convert is abandoned, because of its felt temptations or its supposed dangers. It is not known that every sphere has its own difficulties. It is forgotten that, if God has placed us even in Sardis, he can sustain us there; and at the bidding of a subtle legal spirit, a voluntary humility, an unequivocal will-worship, is cherished by the soul. So strong does this tendency sometimes appear, that young Christians have often been haunted by doubts whether they should pray, because they feel that sin mingles with their prayers. Now, this is walking in fetters. It is dwelling in the shadow of Sinai. It is a soul still in the desert, or at best only crossing the Jordan. It is not the liberty which Christ imparts. It is not the freedom to which the spirit of adoption leads. It is not the gospel honoured so much as the gospel transmuted into the law.

In process of time, however, such a soul, if really touched by the Spirit of all grace, emerges from this condition. The feet are set in a large place, and the soul runs in the way of God's commandments. It is true that such a scrupulosity of mind may be indulged even till spiritual disease is formed, and a morbid frame becomes the result; or prayer may be hindered, the throne of grace forsaken, and the soul allowed to shrivel up and wither like a plant without rain or dew. But when the Spirit of God is indeed the teacher of the soul, it emerges from this doubting condition. It passes into a more evangelical state, and stands fast in the liberty with which Christ makes free. His finished work is better understood and more believingly contemplated, and in him the soul becomes complete. Indeed, it is to this point that all evangelical experience tends, namely, putting the Saviour where the Father puts him, as the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end of all. That is liberty, and all else has some mixture of bondage in it.

Such are some exhibitions of the young Christian's spiritual state. Sometimes the soul passes into great light and joy from amid the darkness of nature.

At

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other times it is long bewildered and perplexed; so that when the day should dawn, it is rather like the evening twilight. At yet other times, there is manifest, it may be, a slow, but withal a steady progress towards the clear light of the perfect day; and thus, according to the different operations of the one Spirit, sons and daughters are prepared for glory-the turbulence of nature is stilled by grace; its rebellion is quelled, and the daystar arises in the heart. But while we rejoice to trace these dealings of the Spirit with the soul, there is one solemn thought which cannot but force itself on our attention. As one, and another, and another, is thus weeded out from the world, and transplanted into the garden of the Lord, oh! what is happening to those who are still left behind-still at ease in the world's arms-nay, asleep in the arms of death? Is it to be ever thus with them? Unwarned by all that happens, are they resolved to die the second death? Surely they are fast hastening to a worse corruption-fast sinking into a deeper and more hopeless abyss! Or what shall we think of those who, having once given promise of better things to come, have relapsed into their native ungodliness, so that the latter end is worse than the beginning? Surely, when such men see one and another of those around them fleeing for refuge to the hope set before them, they should arise and do their first works. Surely, when they feel the power of corruption rising higher and higher, like water in the victim of dropsy, they should awake to their true condition, and seck the Fountain opened for sin. It is thus that the wanderer is reclaimed, and the polluted made pure. It is thus that hope supplants despair, that life dethrones death, that the Saviour is hailed to as our hope and joy, and the soul carried onward and upward to the dwelling-place of the Redeemed.

It is the dream of many that the Papacy is gradually improving that it is not now what it was when its chief trod on the neck of princes, drank the blood of the saints, and ordered Te Deums over dragonades and mas

THE PAPACY-THE WORLD.

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sacres. It is the fond notion of some that the world is improving; and the time is anticipated, by the sanguine but the ignorant, when the spread of knowledge shall so ameliorate man, that virtue shall be enthroned and vice laid in chains. Both are equally deluded. The truth is, that the Papacy is becoming worse and worse, more loathsome and oppressive from year to year, because its antagonism to the truth of God is becoming more and more intense, as that truth more loudly asserts its high prerogative to rule for good. And the world, in one point of view, becomes more and more ungodly as the church of Christ grows more and more pure. We mean, the world is left to sink into deeper sin, because it is resisting another and another proof that God is among men of a truth. It is this that hangs the future of our earth in darkness,-and it is this that should prompt the believer to live upon his watch-tower, to come out and be separated, lest he be found swelling the aggregate of the world's corruption.

CHAPTER XV.

Youthful Godliness—Che Genuine and the
Counterfeit.

.... and

I have seen a fair structure begun with art and care, and raised to half its stature, and then it stood still by the misfortune or negli gence of the owner, and the rain descended, and dwelt in its joints, and supplanted the contexture of its pillars; and having stood a while, like the antiquated temple of a deceased oracle, it fell into a hasty age. . . . . 80 descended into ruin. So is the imperfect, unfinished spirit of a man; it lays the foundation of a holy resolution, and strengthens it with vows and arts of prosecution; it raises up the walls, sacraments and prayer, reading and holy ordinances . . . . . but the building stays, and the spirit is weary, and the soul is naked and exposed to temptation, and in the days of storm, takes in everything that can do it mischief .... and then declines to death and sad disorder."-JEREMY TAYLOR.