tainers, the poor animals, and the body ready to be laid in the grave by strange hands, and in a strange land. Thus passed away this singular and accomplished man, who, however, seems to have spent his latter years in a dreamy existence, unworthy of his talents, and to have perished by a criminal exposure to danger, which he might and ought to have avoided.”

SERMONS TO CHILDREN.

No. 1.-THE FEAR OF THE LORD TAUGHT.

"Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”— Ps. xxxiv. 11.

WHEN children come to the house of God I am afraid they seldom pay much attention to the sermon. If I were to ask you why you did not, I dare say some of you would reply, "Why, sir, the sermon is not intended for us; the preacher does not preach to children, he preaches to grown-up men and women. It is, therefore, no use us listening, for we should not understand if we did." Well, today we are going to preach to children. This is a children's service; I have taken a children's text, and shall preach a children's sermon, and I will try to make it short, plain, and interesting. You have just heard the text, it does not say, Come, ye men and women, but, "Come, ye children, hearken unto me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord."

Now, you see the text has two parts; it makes a request, and it gives a promise; and the fulfilment of the promise depends upon the granting of the request. The promise is given by me, and the request is made to you, and if you will try to hearken to me, I will try to teach you the fear of the Lord.

I. What is it, then, you children have to do? Do you know? Some of you say, "Yes, we have to hearken to you." Well, you all know what hearkening is. When you hearken to a person you generally look at him, fix your eyes upon him. If you were talking to a companion, and he turned his face away from you, you would think he did not intend to hearken to what you said. Well, I want you to look at me, not at the ceiling or walls of this chapel, not at each other, nor at your own dress or hands, but at me while I am preaching. And I want you to listen as well as look. For when you hearken you turn your ears as well as your eyes to the person, and you attend to his words, and you think about what he means, and you are not satisfied till you know his meaning.__So you see you have four things to do while I am talking:—1. You have to look at me. 2. You have to listen to me. 3. You have to think about what I say. 4. You have to do your best to understand and remember what I say. While you are doing all these things, I have to do what? Why, what the text says:

II. Teach you to fear the Lord.

1. I will teach you who the Lord is that you have to fear. Some of you have read of Moses going to Pharaoh, King of Egypt, to ask him to let the children of Israel go and worship God. He heard all that Moses had to say, and then asked, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey him?" And little children sometimes ask this question, as well as Pharaoh, and you ought to be very thankful you can have the question answered. If you were living in Africa, or India, or China, there would be very few that could tell you about God. You know what the hymn says:—

"The Lord, he is the God." He is the living God, and not a dumb and dead idol: the true God, and not like the lords and gods of many of the heathen, who are false gods. And he is the only God, for there is no God but one, and he is the God who made the heaven and the earth, and who still upholds all he made, with the word of his power. He is the God who made himself known to Abraham, and called him from his father's house to go to a strange land, which he would give him, and made his descendants his people, giving them, by Moses and Aaron, his laws and ordinances. He is also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: for Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and he came into the world to make us know his Father, and know him as our Father also. Hence he has taught us to think of God, and speak of God, and pray to God, as our Father in heaven.

2. I will teach you what the fear of the Lord is. (a) To fear the Lord is to be afraid of him. "Well, but you don't want us to be afraid of God, do you?" Yes, I do. Moses wanted the children of Israel to be afraid of him, when he told them he was a great God, and terrible. And Jesus Christ, though he told us God was our Father, yet said to his disciples, "I will tell you of whom to be afraid: be not afraid of man, who can only kill the body, and after that has no further power; but be afraid of him who can not only kill the body, but can cast both body and soul into hell fire; I say unto you, Be afraid of him."

But it is in a particular sense I want you to be afraid of God. You know God says he hates sin, and is angry with those who knowingly sin against him. Now, it is not of God himself, but of his anger, that I want you to be afraid. You see policemen continually

walking our streets, and you know what they are walking about for. It is to find out persons that do wrong to others, and take them before the magistrate, that they may be punished. Now, when any one has done anything for which he can be punished, he is afraid of the policeman, and he won't come near him if he can help it, lest he should arrest him and carry him off to prison. But he who has done nothing wrong does not care for the policeman; instead of being afraid of him, he likes him, because he can apply to him for protection and help if he needed it. You may be very young, but I think you will know how to apply these thoughts about the policeman to God.

Or I may illustrate what I mean in another way. Look at that boy; he has done what his father told him not to do, and what a different father he seems to him now. He once liked to be with his father, and talk with him; now he is afraid to come near him, lest he should punish him as he knows he deserves. This is a proper feeling for him to have, but it would have been better if he had been so afraid of his father as thereby to have been kept from offending him. Now this is what the Scripture means when it says, "Blessed is the man who fears always."

(b) To fear God is to have such a regard for him, as from that regard to do what is right, knowing it is his will that we should do it.

Children who are very young know that there is a difference between motive and action, and that an action is to be regarded according to the motive which leads us to do it. John gives his brother Thomas his bag of marbles, or Sarah gives her sister Mary her beautifully-dressed doll. Generally boys are fond of marbles and girls of dolls, and therefore it seems very generous of John and Sarah to do what they have done, and perhaps they get commended for their kindness in practising so much self-denial for the gratification of a brother or sister. But if John parted with his marbles because he did not care to be troubled with them, and Sarah gave away her doll because she had got another toy, which made her not care to keep the doll, neither of them would deserve to be called generous and noble-minded.

