betoken natural vitality, as well as the possibility of his being vitalized in a yet higher sense. "The crea · ture itself shall yet be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." Withal, however, man is degraded, like an outcast, for the present, from his God. He is polluted, and he thinks he is pure. He is condemned, and he does not feel that he deserves it-nay, to speak the truth in love, he is under the curse of his God, and yet he lives anticipating a heaven to which he knows not the way. Of all the examples of this which modern times supply, none is more signal than that of Dr Chalmers. He long lived unconscious of his real condition, and without any real feeling that he was a sinner, or any heart-felt desire to escape from the consequences of sin. From the very pulpit he indignantly denounced those views of Jehovah's truth which relate to the guilt and the misery of man. "The rewards of heaven," he exclaimed, "are attached to the exercise of our virtuous affections." "Let us tremble to think that any thing but virtue can recommend us to the Almighty." So little did he know of the world of iniquity that exists in even a single member-the tongue *-that he deemed it the dictate of 66 a gloomy and unenlarged mind" to suppose that "the Author of nature required the death of Jesus merely for the reparation of violated justice." He argued that our "sincere but imperfect obedience is looked upon by heaven with a propitious eye." No feeling of the sinfulness of sin-no consciousness of its antagonism to God-no adequate knowledge of the Godhead's purity-no recognition of the effects of the fall, as they are presented in the oracles of God. It was reason, not revelation, that guided his mind. It was natural conscience, and not the Spirit of God, that controlled him; and while that is the case, man, however gifted, or genius, however soaring, can only grope, like the blind for the wall. The fountains of the great deep of sin must be broken up when no

James iii. 6.

28

THE REFUGE OF LIES.

thing else will do. The waters must sweep in anger over the gilded scene of moral carelessness or of crime, before the rainbow of peace can spread its arch in the sky; and when that is done, man's confidence in virtue and virtuous affections will be seen to be only a refuge of lies, a building on the sand, a labouring in the fire, a sowing of the wind to reap the whirlwind.

What unaided reason cannot grasp, nor mental power the most consummate comprehend, the Spirit of God has often explained to babes. The work of the Spirit, then, in the heart of man should be deeply pondered; for without it even the work of the Son of God would not avail to save the sons of men.

The Bidden Life.

The mysteriousness of religion to unconverted men-Prayer-The study of the Word-Dr. Paley-The missionary spirit-Schwartz-Martyn-Macdonald-The martyr's spirit-Polycarp-His death-The safety of the hidden life in its origin—Its nature-Its actings-Its consummation.

THAT life which the Christian leads, after he is raised from death in sin by the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, is perfectly mysterious and incomprehensible to the men whom the Holy Spirit does not teach; it is "hid with Christ in God." If we follow some of the little birds which gladden the ear as they soar and sing, we sometimes find that they ascend so high into the blue above us, that our eye cannot discern them. Their song may flow down in richest melody to regale and arrest us, till we pause to gaze and listen; but we cannot see, we can only hear, the fountain of that gladness -and so it is with the life of a believer. It is something that lies beyond the ken and the scrutiny of all whom the Holy Spirit does not teach. The world may witness the efforts which that believer makes for the good of others in the cause of God; it may notice how the Christian changes his old habits and forsakes his old haunts, and it may assail him on that account; but the mainspring and the motive of these efforts the world cannot know. Or the peculiar joys of the believer may be told in richest description to those whom the Spirit does