is to his delight in the exercise of his pity, love, and mercy, that we owe salvation, with all its blessings. Let us be humble and thankful. Man had as little to do with saving as with making himself: the creation of Eden and the cross of Calvary are equally the work of God; and Jehovah stands forth before the universe as not by one tittle less the Saviour than the Creator of the world. To display his glory in radiant effulgence to blaze it out on the eyes of delighted and adoring angels-to evoke the hidden attribute of mercy—to give expression to his love and pity-God resolved to save, and, in saving man, to turn this world into a theater for the most affecting tragedy and amazing love.

Salvation is finished. It is offered. Shall it be rejected? Take the good of it, and give Him the glory. "He is the God of salvation;" "in his name. we will set up our banners." In that ladder whereby faith climbs her way aloft to heaven, there is not a round that we can call our own. In this ark which, with open door, offers an asylum in the coming storm, a refuge in the rising flood-from stem to stern and keel to deck there is neither nail, nor plank, nor beam, that we can claim as ours. The plan of redemption was the design of infinite wisdom; its execution was left to dying love; and it is Mercy, generous Mercy, whose fair form stands in the open door, bidding, entreating, beseeching you all to come in. Listen to the voice of Jesus, "Come unto me, all ye that labor. and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And let his mother teach you how to speak, and learn from angels how to sing. With her-the casket of a divine babe yet unborn in her virgin

jewel, who held the

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wornb-with Mary say, "My soul doth magnify the Lord; my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour; for He that is mighty hath done great things to me, and holy is his name." Or, hark to the angels' song! glowing with seraphic fire, borrow seraphic words; and sing with them, ere they wheel their bright ranks for upward flight, "Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace and good will to men."

Man an Object of Divine Mercy.

Therefore say unto the house of Israel, I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name's sake.-EZEKIEL xxxvi. 22.

WE have seen a sere and yellow leaf, tenacious of its hold, hang on the tree all the winter through; and there it kept dancing and whirling idly in the wind, not beautiful or graceful, out of place and season, in humbling contrast with the young and fresh companions which budding spring had hung around it. Like that wrinkled and withered thing, some men (who were better in their graves) hang too long upon this world. They live too long; they die too late, for themselves at least. Half-dead and half-alive, mind and memory faded, surviving both their faculties and usefulness, and but mere wrecks of what once they were, they tax affection, to conceal from stran gers' eyes the sad ravages of time, and do for them the tender office of the ivy, when she kindly hides beneath her green and glossy mantle the crumbling ruin or old hollow tree.

It was the happy fate of Moses-and one most singular at his age-neither to outlive his honor nor usefulness: the day he laid down his leadership saw him lay down his life: death found him at his post. Palinurus was swept from the helm. When Heaven saw meet to take Moses, he was one whom the earth and church would have gladly retained: but the time

has arrived when the pilot, who, in calm and storm, through winter and summer seas, has steered the commonwealth of Israel for well nigh half a century, is to resign the helm into other hands. A faithful God calls a faithful servant to his reward and rest. He did not leave them, however, till these weary voyagers were brought within sight of land, and, indeed, to the mouth of the very haven they had so long desired and looked to see. The children of Israel have reached the banks of Jordan, and—grateful sight to eyes weary of these naked mountains and the dead flat level of barren sands-the people cluster with eager looks on every summit, and, scattered along the banks, they gaze across the flood on the Land of Promise. How they feed their eyes, and never weary looking on the verdant pastures, the golden harvests, the rocks clothed with vines, the swelling hills crowned with wood, the plains studded with villages and cities teeming with a population that told how rich the soil, and how well described, the land as one "full of corn and wine, and flowing with milk and honey." In this posture of affairs, before he ascends to his rest, Moses summons the tribes of Israel; and, like the members of a family who gather from their different and distant homes around a father's death-bed, they come to receive the old man's blessing, his parting counsels, and last, long farewell.

Propped upon pillows, bending on his staff, panting for breath, speaking in brief and broken sentences, by those groping hands that felt for Ephraim's and Manasseh's head betraying the stone-blindness of a great old age, Jacob gave his blessing to the twelve sons, who all-uncommon fortune in so large a family -survived their parent, and were themselves the

fathers of the living millions now swarming beneath the eye of Moses. But how different the bearing and aspect of Moses from that of the hoary patriarch! An old man! if not as old a man, of age not much short of Jacob's! One hundred and twenty years had passed on his head, but they had neither blanched his beard nor thinned his locks, nor drawn a wrinkle on his lofty brow: that eye had lost none of its fire, nor that arm any of its force, since the day when, striking in for a brother's cause, he bestrode a prostrate Hebrew, and, parrying the blow of the Egyptian, gave it back, like a battle-axe, on his head. Nearly the same age as Jacob, whose bent and venerable appearance, as he entered leaning on Joseph's arm, led Pharaoh to ask, "How old art thou?" Moses bore himself erect, and looked the same as on the day, forty years before, when he strode into Pharaoh's hall, and demanded of an angry king that the Hebrews should go free. The sun that went down in the evening of summer's longest day, sunk as full and bright, as if it had set at noon; "his eye was not dim, nor was his natural strength abated." His life closed amid the rich glories of the noblest address that grace, genius, patriotism, and piety ever uttered.

Standing on some rocky platform, with his back to the sky, and his face to the people, Moses delivered an address never forgotten, and that for long ages continued to sound its trumpet echoes in the ears, and to breathe courage into the hearts of Israel. He blessed the tribes in succession, and-charged with inspiration, as a cloud with lightning-he burst forth at the close into these glowing exclamations-"There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heavens in thy help; thy shoes shall be iron