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Sin, like a raging fever reigns
With fatal strength in every part;
The dire contagion fills the veins,

And spreads the poison to the heart.

And can no sovereign balm be found?
And is no kind physician nigh
To ease the pain, and heal the wound,
Ere life and hope for ever fly?

There is a great Physician near;
Look up, O fainting soul, and live;
See, in His heavenly smiles appear
Such ease as Nature cannot give.

See, in the Saviour's dying blood,
Life, health, and bliss abundant flow;
'Tis only this dear sacred flood

Can ease thy pain, and heal thy wce."

Scripture Questions.

I.

"How much owest thou unto my Lord?"

The vast majority of mankind have no consciousness of owing anything whatever to God. If they are persons of moral honesty, they will see that their transactions (as between man and man) are kept clear and square. They may feel grateful for the favours of friendship, and duly reciprocate them. But as far as spiritual matters are concerned, beyond a chance recognition of Providence in a general way, obligation to a higher power has for them no existence. Those who are rich and increased in goods, for whom the stream of life has flowed smoothly, are fain to construe success into individual merit. While those who have stumbled on rough and thorny roads often shape thought, and mayhap expression too, into the bitter query, "Why were we ever born?" Christianity alone dispels these illusions, and changes the soul's mood into one of universal ever-increasing thankfulness; till the mind comes at length to perceive that, from the simple air we breathe,

up to the fullest manifestation of the Divine Presence, nothing is of right or desert, but all of love; and therefore involving a debt too heavy for mortality ever to discharge.

"How much owest thou?" Everything; and I have nothing wherewith to pay. Ah! that voice, inaudible to the multitude, is yet sounding in many ears with eloquent appealing. And while they who live on insensible of obligation to the end will surely one day awake to bankruptcy with "shame and confusion of face," those who have felt the wondrous record of His benefits far above their reach even to number, and so have learned to roll it on the shoulders of Mercy Omnipotent, will find at last that, because they had nothing to pay, He frankly forgave them all.

II.

"Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast Thou not known Me?"

We have a double question here, on the very threshold of which the mind is arrested. Is it true that Christ has been with us long, or has He been with us at all? Ay, verily, every hour and moment of our existence has He been watching, and tending, and doing us good. But have we seen Him? have we companied with Him and estimated His worth? He has been always with us-have we been with Him-how many years, months, weeks, or even days? Frequent loving counsel taken with an earthly compeer soon rivets the close bond of friendship. Gradually we win our way into his inmost heart; we confide to him our minutest joys and sorrows, till he grows into sympathy with our every mood. Others who see and converse with him at intervals hold faint ideas of the beauty of his character, his wisdom, generosity, and truth. They talk in general. terms more from hearsay than actual experience. But we, who have been taken into the palace of his mind, who are familiar with his varied qualities, who have weighed his noble affection in balance with the fleeting, shallow professions of others, we can speak in no vague or measured phrase of his

excellences; he has been so long with us that we know him thoroughly. The application is easy. Jesus is our everpresent Friend. He needs not, however, to seek acquaintance with us; while our comprehension of Him, on the other hand, depends entirely on our own seeking. For whereas in the case of fealty between man and man, face answereth to face, Christ's understanding of His creatures is perfect from the beginning. Our knowledge of Him, commencing in time, will be continued through eternity.

"Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me," is the sinner's cry; quite consistent, too, with those other words, "Who can find out the Almighty unto perfection ?" Yet let us be grateful if enough light is vouchsafed to cause our hearts more and more to desire His fellowship, and to teach us that, of whatever else we are ignorant, we feel that "this alone is life eternal," to "know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent."

"Will ye also go away?"

III.

A clergyman of large experience used to remark that the number of persons who, at one period or other, had come to the borderland of Christianity, realising, in various measure, the capabilities of the faith, and then gone away, was legion. How often has the warm impulsive mind of childhood, moved by the solemn story of the Babe of Bethlehem, received the gospel after its own simple fashion! How often have the fresh fancies of youth culminated in poetic reverie on the miraculous power and tender eloquence of Him "who spake as never man spake !" How often has vigorous manhood, disappointed in some scheme of earthly aggrandisement, been found pondering on the transience of sublunary ambition, and putting forth a strong cry like the dawning of a better hope! While age, which may have frittered away life in a round of frivolities, frequently makes a feeble effort at the eleventh hour, under the arrest of sickness, to turn from lying vanities to the living God. Alas! what wonder

A WORD TO THOSE WHOSE CHILD IS TAKEN FROM THEM.

if after so brief enlightenment all these should speedily go back? But ye, His own chosen ones-ye who have enjoyed His loving presence, shared His counsels, reposed under the shadow of His great compassion, who have sat at His table and broken the bread and drunk the wine of His blessed Communion-ye whom He has called "friends," and to whom He has said, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," oh! will ye also go away and walk no more with Him? Nay, rather will not each one say for himself in the spirit of Peter (not as before his temptation, but in the perfect loyalty which supervened when the Saviour had prayed for him that his faith might never fail), "Though all men should forsake Thee, yet will not I." "Lord, to whom can we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

A Word to those whose Child is taken
from them.

ILL you allow me, my dear friends, to say a few words to you in your present distress? You are in great grief at the loss of your little one; and no wonder. Jesus wept at the grave of His friend Lazarus; and there can be little of a parent's love in the heart which weeps not at the death of a child. Think not for a moment that I seek to come between you and your sorrow; nay, I would say, as long as nature prompts you, let the fountains of grief remain open, and let no check be

placed upon the flow of your tears. But it is when your

heart seeks comfort from without that I desire to say a few words of consolation; to follow His example who taught us "nct to be sorry, as men without hope."

At first our thoughts refuse to leave our present surroundings; we think of the merry little laugh, and the pretty little ways which had so won our heart; and it seems as if

A WORD TO THOSE WHOSE CHILD IS TAKEN FROM THEM.

a terrible blank had been made in our own future when the prospects our fancy had so fondly painted have been thus early blighted. But let us calmly consider our own experience. Is it not the case that human life, from childhood to old age, is full of trouble? Could we have reasonably expected for the child who is taken from us a less chequered existence than is usually allotted to man? Should we have been content if its life had been a repetition of our own? Even as far as this world is concerned, the difficulties and dangers which surround us make it almost a matter of thankfulness that they should be forestalled by death in childhood. But when we consider the infinitely greater and more important dangers which beset us in respect of our eternal hereafter, the thought that our loved one is spared them is wonderfully consoling to us. Who does not know the manifold temptations to a downward course? Who that has ever sought to tread the path which leads to heaven will call the task an easy one? And, my dear friends, would you, with all your father's love, your mother's affection, have exposed your little one to these dangers for the satisfaction. of keeping it with you and seeing it grow up to manhood? I say nothing of the possibility of your expectations being disappointed; hearts have been broken and homes destroyed by those who were once dearly-loved and promising children; but, on the grounds of eternal salvation, I am sure that you must feel that present certainty is infinitely to be preferred to future doubt. Your little one is now in Paradise; in a brighter, happier world than this it awaits, without possibility of failure, the final joys of heaven. There is no pain, no sickness, no sorrow, no sin, no death there. Then, when your first grief is over, will you not rejoice that one you loved so dearly has been placed beyond the reach of all that makes existence wretched? Will you not be grateful to Him who has taken it out of this uncertain life to a world of certain bliss?

But, perhaps, you think I cannot know a parent's love when I speak like this, when I say nothing of the terrible

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