enough within it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown edge on the skull; no more. Would you take the offer verbally made by the deathangel? Would the meanest among us take it, think you?

Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of us grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man accepts it who desires to advance in life without knowing what life is; who means only that he is to get more horses and more footmen and more fortune and more public honour, and-not more personal soul. He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer-whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace.-Ruskin.

THE doctrine of the Cross is not sordid and selfish, and, so far, it corrects the mechanical, utilitarian tendency of our times. Against the lust of gain it sets, in strong contrast, the example of Christ's voluntary poverty, and in solemn warning, the Saviour's declaration how hardly the rich man enters the kingdom of heaven. Against the disposition which would set material interests above all others, and teach us to regard the tangible goods of earth as the only real or the only valuable possessions, the Gospel shows Christ setting moral far above all material interest, and uttering the brief and pithy questions, before which avarice turns pale and ambition drops his unfinished task: "What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" If, as the great English moralist said, that which exalts the future, and disengages man's mind from being engrossed by the present, serves to elevate man to the true dignity of his nature, how great the practical value of a faith in whose far-reaching visions time dwindles

into a speck, and eternity becomes the paramount object of man's anxieties and hopes, where Truth is made more valuable than all things, to be bought at all risks, while Truth is not to be sold for the world. And the prevalent selfishness which lies at the basis of that mechanical and utilitarian spirit of which we have spoken, is sorely rebuked by the very thought of a Divine Redeemer, who, moved by no selfish aims, but in disinterested kindness, compassionately visits, and by the sacrifice of Himself ransoms His envenomed foes; and whose Gospel makes all mankind my brethren in a common sin, doom, and ransom, and bids me freely give to my fellow-man what I have most freely received.—Rev. W, R. Williams, D.D.

How old are you? Twenty-five? Thirty? Are you happy to-day? Were you happy yesterday? Are you generally happy? If so, you have reason to judge that you will be happy by-and-by. Are you so busy that you have no time to be happy? and are you going to be happy when you are old, and you have not so much to do? No; you will not. You now have a speci men of what you will be when you are old. Look in the face of to-day. That is about the average. That will tell you what you are going to be. What you are carrying along with you is what you will have by and-by. If you are so conducting yourself that you have peace with God, and with your fellow-men, and with your faculties; if every day you insist that duty shall make you happy, and you take as much time as is needful for the culture of your social faculties, you will not be ex hausting life, and it will be contin ually replenished. But if you are saving everything up till you get to be an old man, habit will stand like a tyrant, and say, "You would no enjoy yourself before, and you sha not now." How many men there

are who have ground and ground to make money, that they might be happy by-and-by, but who, when they got to be fifty or sixty years old, had used up all the enjoyable nerve that was in them! During their early life they carried toil and economy and frugality to the excess of stinginess, and when the time came that they expected joy, there was no joy for them.-H. W. Beecher.

Ir is said that among the high Alps at certain seasons the traveller is told to proceed very quietly, for on the steep slopes overhead the snow hangs so evenly balanced that the sound of a voice or the report of a gun may destroy the equilibrium, and bring down an immense avalanche that will overwhelm everything in ruin in its downward path. And so about our way there may be a soul in the very crisis of its moral history, trembling between life and death, and a mere touch or shadow may determine its destiny.

A
young lady who was deeply im-
pressed with the truth, and was
ready, under a conviction of sin, to
ask, "What must I do to be saved?"
had all her solemn impressions dis-
sipated by the unseemly jesting and
laughter of a member of the church
by her side as she passed out of the
sanctuary. Her irreverent and
worldly spirit cast a repellant shadow
on that young lady not far from the
kingdom of God. How important
that we should always and every-
where walk worthy of our high call-
ing as Christians!

"So let our lives and lips express
The holy gospel we profess."

Let us remember that we are al-
ways casting the shadow of our real
life
upon some one; that somebody
is following us, as John followed
Peter into the sepulchre. Happy
if, when all the influences of life flow
back and meet us at the judgment,
we can lift up clean hands and spot-

less robes, and say, "I am free from the blood of all men !" Happy then, to hear even one soul saying to us out of the great multitude, that, following the shadow of our Christian life and devotion, he found Jesus and heaven.-Rev. T. Stork, D.D.

