moral exposure; at those inward vices, those secret sins, those evil indulgences, which threaten to lay waste the immortal nature, which threaten to kill the soul?

There are others who find it difficult to enter into those views of penitence which are taught them. They feel as if there was some extravagance in the language of scripture and of the pulpit on this subject. They can understand what it is to acknowledge in general that they are sinners, and to confess in a general sense that sin is an evil; but deep and painful regret for their moral deficiences, is what they cannot understand. But it is not so when disease assails them. That they can understand, and feel a regret for it that weighs as a burden upon all their thoughts. It is a different regret indeed that is required for sin. But shall the regret be less, because it is guilt, as well as an evil, that calls for lamentation! Shall it be less, when an evil greater than all disease and guilt, worse than all other evil, presses upon the soul and is bearing it down, at once to dishonor and misery ?

It will be easy for every reader to carry out these comparisons into many particulars. Let him inquire in a serious view of his life, what he is doing to gain earthly good, or to avoid earthly evil; and then let him ask himself whether he is with an inward and hearty effort, doing as much for his spiritual interests. As he decides this question, is he either a spiritual or a wordly man. This is the strict and serious test. None lower or laxer is to be applied to our experience. The question is not about sentiments or contemplations, about paroxisms of joy, or penitence, but about the actual and earnest doing of God's commandments.

It is a great thing thus to give religion its place among the realities of human affection, desire and pursuit, thus to bring all the active and rational energies of the mind to bear upon it, thus to introduce it into the depths of the soul, and to make it the home-bred, heartfelt interest of our being. It is a great thing; but it is the only thing that is genuine and true.

I should but little value the religious progress of any individual, who did not find his thoughts more and more rational, more and more familiar with holy themes; who did not more and more feel religion as he feels other things, as he feels friendship, hope, love, -as if it were a part of himself; as if he could not live-not merely as if he could not die-but as if he could not live without it. No man can feel this who does not feel it as he does other things. No man can preach this great and living theme as he ought, with any artificial aids. No solemn dullness can help or suffice here. A passion of tears is not the thing. We may weep, indeed, and well may we do so at times. But to my mind, there is something beyond all tears, beyond all tones, beyond all the ordinary methods of description-a sense of religion, not as taught, but as felt, as springing immediately from the self-teaching experience of the heart, from long-continued, and widereaching reflection-a sense thus formed of religion as unutterably precious, glorious, real and true; in one word, there is a great and living, and sober, and blessed certainty, an immoveable calmness, trust, fixedness of the soul, before which, if we could rise to it, all enthuism and all impulses would shrink away abashed. There is no description by which I can so fully set

forth religion in this reality, and this fulness of perfection as by simply referring to the mind that was in Christ. Such a mind was never presented to human observation, as his; of whom, amidst all his afflictions, it is but once written that he wept, of whom it is never written that he smiled; who was at once, the most tried and patient, and the most calm and cheerful of beings. See how naturally all the gladdening aspects of nature rise before him, how, calm and fair images from the lillies of the field and the flocks of the pasture interweave themselves with all his discourses, and yet before his eyes was ever presented and stedfastly held up, the bloody scene of the crucifixion! Behold a teacher without enthusiasm, without any feverish excitement, without one hasty word, or extravagant action, and yet snares and wiles, calumny and persecution, prejudice and deadly hatred waited for him at every step! Waited for him at every step and yet he walked through that land of foes and spies and betrayers, speaking lessons of grave wisdom, calmly as if he had been walking in the cool and sequestered groves where philosophers resorted to deliver their pre

cepts.

But I must not pursue these reflections. Let me only say and repeat, in close, that the claims of this religion whose simple and rational character is so preeminently manifest in its great Example,—that the claims of this religion ought to be acknowledged with simplicity and heartiness. It is no voice of oracles, muttered from awful shrines; it is no mystic and strange doctrine that is addressed to us. Then, had the lukewarmness with which it has been received and preached, been

justified. But the religion we believe in, is a simple and intelligible appeal to the heart, and it ought to come home to the heart as other claims do. It is a practical religion, and it must be reduced to practice. It is reality, and it ought to be felt as reality. It is the interest of the soul, and the soul ought to be alive to it. It is the all-embracing interest, and it ought to absorb the chief affections, energies, and aspirations of every rational being.

Surely, reader, if all truths and realities do not deceive us, if reason is not a delusion, if experience is not fiction, and the very idea of a mind is not a dream, we must pay some serious regard to the claims of such a religion. Surely, the least that can be demanded of us, is, that this interest shall be as heedfully, as faithfully regarded as any other and lesser interest. And yet assuredly, if it were thus regarded, by us and by all men, the world, with that single change, would be converted to religion, to virtue, to God. What zeal would there be ! What fidelity! What perseverence! What noble charities and generous self denials! What true worshippers in the temple! What lovely and edifying examples of obedience, in all the walks of christian virtue and purity! Happy day! How far off from us, God only knows. But never till it comes shall we see what religion is, or know what the world may be! Till then, men will talk mysteriously or blindly about religion, and darkly about providence. Till then, the dwellers in this world will be children of vanity, and life will be proverbially filled with sighing, discontent and sorrow. Happy day! when the children of this world shall no longer surpass the children of light in

wisdom-when they shall have no maxim of reason, no lawful device of ingenuity, no resolution, (perseverance, zeal or self devotion, which shall not also be brought into the service of religion! May the Governor of the world, the Father of all spirits, hasten it in his own time!

D.

WHY A CRUCIFIED SAVIOUR WAS NECESSARY, EXPLAINED, AND THE MANNER IN WHICH OUR LORD'S SUFFERINGS AND DEATH ARE SPOKEN OF IN THE EPISTLES, ACCOUNTED FOR.

[Continued from the last number.]

3. In the third place, the cross of Christ is replete with spiritual energy, inasmuch as it sets forth a sublime instance and example of spiritual perfection. Amid all the ignominy, and pain, and horror of that closing scene, a light shines far more glorious than that before which the amazed Apostles bowed themselves, upon the mount of transfiguration. There was a majesty, the majesty of simplicity and innocence in the suffering man of Nazareth,' that the cruel devices of scorn could not hide, nor pervert. There is a glory in the dignified silence which he preserved upon his arraignment, that no words could have, even for him. When he speaks, you perceive the calm consciousness of being born, of having lived, of suffering, and dying for a great object. Upon his trial before the Roman governor, he did indeed prove himself a king, but