held their charge, even so we believe it to have been revealed by the angels' Lord that, this sure groundwork being established, not to a single inheritor only, but to all them that should be heirs of His salvation, would they be sent forth as ministers of His who do His pleasure.

"God with us!" The mystery of godliness 66 seen of angels," and which still they "desire to look into!" The only means whereby that great reformation may be achieved whereafter the whole creation groaneth and the hearts of men continually aspire: the only bond wherein an universal brotherhood may be established, and a reign of peace set up upon the earth: the only power whereby, from its fallen condition of impotency and uncleanness, the soul of man may be raised into union with God Himself, so that it shall be able to exclaim, "Now shall the Lord be my God!"

And to as many as would claim the "I am with thee" of the covenant token, we would say, See to it that it be counter-signed with the suretyship of Immanuel; see to it that you are seeking the Father through the Son; that for ever there be abandoned the attempt to scale the

heights of heaven by a ladder of good works, sacraments, earnest purposes; but that He who by His incarnation and atonement is made unto us the Way, the Truth, and the Life, be recognised as your one accepted means of access to the Majesty on High. For it is this revelation of Christ's atonement meeting our transgression, of Christ's righteousness covering our nakedness, of Christ's love warming into life our insensibility, of Christ's grace filling up our needs, that constitutes the new era, the Anno Domini, of the individual history, for ever bringing the soul into the fair haven of New Testament light and peace.

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And so sweet a subject is this one of the manifestation of God in Christ to the soul, so sacred a recollection that of our admission to the pavilion of His presence, and of His Spirit's drawing up our mind to high and heavenly things," so vivid the remembrance of the wonder and joy with which, looking back upon that season, we exclaimed, "Surely the Lord was in this place," that we would fain linger here, exclaiming with him whose records we have already cited, "Oh, the inward peace, composure, and god-like serenity of such a season! Heaven must

needs differ from this only in degree-not in kind!"

But the charter-roll is written within and without. The Bethel pillar is a memorial, not only of God's manifestation of Himself to the soul, but with equal certainty of the believer's dedication of himself unto the Lord. The deed or covenant whereby the pilgrim enrols his name as a true servant of the Most High, is dated thence. In other words, conversion implies dedication, trust, anticipation.

Conversion! A word avoided; a necessity ignored; a miracle wrought now in the earth by the power of the Holy Ghost which men refuse to see, and in which they will not believe. For the Royal certificate given at Bethel, thousands of forged papers are issued and have currency in the world; and the world's scrutineers are willing to receive in its stead passports of orthodoxy and their own smoothly written letters of credit, and hold him as fanatical and too superstitious who seeks to discover the autograph and sign-manual of the King.

And yet this conversion is a reality. And yet the Lord the Spirit is working on the earth

resigned to His operations by its great Purchaser and Redeemer who has not left Himself without a witness, in that by some mighty invisible Agency men and women are, even in our own day, translated from the power of Satan unto God.

From one end of the earth to the other, its inhabitants are drawn to behold the achievements of science and the results effected by nature's hidden forces brought to light and cunningly developed in this age of progress. But turn aside and come in hither. The marvellous work behold amazed! Here is a spec

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tacle concerning which angels in heaven and devils in hell have held earnest discourse. Within this chamber is found a converted soul. stand in its fullest sense the import of these words. They signify, if they signify anything at all, that of the basest and most defiled material there has been fashioned a temple for the High and Holy One that inhabiteth eternity. They signify that from the most degraded slavery one has been rescued and admitted into the Family of the King. They signify that the heirdom to an inheritance unfading and everlasting has been

conferred unreservedly and with positive certainty of possession. They signify that an unseen contest has been waged with the prince of this world who had gathered his legions to the fight; and that there hath been victory and spoil, and that the prize of an immortal soul hath been wrested from him for ever. And, yet further, by conversion it is implied that upon this same base material there has been put forth a transforming agency whereof the effects are visible to all-that by some unseen influence, more secret, and a hundredfold more potent, than those furnished to the most successful investigators of science, there has been exerted upon the invisible spirit an energy and a change whereof the results are made manifest to them that are without-that the work has been achieved which required God for its execution, and that a heart by nature alien from, and in rebellion against, its Creator, has been so wrought upon by a Divine miracle that it now beats in unison with the heart and will of the Lord Most High.

He who, raising his memorial pillar, marks the revelation of the Lord as the Saviour of his soul, at the same moment engraves thereon the