taminations and unworthy passions that keep true Christians apart. From these let them be purified by the genial fires of love, or the sharp fires of suffering, and union will follow-follow as when the purified globules of quicksilver, brought into contact, run into each other's embraces to form one shining and brilliant mass. May God give his divine Spirit of love and unity for such a blessed end-a consummation so devoutly to be wished for. The prophecy fulfilled which foretells such an union, then, the redeemed of the cross, and elect of God, shall make up a countless company, one which no man can number-multitudes and myriads-offering such a contrast to the handful who follow the steps of the Man of sorrows, that we shall hear these words no more-- "Ye are a little flock."

"He cometh, he cometh to judge the earth;" and how? after what manner? in what royal state? "Behold he cometh with clouds "--clouds, that on their nearer approach to earth, when the general mass shall resolve itself into individual objects, may be found to consist of innumerable hosts of winged and shining angels. On that great occasion, the saints-countless as the atoms that float in the vapors of the sky, or the drops that fall in its showers-shall also form, to use Paul's expression, "a cloud of witnesses." Already they form a cloud in heaven; and to the eye of faith it is as those nebulous spots, which, by their great distance, shine only with a faint luminosity far away in the depths of the starry firmament, but which, under the eye and instruments of the astronomer, are resolved into a countless aggregate of burning suns.

IV. We are assured that God will bring all his peo

ple to glory, by the fact that his own honor, as well as their welfare, is concerned in the matter.

In that lay the salvation of ancient Israel. "How long will this people provoke me? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them; and I will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they." Thus spake the Lord to Moses, and how did he reply? He had certainly a great temptation to make no reply and let things take their course, since the issue would bring him and his such great advantage. Type of the Saviour, he flung himself between justice and her culprits. He ventures to remonstrate with God. He sets himself to show, that the destruction of Israelalthough the just punishment of their sins-might militate against God's declarative honor, and expose it to suspicion; and that, therefore, although he could not spare them for their sakes, he should spare them for his own. Moses was concerned for the fate of his countrymen. Like a true patriot, he declined to rise on their ruins; but more deeply concerned still for the honor of God, he takes courage to reply, "Then the Egyptian shall hear it, and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard of thee will speak, saying, Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he had slain them in the wilderness."

As it was then, so is it now. God's honor, and truth, and covenant, are all concerned-are, so to speak, compromised to make good the promise, that he will bring his redeemed to glory. It is, indeed, no easy work to bring believers safe to glory. When I think of the sins to be forgiven, and the difficulties to

be overcome, the wonder seems not that few get to heaven, but that any get there. We have read of voyages, where for nights the sailors enjoyed no sleep, and for days saw no sun. Lying at one time becalmed beneath a fiery sky, at another time shivering amid fields of ice; with sunken rocks around them, and treacherous currents sweeping them on dangerous reefs; exposed to sudden squalls, long, dark nights, and fearful tempests, the wonder was that their battered ship ever reached the port. I select a case of recent occurrence. Some while ago a vessel entered one of our western harbors, and the town poured out to see. Well they might. It had left the American shore with a large, able-bodied crew. They have hardly lost sight of land when the pestilence boards them; victim falls after victim; another and another is committed to the deep, as from deck to deck, and yard to yard she pursues her prey; nor does she spread her wings to leave that ill-fated ship, till she has left but two to work it over the broad waters of a wintry sea. And when, with Providence at the helm, these two men, worn by work and watching to ghastly skeletons, have brought their ship to land, and now kiss once more wives and little ones they never thought more to see, and step once more on a green earth they never more hoped to touch, men run to see the sight, and hear the adventures of a voyage brought against such dreadful odds to such a happy issue.

Yet there is never a bark drops anchor in heaven, nor a weary voyager steps out on its celestial strand, but is a still greater wonder. Save for the assurance that what God hath begun He will finish-that what concerns his people He will perfect-Oh, how often would our hope of final blessedness altogether expire.

Well might David say, "I had fainted unless I had believed." And knowing what we know, and feeling what we feel, how entirely may we acquiesce in the old remark, that the greatest wonder we shall see in heaven, shall be to see ourselves there.

Yet let Christians take comfort. Your good and God's glory ever run in the same direction. They are the parallel rails on which the chariot of salvation rolls. They shall bring you to the Jerusalem above. To compare small things with great, our journey there, with its dangers and changes, has sometimes appeared to me like that of a passenger to our own city. On these iron roads he now travels along rich and fertile plains; now, at a dangerous and dizzy height he flies across intervening valleys; now, he rushes through a narrow gorge cut in the solid rock, with nothing seen but heaven; now, boring into the earth, he dashes into some gaping cavern, for a while losing sight even of heaven itself, and then again he sweeps forth and on in sunshine, till at length the domes, and towers, and temples of the city burst on his view. And, these close at hand, he concludes his journey by passing through an emblem of death. He enters a gloomy arch, advances in darkness through a place of graves, and then, of a sudden, emerges into day, to feast his eyes on the glorious scenery, and receive the congratulations of waiting friends, as he finds himself safe "in the midst of the city."

Man Justified.

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.EZEKIEL XXxvi. 25.

In the earliest peopled regions of the world, there still stand some ancient monuments, bold in plan, and colossal in dimensions, defying both time and change. Raised, as these rude structures were, in the very infancy of art, and ere the giant arms of machinery had grown into their present strength, they are objects of deep interest, both to the architect and antiquary. How came these great stones there? By what means or machinery did man, in days so rude, raise such ponderous masses?

Science has questions as inexplicable to put regarding the works of nature. We climb a mountain range, and, standing on its apex, see valley and plain stretching far away to meet the ocean, that lies, gleaming, like a silver border, on the dim and distant horizon. After expatiating on the beauties of the scene around us, our eye turns downwards, and lights on a very extraordinary object—a shell—a plant-a zoophite, whose proper habitat is the low sea-shore-or, lower still, down in the dark depths of ocean-embedded in the rock. How came it here? what business has it here? We find, in fact, that, although now raised some thousand feet above the sea, the platform on which we stand had once been an ocean's bed. And