heart. How could he receive instruction from one who treated him with no more respect than that? "So he turned and went away in a rage." Had the transaction terminated here, the result would have been disastrous on many accounts.

Naaman himself, instead of being cured-instead of returning with health sparkling in his eyes-his countenance ruddy as that of a youth-his wasted flesh restoredand his whole body gloriously renovated, would have gone back a loathsome leper; the poison in his system would have spread through his entire frame, and he would have had to look forward to the time when, shunning and shunned of his race, he would be plunged into the deepest gloom and despair.

Not only so, but the testimony of the little captive maid would have been considered false. Pride and anger have neutralized many a glorious truth. Truth, however, is truth, whether angrily and scornfully or meekly received. Many a testimony has been pronounced false which was true, and would have been found blessedly true had it but been received and acted on.

The result would have been disastrous to the Israelitish nation. Their claims in regard to their God, their prophets, and their religious system were high and lordly, and these claims were recognized by Naaman after his cure; but the reverse of this would have been the case if he had not been brought to a better mind.

Elisha, too, would have suffered in his reputation as a prophet. He who was remembered ever after with profound respect and gratitude, would have been thought and spoken of as a charlatan—a mere pretender.

Lastly, it would have been disastrous to the honour of God. As Naaman received a cure, Jehovah and Rimmon changed places; had it been otherwise, not only would the Syrian deity have occupied the

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first place in the leper's esteem, but the God of Elisha would have been thought of with scorn.

But better thoughts came over Naaman. Reflection sobered him down, softened his rage, changed his mind.

"Apt words have power

To assuage the tumours of a troubled mind,
And are as balm to festered wounds.'

Never were words more apt and balmy than the words of one of the servants of Naaman. "He came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldst thou not have done it? how much rather then when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean ?" Light thus breaks in upon Naaman's mind; he perceives his folly, admits the truth of his servant's representation, and is prepared to do as the prophet directs. It was well that second thoughts were his, and that he possessed a servant even wiser than himself. Some encourage the rage and folly of others, however unreasonable and wicked they may be. Much wiser and kinder is it to instil, if possible, better thoughts. What a rich harvest of blessedness would this servant receive into his own soul, and diffuse among thousands of his countrymen, by his wise and courageous course!

Naaman, having practised the advice which at first filled him with rage, found, and immediately found, what he sought. What a lesson is here! How much do we lose for want of a docile and teachable spirit! The practice of what enrages us may bring to us comfort and peace.

The aim of Elisha and Naaman was one. Elisha was as anxious for Naaman's cure as he was himself. Their opinions as to the best means to effect the cure were different, but that was all. But who ought to yield here the teacher or the scholar? the physician or the patient? In what an absurd position did Naaman's rage place him! If he knew

better than Elisha both what was to be done, and how it must be done, why did he come to him? And if he did not know better than Elisha, he ought at least to have practically regarded the prophet's prescription. Never reject unpalatable advice because it is unpalatable. The most nauseous medicines are often the most healthful.

Having thus placed before you an enraged hearer, and given you his

reasons for his rage; having pointed out what would have been the disastrous consequences had he persisted in his folly, and the blessed results of obedience to what at first appeared a ridiculous prescription, I shall conclude by placing_before_you a command of the Great Teacher Himself

"TAKE HEED HOW YE HEAR.'
W. C.

Louth.

It is the weariest part of a weary pilgrimage. Childhood has its glee; youth has its buoyant hopes and ardent expectations; but old age is in a great degree incapacitated for active toil, and is rendered solicitous by the certain prospect of speedy dissolution. At that period of life one seems walking, as it were, among the bones of his fellows who have preceded him. His head is whitened with the frosts of time. His physical force is abated. His form is trembling and stooping, and the very ground, to his ears, seems to ring hollow beneath him. The past is to him but as a dream, and the future is yet to be tried. Dimly recollected visions of other years flit through the chambers of the memory, and disappear like airy phantoms from mental view. The companions of his youth are gone, and the tastes and sympathies of his contemporaries are inharmonious with his own.

Through feebleness he is mostly confined at home. Eyesight grows dim, music fails of its charms; thirst for fame or gold becomes even more than formerly vain: and he who was once perhaps mighty in word or in deed relapses into second childhood, feeble and spiritless, just on the border of the grave.

