strangely with sudden sickness and the powers of death, we are stunned for the moment-he dies-we sigh-we shed a tear-moralize-and then to our ways again. The holiday (holy day) is over, and the work, work, work, of sin, of carelessness, of worldliness, of contempt of salvation it may be, engages us afresh till our turn comes-is this manly? Men, young men especially, take a word of advice. You know the ways of sin and vice are ways of folly and of shame. You know that the minister of the Gospel, the Gospel itself, the Lord of the Gospel, are striving for your temporal and eternal happiness. Can you, will you, barter all that God puts before you, for a mess of pottage? For the pleasures of sin for a little season? Can you not muster courage to say "I am the image and glory of God, how dare I live in sin! How dare I prostitute the noble faculties of my body and soul to do the drudgery of the devil! How dare I mock and vex God's servants?" But I refrain-in our little village home, we ought not to have young men the greatest hindrances to the spread of the Gospel; they ought to be the main-stays of religion. Let me affectionately and earnestly invite them to think, to consider, to use those means which are near at hand, to raise them in intelligence, in morals, in godliness. Let me also beg of them who are older, as fathers and masters and others, to set a good example, so as to shew youth the road to man, that man who is "the image and glory of God." THE WELL-BELOVED GAIUS. 3 JOHN 1. "The elder unto the well-beloved Gaius." HOW many a Christian has lived and died in obscurity, their virtues and their vices confined, as we should say, to a narrow sphere; but they were known of God, and their names, although forgotten perhaps, on earth, are registered in heaven! Consider such a little village as ours. obscure, country-place. A quiet, In a map of England not put down at all, and in a map of the county printed Yet out of this little place in very small letters. many of its inhabitants have Their travels have been short. scarcely ever gone. Their knowledge of They will die here men and things is very limited. probably, and, one after another, be laid side by side in our quiet and beautiful churchyard, until the voice of the archangel and the trump of God wake them up in the morning of the resurrection. Yet each humble individual that lives in this humble place, has a soul as valuable as the soul of Queen Victoria, or of any great and illustrious individual talked of in books of history. And each person also exercises an influence as real, though not as great, as the nobles of the land; and should it be his happy lot, and it might be and should be, to be a real Christian, a lover of Jesus, his name is written in heaven. If the Divine Redeemer could say to His more immediate disciples, when they returned from a successful mission-" Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven," surely we poor sinners of the Gentiles, in the isles afar off, should learn hence to seek for the source of our enjoyment in the favour and blessing of the great God of heaven! John, the beloved disciple, whose name and whose praise have been always, and are still, in all the churches, wrote an epistle to a man named Gaius, or Caius. There are several of this name just mentioned in the New Testament, but we know next to nothing about them. Who this well-beloved Gaius was, where he dwelt, what were his circumstances, we know not; we can only infer from what is told us in this short letter. Why again it pleased God to have this short letter put into the Bible we cannot tell; but here it is. Known unto God are all His works; but they are not all known to us. Per |