Now I want the fear of God to be a motive with you—that is, a reason why you do this act or will not do that. When Joseph was a servant in the house of Potiphar, his mistress wanted him to do a very wicked thing, which he refused to do. But why did he refuse? He did not say, "Well, I cannot, for my master will find it out and I shall be punished, perhaps be put to death. I cannot run such a risk as that." No, but the fear of the Lord was before his eyes, and he said, "How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" Thus it is that the fear of the Lord is to depart from evil; that is, if there is a proper regard for God, out of such regard, evil, or wrong-doing, will be departed from.

Joseph's history gives us another illustration of this. When his

brethren came to buy corn of him, they did not know that they were speaking to their brother Joseph, toward whom they had acted so cruelly; but he knew them, and acted strangely and roughly to them. He did not do this from a spirit of revenge; he brought them into trouble that he might bring them to be sorry for their past wrong conduct. But when he wished to lead them to believe in his right-doing, what did he say? He said, "I fear God." The Egyptians were idolators, they worshipped false gods, while the brethren of Joseph were worshippers of the true God, and so, to gain their confidence in his uprightness and truthfulness, he knew it was enough for him to tell them that he feared God. This shows that what we said before is correct-that to fear God is, out of regard to him, to do right, knowing that on evil, or wrong-doing, he ever looks with displeasure.

3. And now I will teach you why you should fear the Lord. (a) You should fear him because of his authority. He is the Being who created the heavens and the earth, and all the things that are therein. He made us, and not we ourselves; we are the people of his hand, and the sheep of his pasture; and if God made us, and keeps us alive, has he not a right to rule over us, and tell us what is right and what is wrong, and say to us—you shall shun the wrong and do the right, and if you do I will reward and bless you, but if you do not, I will be angry with you, and punish you?"The son honoureth his father, and the servant feareth his master: if I be your Father, where is my honour; if I be your Master, where is my fear? Now God is our Master, and our Magistrate, and our Sovereign, therefore we should fear him; and if we do not, we withhold from God what is his due.

(b) You should fear him because of his greatness. You are told this in the Bible. "Great is the Lord, and greatly to be feared, and his greatness is unsearchable." He is the Almighty God, and his power is something to be afraid of. You have a companion, and perhaps you offend him in some way, and he is angry with you; but he is no older, no bigger, no stronger than yourself, and so you are very unconcerned about it. "Let him be angry," you say, "I do not care for him." But suppose he is much older, and bigger, and stronger than yourself, and if he likes is able to punish you for offending him, would you not feel differently and talk differently about him than you did about your equal? You are afraid of him, and try to keep out of his way till you know how he means to act with you. So God should be feared for his power. Jesus Christ said so in words we have already quoted: Fear not him who is able to kill the body only; but fear him who can cast both body and soul into hell." That is, let your fear for God be so much greater than your fear for man, because God has so much greater power than man, that your fear of man should always give way to your fear of God. If you must displease man or God, seeing God is able to punish you more severely than man,

always put God before man; fear him first, fear him last, fear him always.

(c) You should fear him because of his goodness. God is good as well as great-good in himself and good to us. He has a good feeling to us, and he acts it out. He does us good, and crowns us with his loving-kindness.

Perhaps some of you say, "Should we not rather love than fear God for his goodness?" I answer, you should do both; you should both love and fear God, joining reverence with your love, and affection with your fear, and thus both your love and fear will be perfected by their blended exercise.

"Happy beyond description he
Who fears the Lord his God;

Who hears His threats with holy awe
And trembles at His word.

"Fear, sacred passion! ever dwells
With its fair partner-love;

Blending their beauties, both proclaim
Their source is from above.

"Let terrors fright the unwilling slave,
The child of joy appears;
Cheerful he does his Father's will
And loves as much as fears.

"Let but Thy fear, most holy God,
Possess this soul of mine,
Then shall I worship Thee aright,
And taste Thy joys divine."

J. HUDSTON.

LETTERS TO THE YOUNG.-No. II.

Now you all know what I am to write about this month; for I gave you notice in the last INSTRUCTOR. I am to write about "IF."

I don't consider "if" a respectable word. It is a beggar. It always goes on crutches. It must lean on something all the time, or it falls over or vanishes from sight. It is like many a human being I have known, whom somebody has to carry all their lives, simply because they have no self-help in them. The truth is, about one-half the world are "ifs," and the other half have to make up for their deficiencies. I don't like a boy or a man who has no self-help in him. I had rather see a person go-ahead, hit or miss, even if he fail, than I would see a sleepy, good-for-nothing creature who will not try at anything, and who constantly needs propping up. These have learnt nothing all their lives but to say "if."

Do you see, or rather feel, how the idea signified by "if" chokes you, stifles you, frightens you, and knocks all the life out of you? "I would, if I could" is the saying always of the irresolute and timid. "If I go into the cellar, or even to my bedroom, in the darkness, I shall see a ghost.' "I would learn these lessons, if they were not so hard." "I would keep good company, if it were not for Paul Plausible, who, somehow or other, always persuades me to do