If now he is destitute of a cheering, vivifying faith in Christ, how strange and mournful his lot! Through a long life he has declined to walk with God. He has accepted the food and raiment a Father's hand has bestowed; he has been glad when his health and strength have been sustained. He has laboured long and hard, but has laid up only what moths corrupt and thieves steal. And now he is nearly at the end of his

race, jaded, worn out, and gray in the service of the most cruel of taskmasters. He has spent all his years an enemy of his best friend. He has passed his life in slavery, but has received only a curse for his labours, and, except repentant, can never hope for any thing better. Galling as his chain of bondage has been, he has contracted a love for it, and still hugs it with trembling hand to his bosom. What more melancholy sight can one picture to his mind? His childhood, youth, and manhood were spent in sin. Through half a century, sixty or seventy years it may be-he has resisted the appeals of conscience and of God, and there he stands trembling by the side of the grave-old in unbelief, gray in sin, up to this hour a neglecter of heaven's freely offered grace; still in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity. How mournful the sight! He has trusted in his own wisdom, and leaned upon himself for strength. Perishable things have been his chief good. And now he must quit all; and yet he fears it is not all of death to die. Somehow it now seems to him dreadfully true that he is not about to cease to exist because he is about to cease to breathe. Somehow he now begins to apprehend the future is to have a mysterious and awful connection with the present. Through scores of years he has sought only "the meat that perisheth.' The Word of God has not been his careful study; the people of God have not been his chosen companions; the Redeemer's service has not been his delight. A poor, dependent one he has ever been; destitute, miserable, and forsaken he ever must have been, but for the present help of Him who

gave him life; and yet he has travelled through all his years a neglecter of His salvation, who gave him existence at first, and sustained him to the last! Whose sympathies are not stirred within him at the sight of one thus

LEISURE

"To my mind," said a friend, "leisure hours always suggest slippers, a lounge, and an open fire-place." Pleasant suggestions these, and doubtless to every reader of the words they will bring visions of his own peculiar delights, grave or gay, quiet or active. It may be a little revelation of secrets we keep even from ourselves to interrogate closely the meaning of these pictures, for we do not deck our bodies with half so much care to hide deformities as we do our characters, and the one we seek to please in the latter case is none other than ourselves. In the leisure hour we are off guard, so to speak, or rather we are in negligé; given over to the enjoyment of "sweet neglect," and so suffering our real inclinations and desires to come out and show themselves. Ask not what are a man's pursuits, but what are his pleasures, if you would know him best. Meet him anywhere but at his business, where policy, and propriety, and business considerations are controlling him, if you wish to know really what he is or where he is drifting. Where are his leisure hours spent? What are his relaxations? What are his daydreams and anticipations?

Leisure hours are not enough esteemed. It is an old line of remark to go on to speak of the continual drive and hurry of life, which begrudges holidays, which counts the time lost that is not given to labour and gain, and so on. A sadder thing than this is the use made of the little leisure actually obtained. The notion that this is waste time is unfortunately too near the truth, and is only false in so far as it fails to state the whole evil. Leisure ought to be a great educator and improver; it should ease the mind of the burdens which are wearing it hard and callous, give play to the natural feelings of delight in nature, in children, in beauty and simplicity of any kind; it should call out the quiet and simple pleasures of existence which God has

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tottering into a hopeless grave, leaving behind him threescore years of perpetual mercies rejected, a lifetime wasted, a Saviour rejected, and the Spirit of Grace probably grieved for ever away?

HOURS.

designed for each one of us, and which will make us purer and nobler if we will suffer ourselves to feel their inspiration.

But the truth is, we are gluttons with our leisure. We assume that the amount of delight to ourselves is exactly proportioned to the number of fancied pleasures we can cram into the moments. We do not think of protracting the delight by slowly partaking, that we may not miss any of its power; but rather seek to get the whole concentrated, to stuff ourselves with it, so that it will last over to the next holiday, as the Bushmen eat whole cattle, and then go without food for days. And so appetite is abused, and digestion disordered, and we are the worse for our fancied pleasures. They become intense, unnatural, destructive.

And, again, leisure hours are not enough esteemed since the feeling is too common that it is not of much importance how we spend them. The great end to be sought is relaxation, and if we get this, what more is to be desired? This is a bad mistake. Often it is forced on our notice that our formal education and our systematic training do not after all make us what we are. Occasionally a man is developed in spite of these, and as if to mock at their impotency, he becomes something widely at variance with what they would have made him. His leisure hours, his pleasures, have shaped his character. These are most potent educators. Half the puzzles which are pointed out with reference to the difference between the aims and results of training find their solution here.

A dreadful commentary it is upon human depravity that most of the sins and enormities which are known to society grow up under the guise of pleasure. This is a fact which stares us in the eyes every day, and yet we fail to realize that it is of much importance how we use our leisure, what

kind of relaxation we take. It is only a leisure hour; what if I waste it, or turn it to questionable pleasures, or spend it in foolish or vile imaginings? It is a very small part of my life. Small, but the seasoning which flavours the whole.

The abuse of leisure! A volume might be written about it, and sometimes when thinking of the subject, we are almost ready to rejoice even at the

hard-pressing, unceasing moil of life around us, as a protection against greater evils. And yet leisure is every man's desire and longing; his choicest opportunity for culture, for spiritual growth, for doing good and growing better. If only a feeling of its importance and value could go with it, and intelligent views of its proper use, surely more leisure would be as desirable as it is desired.

