into the joy of thy Lord,"-can come,-(as God wishes it to come)-also to us!

Young Reader! Value Religious emotions and Pious feelings, especially in early life,-as the most precious of all God's gifts,-but value them, as He intends them to be valued, as a Means to an End. Do not rest on them,-grasping the Shadow for the Substance ;-they are intended to lead to, but are not in themselves,-" Conversion." A religion which costs you nothing is just no Religion at all ! Depend upon it, a religion of mere sentiment, without the Cross, will never win the Crown! "Without Holiness no Man shall see the Lord," Heb. xii. 14.

THE YOUNG BELIEVER DISCOURAGED.

Without this true View of "Conversion" being taught him, the Young Christian may become utterly discouraged. Why! I quite thought that at such and such a time I was Converted,❞—and yet here are all the old sins still! Why I quite thought from that day all would be Happiness and Peace!

I thought that there would be no more doubts, no more very great, or, at any rate,-very successful,-temptations, and that I should fall no more into any very serious sins.” Did you? Then, dear young Reader, you were expecting a Life contrary to the experience of every child of God! To be "Born again,"-is not so easy a matter! The change from a State of Nature to a State of Grace is not so easily effected! It is the Work of a Lifetime! Else what are we here" three-score years and ten" for?

You are expecting the Crown,-before the Cross, the Victory before the Conflict! It cannot be! The Christian must be tried! As a young Christian you are expected to prove a true, not a sham,-" fair weather only," Soldier of the Cross. Our Saviour's own path led Him to the Cross on Calvary! The Christian's life would be unintelligible,if there was no trial-no conflict-no foe to face,-no fighting a good fight of Faith,-no Satan to oppose,-no confidence in God to be tried!

GIVING IT ALL UP.

Many youths,-looking to themselves alone,-and forgetting the power of the Almighty,-conclude that Christ's precepts are, at least to the immense majority of Mankind, -infinitely too high for poor human nature to entertain the slightest hope of following them. Thus, the precepts of Jesus Christ, in regard-for instance,-to absolute purity in Life, and even in Thought,-the "giving up all, and follow

ing Him," the "loving our neighbour,"-nay, even our enemy, "as ourselves," &c. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,"-are Precepts so transcendently high as to be ineffectual, because impossible to follow. It is to be feared that many, usefully engaged in Christian work, having to come in constant contact with these precepts, are so depressed with the immense contrast presented by their own practice, and the lives of those around them, to the teaching of Christ,—that they say, “I cannot go on preaching to others what I do not, and cannot, follow myself, it is a farce to do so," and give up in sheer despair!

WE HAVE ETERNITY TO WORK IN.

Being Himself Divine, how could our Saviour's Precepts and Standard be anything else but transcendent" and Godlike? But, dear Reader, we must remember that, to reach that Standard of being perfect, the Christian will have Eternity in which to approach,-without ever reachingDivine goodness! This is merely the Commencement of the Christian's life! If God gives the desire, He will, in time, give the ability. "I can do all things through Christ strengthening me.

The fault surely lies in looking too much at the " impossible of man, and forgetting that " with God all things are possible." Because neither we, nor those around us, seem able, at present, to obey the Gospel precepts, are we to madly give up all faith,—in the amazing changing power of God, the Holy Spirit,—and that life of prayer which we are assured will lead ultimately to our becoming "sons of God"?

No one denies for a moment the immense corruption of the Christian church, if judged by Christ's standard. Where Is the consistent "Christian"? may well be asked in 1907.

TRUE CONVERSION.

It certainly requires Faith to believe that the wondrous change can take place. But before the mysterious and blessed influence of God the Holy Spirit a marvellous change is experienced. That terrible hunger and greed after gain, and money, for instance,-that terrible Sin of Covetousness, the sin of our day (and the Sin especially of the English-speaking Race)-relaxes its fearful hold upon the Soul, as higher ambitions, and hopes, begin to dawn upon the Believer.

So with the Besetting Sin,-Intemperance,-Immorality, -Dishonesty,-Irreligion,-whatever it may be. God the Blessed Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier,-can, in time,—but

it takes time, if earnestly sought,-entirely change that deadly Selfish Heart,-change the entire Character, Ambitions, and Desires! Do you doubt it? Well, look around you! What! never seen that wondrous change in any Companion, Relative, or Friend? It is incredible! We see it,—thank God, certainly! Nay! We experience it,-as Believers, -ourselves! And you, if you only persevere in a Prayerful and Christian Life,-shall experience it too! Things,which once were everything to us,-upon which the then worldly, selfish, Christless heart was set,-are nothing,thank God,-to us now! The taste for them has gone! We have something better now! This is CONVERSION," -the true Change, for Time and for Eternity!

