, a safe retreat, a holy and attractive home. In the congregation with which the writer is connected, a Congregational Young Men's Society has been maintained for five-and-twenty years. It has met weekly through all that period, discussing all kinds of useful subjects, and has always, but never more so than at present, enjoyed the most cordial and kindly consideration of the congregation. Much as it has received from the congregation, it has conferred on the congregation still more. If the congregation has nourished and cherished the Society, the Society in turn has blessed the congregation. From its ranks have been taken nearly all of the existing office-bearers of the congregation; and while its members still carry on its own proper business as a Society, most of them are also to be found at the same time serving amongst the foremost workers in the congregation's various enterprises. A conspicuous instance it is of a healthy relationship between a congregation and one of its agencies the blessings received are returned many fold back into the congregation's own bosom.*

*It may be added, that in the same congregation a friend has, for many years past, set apart Wednesday evening of each week for the reception of its young men. The

Nor should the case of those be ever out of sight who are merely adherents of the congregation-recognised as within its pale at their baptism, it may be, yet who have not by any act of their own confirmed and accepted the obligations then specially assumed for them by their parents. Standing as it were in an outer court of the sanctuary, they are between the congregation and the outside world. They follow the people of God, but yet are not numbered amongst them; they cannot, it may be, go away, but they have not come in. Near the kingdom and on its very threshold, yet not within as its professed subjects,-halting between two opinions, but, as judged by their situation, with decision inclining to the right course, their case cannot fail to awaken a congregation's deepest interest and anxiety, and to incite to the appropriate means of meeting it.

These and such like works will occupy a congregation within its own enclosure. But it has also a work to do in the outer field, which is the world. Whilst conserving those that are within it, it is at the same time to be reaching forth blessings to those that are beyond it. Whilst building itself up, it is not to forget the waste places that lie around it and beyond it. If it is salt, it is to apply itself to that which has need of salting; if it is a light, it is to be held forth to them that sit in darkness; if it possesses a heavenly cure, it is go forth with the saving health to those that are ready to perish. And surely the care of such that lie around it, in its own near neighbourhood, must first engage its anxious consideration; for “if a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" And accordingly it will have some near-lying and destitute district towards which its special sympathies will be flowing out, and on which it will be bestowing its special effort. Thus contributing to benefit its vicinity, thus a local influence for good, a diffuser of moral health, and a promoter of that righteousness which exalteth a community, and a remover of sin which disgraces any people, it will be greatly valued and respected in the place where its lot is cast; and congregations of other bodies at work in adjoining parts of the same common field, recognising in it a fellow-labourer, will hail it with the salutation, "The Lord be with you,"-each receiving in return its own fraternal benediction, "The Lord bless thee."

But a still wider prospect always lies before the view of a Presbyterian congregation. If such a congregation is composed of many members, itself forms part of a still larger whole. It is not an isolated unit; it dwells not alone, self-contained, self-engrossed; it lives in close and conscious relationship with all the other congregations of its communion; it feels itself to belong to a commonwealth,-to be one of an intimate brotherhood,-living with many under a common administration in which it bears its equal part, -determining, with the rest in council, the general procedure,-managing the general affairs, considering the cases brought up for settlement, tenderly applying the common laws in the spirit of the maxim, "Do to others as ye would that others should do to you." It has a care of the other congregations, as they have of it. Thus habitually regarding not its own narrow interests alone, looking thus not to its own things alone, but also to the things of others, its views are expanded, its heart is enlarged, it grows in generosity of sentiment and in kindly feeling. Nor while the scattered members of the Church at large are thus living in sensible communion with each other, is it without great advantage, both to the Church itself and to its individual congregations, that in her press and in her courts the matters of individual and common concernment are brought before the general mind, and are simularrangement is well understood, and though the invitation be general, each of the numerous visitors will own that in no place did he ever find a more cordial welcome.

taneously regarded by so many observers from so many different points of view, for "without counsel purposes are disappointed, but in the multitude of counsellors they are established."

This relationship of the Church at large to its individual congregations, and of its individual congregations to the Church at large, is not only one yielding reciprocal advantage, it involves also reciprocal duties. It falls within the line of our present purpose to specify merely those that are incumbent on a congregation to the United Church. It is to send those as its representatives to the Church's courts who shall give their best thought and consideration to the Church's affairs, and shall faithfully attend to its business; and for itself it is to show a ready mind and a willing heart in doing all that its courts may enjoin for the common interest; and particularly in promoting by its prayers and by its means the Church's work at home and abroad;-in the case of our Church, its church extension and home mission schemes-its schools—its missions in China and in India. In order to do this with intelligent and hearty interest, the members of a congregation must keep themselves informed of what is being done in each of these departments of the Church's general work; and here we may say that our Church is fortunate in having its Weekly Review, and its ENGLISH PRESByterian Messenger, the one a weekly newspaper, and the other a monthly magazine, in which such information is conveyed. They should therefore be regularly read by all its members. Each of them, indeed, is a means of intercommunication to the Church's members. They are not, however, repetitions, but rather the complements of each other. The one occupies a larger province than the other. The newspaper, while noticing the Church's work, reports chiefly what is happening in the world, and considers what transpires from a Christian and Presbyterian point of view. The other, while also noticing public events, reports mainly what is being done in our Church. The one may be described as the Church's voice to other Churches and to the world, the other as our Church's voice to her own members. The latter, the ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN MESSENGER, should therefore be especially read regularly by all the members of each congregation. From it will be learned what is done and what remains to be done in the Church, and what they, as members of the Church, should do in regard of each of its schemes. They will thus better realize a sense of unity, feel suitably towards other congregations, rejoicing with those that rejoice, and sympathizing with those that suffer. They will thus find themselves placed in immediate contact with the workers engaged in each of the general enterprises of the Church; and in reading the letters of her missionaries in China and India, they will find themselves transported to the field,-placed by their side,-entering into their difficulties, sympathizing with them in their trials,-joining in their prayers and thanksgivings. They will find themselves, too, living among the converts, appreciating the peculiarities of their position,-bearing towards them a personal sympathy as they strive amid much opposition to walk worthy of Him who has called them out of darkness.

A congregation thoroughly in earnest will adopt the best means of sustaining pecuniarily the Church's schemes. It will not content itself with an annual collection, to which, through inclement weather on the collection-day, from forgetfulness of the collection on the day it is made, or during the previous week, when expending on some personal matter to the exhaustion of their immediate ability, many of its members may not contribute. A thoroughly earnest congregation will form a collecting association, will divide its locality into manageable districts, and will appoint a collector to each, who will visit monthly or quarterly the resident