Hallo, Mr. Cocoa-nut! have you seen me in my new suit? Look up here. Don't I shine? Isn't my light remarkable? This hall would look miserably dull without me, I can tell you. And what a difference there is between us, to be sure! Upon my word, I feel for you, old boy; I do indeed. If you could but be an aristocratic Hall Lamp like me, now, instead of a poor brown Mat! Why, just think; whilst I live so splendidly out of the reach of that wheezy old door, you must lie flat on your back, on a cold stone floor, and catch all the draughts that may whistle and rush viciously at you. I declare I shiver at the thought! Why, I should be extinguished with half what you have to endure.

Then think again. I am clothed in fine colours, and hung up here to be glorified, whilst you are fated to receive the nasty refuse which anybody may bring in from the street. Nobody cares how you look. Thank goodness I'm a lacquered Hall Lamp. Poor Cocoa-nut."

The Front-door Mat didn't trouble to rise, but quietly replied, “Small manners to you, Mr. Lamp. Suppose you keep your pity until you have heard my say. I am contented. You are, I grant, handsomer in appearance than am I, but you did no more towards

your own gilding than I did towards my plain brown aspect.

As to our respective positions, for aught I see, one may as well lie on one's back, as be hung up by the hair of one's head, as you are; and draughts, by the way, are no worse than hot poisonous air. You talk of your service in the hall, but I am far more indispensable to the house than yourself. Have you forgotten what our master and mistress said about us, when we hung in the shop together, a month ago? We must have the mat; the lamp can wait awhile.'

Then remember, that although I am plain looking, I am useful and willing, all day, and all night too, if wanted, whereas you only work three or four hours in the evening, and even then you know that you sometimes make a great fuss about lighting. Haven't you also been seen impudently bobbing up and down, making my eyes ache, and Master very cross? And have'nt you then gone right out in a pet? I don't see that you are so good after all.

Besides, I work for love, and ask no toll; but you will not give an hour's light without sending in a little bill after.

Then I am always prepared for use; but Jane has to go into the cellar, then return, mount a chair, turn a tap, and hold a match beside you, to make you work. If I get wrong, broken, or worn, I am sorry, but I don't make bad worse; but if you should fall into trouble, whew! what a time we have of it! No matter how small the hole, if there be life in your body, you begin breathing out threatenings and slaughters, and filling the house with your evil odours, so that we have all wished you further.

THE THEOLOGY OF THE COMMISSON ON THE SUBJECT OF CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. By R. Ingham. London: E. Stock.

A SINCERE and hearty lover of truth will search for it wherever it may be found, and will buy it at any price which it may cost. The doctrine of Christ constitutes the most precious truth which the mind can discover, and which the heart can obey. When this doctrine is clearly known, and cordially embraced, all our energies will be enlisted in its advocacy and defence; and everything which is deemed to be at variance with it will excite our secret antipathy, and arouse us to active opposition.

The testimony of our Lord concerning the ordinances of His church is to be accepted as decisive and sufficient; and such testimony must be adduced and enforced by all who would be found faithful to Him. This duty becomes the more imperative at a time when the multitudes have "gone away from his ordinances, and have not kept them." All divine institutions-those which were imposed by Christ, as well as those which were inaugurated by Moses have been, after a while, either entirely abandoned, or extensively altered; so that it has ever been a part of religious fidelity to reprove the neglect, or to resist the innovation.

The Author of the "Hand-book on Baptism" would be pronounced by those who know him best to be a man of "a meek and quiet spirit;" not naturally contentious, or constitutionally inclined to controversy. Yet he has been incited, by a solemn sense of duty, to argue the question of Baptism with a perseverance, we might say a pertinacity using the word not in blame but in praise-which has probably never been surpassed. His form treatise on the Mode, or nature of

baptism, consisted of more than six hundred pages; yet, as the question concerning the Subjects of Baptism is on all hands acknowledged to be more important than the question as to its mode, he could not be satisfied to leave it untouched. The time and toil expended in the preparation of the first part of his work were enough to occasion what he now confesses to have felt-" a tiredness of the controversy." This sense of weariness has led him to issue his second part as a 66 fragment," confining it to what he calls "the Theology of the Commission on the Subjects of Baptism." To corroborate the theological import of the commission he cites the account given in the Acts of the Apostles of the baptism of the three thousand, who, if not baptized, were "added to" the church on the day of Pentecost.

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The most remarkable feature in this second and smaller, as well as in the first and much larger, part of the work, is the long array of quotations made from Pædobaptist authors which favour our faith and practice, and which Mr. Ingham rightly regards as weapons put into our hands to use against the practice of infant baptism." With the unsleeping eye and undeviating aim of an ecclesiastical detective he seems to have traversed the highways and bye ways of ancient and modern Christian literature in quest of these weapons; and having found them in almost incredible numbers he has stored them and made a display of them, something after the manner in which implements of war may be seen exhibited in an armoury. As the baptismal controversy is certain to continue, and as "there is no discharge in this war" for those who are ranged on our side of the contest, it is well to be provided with a proper equipment for it. We have had other works designed to fur