EXCITEMENT.

There never was a time when it was more needful to bear in mind that all things in Nature designed to be lasting and permanent, much more, all things connected with Religion, must, from the Constitution of things, be of extremely slow and gradual growth.

In these days of increased intelligence and excited feeling, we demand Preachers who can thunder and lighten, and urge their hearers forward by a succession of powerful impulsesalmost without their knowing it-into the kingdom of Heaven. What an idea of unreal and fictitious growth do such means present to us, to which all things in Nature-and, above all, God's dealings with Mankind-offer a denial. With God all things are possible; but except in occasional instances, upon which we have no authority to rely-they being the exception, not the rule-His dealings with man have been as remarkable for their extreme deliberation as for their inevitable accuracy and certainty. Although hopelessly and fatally corrupt, a hundred and twenty years are given to a World, altogether corrupt, to repent, before it is destroyed. A hundred and twenty years did Noah warn the sinners before the Flood of the Wrath to come, while, though the World went on as usual, he was ever building the Ark. It is probable that they only laughed at the "foolish old man,” who had been toiling for a hundred years on his mad scheme : for we learn how few righteous and repenting would have stayed God's hand when His judgment waited till righteous Lot was in a place of safety. Noah, we are told, was "a Preacher of Righteousness," but he preached in vain! The hundred and twenty years" of God's long-suffering slowly passed; and God warned Noah, at length, to go into the Ark. Louder than ever laughed the scoffers around him, at the silly old man and his family shut in on dry land, they

ate, they drank, but the rain came, the very windows of heaven were opened, the fountains of the great Deep were broken up, and swept them all away!

"The Earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the Earth; and God saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the Earth, and the Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive with man, yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. In the Second Month and the Seventeenth day of the Month, the same day were all the fountains of the great Deep broken up and the windows of Heaven were opened. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered."-Genesis vi. 7.

Again, a city, with not ten unpolluted by frightful sin, is visited by God Himself, to see whether they have done altogether according to the report," before it is overwhelmed. The dealings of the Creator with His creatures undoubtedly exhibit amazing long-suffering, "not willing that any should perish." But such examples only serve to confirm the certainty of judgment which overtakes the hardened and habitual sinner before he can persuade himself that there is any cause for alarm. Hence the caution with which the many extraordinary accounts of sudden changes in those old and con

firmed in sin should be propagated, especially amongst the young and unthinking; for they tend to encourage fallacious hopes, and fail in every way to stimulate the young to earnest and real endeavours after a better life, while time and opportunity are theirs. The Thief on the Cross, we may conjecture, although we are not positively told so, may have never heard or known of Christ before. This man was undoubtedly converted and accepted while upon the Cross; but does this apply to one who has known from very Childhood all the truths of the Gospel, and yet known them in vain? How little do we know of the former life, the circumstances, the state of Society in which this man had lived! If he for the first time had heard of good, how little can we understand that degree of faith, in a Criminal of those dark times, which enabled him to discern in one convicted, crucified, and reviled, a Saviour who would shortly be the Lord over Heaven and Earth-a faith surpassing that of His immediate followers, who had been with Him from the first-amidst the tumult and excitement of the scene, with the knowledge that in a few hours at the longest he must pass into eternity, and the consciousness that he was looking for the last time on the world around, which enabled him to address to Christ those touching words, "Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom." Was this intended as an ordinary case of one whom sin and Satan had been hurrying on from one stage of guilt and pollution to another? Is this a case, constantly as we hear it brought forward, which-till we know more of its unusual features,—we dare to cite to others as an instance of the ordinary dealings of God-the ordinary termination of a polluted, woeful, drunken, criminal, immoral, misspent life? Surely the parallel case of the parable of the workmen not called to work in the vineyard until the eleventh hour is not meant to encourage any madly to risk his all upon the chance of a late, so called "Conversion." The object of the parable, designed as all were for certain states of mind in those who heard them, aimed rather to reprove the jealousy, which, having all things, could not feel pleasure in their being also bestowed on others.

Surely, when Piety and its duties have been presented to the mind from very early days, there can be no application of this often misapplied parable, seeing that the "Call" to a Religious life a life of Piety towards God has already gone forth, not in the "eleventh " hour, but in youth, long ago.

The gracious words, "Let the wicked forsake his way," etc., and again, But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all My statutes, and