WE are pilgrims to a dwellingplace of blessedness; and the light that streams through its open portals ought to suffice us as we approach them. An anticipated beatitude, a

sanctity that even now breathes of

Paradise, a grace which is already tinged with the richer lines of glory,

these should mark the Christian disciple, and these as he advances in years, should deepen and brighten upon and around him, until the distinction of earth and heaven is almost lost, and the spirit in its placid and unearthly repose is gone, as it were, before the body, and at rest already with its God-a being already invested with a deathless life, already adopted into the immediate family of God, already enrolled in the brotherhood of angels, yea, of the Lord of angels; a being who, amid the revolutions of earth and skies, feels and knows himself indestructible, capacitated to outlast the universe, a sharer in the immortality of God. What is there that can be said of such an one which falls not below the awful glory of His position? Oh, misery, that with such a calling, man should be the grovelling thing he is; that, summoned but to pause for a while in the vestibule of the eternal Temple, ere he be introduced into its sanctities, he should forget in the dreams of his lethargy the eternity that awaits him! Oh, wretchedness beyond words, that, surrounded by love, and invited to glory, he should have no heart for happiness; but should still cower in the dark, while light ineffable solicits him to behold and to enjoy it!-W. Archer Butler.

THE Autumnal Session of the Baptist Union will be held in Manchester on the 9th and 10th of October. We are requested to state that all communications and inquiries must be addressed to the Rev. D. Macgregor, 53, Grafton Street, Oxford Road, Manchester.

The Rev. Dr. Brock having resigned the pastorate which he has so long and so honourably held at Bloomsbury Chapel, it has been decided to present him with a testimonial in the form of an annuity of not less than £200 a year. Never was such a testimonial better deserved.

The College at Haverfordwest held its annual meeting a few weeks since, the interest of the meeting being all the greater from the fact that the Rev. G. H. Rouse, who is going immediately to resume his work in India, then took leave of the College. Mr. Rouse was presented by the students with a handsome gold watch. The report for the year was entirely satisfactory.

The foundation stone of a new chapel has been laid at Faversham, Kent, for the ministry of the Rev. A. Bax.-The memorial stone of a new chapel has been laid in Lordship Lane, Dulwich, for the pastorate of the Rev. H. J. Tresidder. - The Baptist chapel, Bassaleg, Monmouthshire, has been reopened, after repair and enlargement.-A new chapel has been opened at Abingdon, for the ministry of the Rev. W. Pontifex. -A new chapel has been opened at

Shoreham, Sussex, for the ministry of the Rev. J. W. Harrald.-The foundation stone of a new chapel has been laid at Dalton-in-Furness, for the ministry of the Rev. D. Thomas.

The Rev. T. Hanger has been publicly recognised as the pastor of the Church at Highbridge, Somerset. -The Rev. J. P. Owen has been recognised as the pastor of the Church meeting in Salem Chapel, Burtonon-Trent.-The Rev. J. P. Davies has been recognised as the pastor of the churches, Ebenezer and Penuel, Bryndery, South Wales.

The following reports of MINISTERIAL CHANGES have reached us since our last issue:-The Rev. J. Stock, LL.D., of Devonport, to his former pastorate at Salendine Nook, near Huddersfield; the Rev. J. G. Hall, of Irwell Terrace, Bacup, to Astley Bridge, Bolton; the Rev. T. James, of Cookhill, to Blakeney, Gloucestershire; the Rev. C. Bright, of Church, Accrington, to Lodge Road, Birmingham; the Rev. T. Wheatley, of the Metropolitan Tabernacle College, to Weston-superMare; the Rev. C. Chant, of Honiton, to Dalton, North Devon; the Rev. W. F. Gooch, of Diss, Norfolk, to Falmouth, Cornwall; the Rev. G. Charlesworth, of Maiseyhampton, to Wincanton, Somerset; the Rev. R. J. Mesquitta, of Pershore, Worcester, to Warkworth, Northumberland. The Rev. H. Angus has resigned the pastorate of the Church in Claremont Street, Shrewsbury.