party motives and petty disputations (mercifully overruled indeed) oftentimes accomplished more than the direct impulse of our christian zeal? Do not some of our churches (alas! how many) resemble an army disputing in the camp, rather than one marshalled on the battle-plain, or in systematic conflict with the enemy of man? And do not these jealousies and quarrels of ours exhibit us to the world's eye as pitiful and powerless ?

Are our officers always in conformity to the model churches? These officers are called deacons. Their qualifications are specified with great precision. They were to be men of eminent devotion, of superior wisdom, and of great amiability of spirit. Their hearts were to be capable of cherishing the sympathies and the discretion of domestic love. Thus qualified to rule well themselves and their own house, they were fitted to serve the church of God. Such deacons are great blessings when they are found among us. They are the cause of much happiness in a church, especially to the pastor's mind; for he has the most to do with them. Their simplicity and godly sincerity win his confidence and foster his cordial esteem. Their bosom is his sanctuary; and knowing the lovely concord that exists between their counsel and their inward feelings toward him, he greatly values their advice. Their "wholesome tongue is to him a tree of life."

On the other hand, how often have our churches been punished by forgetting the endowments named by divine wisdom, as essential to the deacon's office! We have just rejoiced with the minister whom we have supposed to be looking on some of these official brethren, in whose nobleness of mind he can repose, and whose wisdom he is glad to consult; and yet, it is possible that in reference to others he may be constrained to say inwardly, as he looks and passes on, there is Demas, a lover of money; and there is Diotrophes, a lover of power; and there is Alexander, the coppersmith, a lover of himself alone, and whose hammer of cruel words is ever ready to smite the honest heart that cannot love him. Self-will, bitterness of feeling, pride of wealth, fondness of authority, harshness of remark, familiar rudeness, are ungraceful things in any class of social life; but how especially uncomely do they appear in that community which ought to exhibit the meekness and gentleness of Christ!

Do our ministers resemble those of the model churches ? Our ministers are good men. Instances of departure from the line of moral virtue are of rare occurrence among them. As a body they are equal to those of any other churches, in mental power and mental cultivation. They have enough of talent and learning for the purposes of addressing the souls of men on the great subjects of the gospel ministry. It is, however, the opinion of some devout observers of our pulpit exercises, that we are in danger of neglecting the preachers of the model churches in a few points. We are apt to illustrate "the present truth" by foreign allusions; they set it forth by going at once to the bosoms and the business of men. We employ swelling words; they used great plainness of speech. We preach before the people; they preached to them. We invite the fancy; they smote the conscience. We spin round-about phrases; they uttered thought which came as a stream from its well-spring, strong, unbroken, clear.

A conversation between two excellent men here occurs to me. They had been listening to a sermon on a special occasion. I could name the preacher and the place if needful. The remarks of one of those amiable men were in words like these. "It was

a good sermon in point of truth, and correctness of diction; but not a word of it will be remembered to-morrow. The scriptures indicate true oratory by the arrow, the hammer, the fire. The sermon wanted the powerful directness which those images describe. There was nothing in it to pierce or to bruise ; nothing to rend or to melt." Preachers among us are divided into two classes, those who endeavour to convince the judgment, and those who attempt to move the passions. The accurate reasoner untwists as fine a thread of argument before a village congregation as if he were intending to instruct the students of a college. He therefore makes no impression. Then, again, the mere pathetic preacher is despised by an intelligent audience, who take incessant attempts on their hearts to be little less than contempt offered to their intellect. Either of the two qualifications apart, is but one-half of a preacher. The efficient preacher unites them both in himself. His reasonings are animated, and his attacks on the passions rational. He interests the whole man at once. You are convinced and warned at the same time. His conceptions are natural, his reasonings clear, his imagination

vivid, and his words are all on fire. As he employs every power of his own soul, you hear him with every faculty of yours. While you listen, every fibre of your heart vibrates with emotion. A discourse that does not strike at both head and heart, strikes efficiently at neither. The principal work, however, of a sermon is with the heart; for on the great subject of eternal life and death the judgment is already settled; and the affections only need to be stirred and rectified. When God came down on the trembling mount, he delivered his law in thunder and in flame. When incarnate mercy revealed the divine will, he did it in the language of tears and of blood. These were examples of speaking in terror and in sweetness; but in each instance, it was speaking to the heart. DELTA.

ON GOD'S AVERSION TO SIN.

It is of the utmost importance to aim to cherish purely scriptural views of the character of God. Delusive hopes, needless fears, wrong modes of seeking pardon and eternal safety, are generally, if not always, associated with some kind of misapprehension respecting the character and ways of God. But whilst purely scriptural views of the character of God are important to us personally, they are so in a high degree, in order that all our endeavours to do good may be made in such a spirit as shall be to the honor of God, and likely to be succeeded by the influence of "the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." That God is averse to sin-that it is hateful to "the Holy One of Israel"— abhorred by "the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy," is as true as that "God is love;" and when we consider that we live in a disordered province of the great empire of "the King of kings," and witness much that is gloomy, and much that tends to perplex the mind, it is the more needful watchfully to cherish scriptural sentiments and feelings in relation to God, connected with our recognition of the truth that sin is hateful in his sight.

Why is God averse to sin ?—is a question worthy, on many accounts, of very definite consideration. To a few remarks on this question we respectfully invite the attention of our readers.

Sin is hateful to God on account of its nature, and on account of its tendency in other words, because it is wrong and because it is injurious. What we term sin, is a state of moral character essentially wrong. In illustration of this, we may refer to the first sin of our first parents. View them as having been created capable of high and perfect happiness as happy in reality, and as placed in a sphere of privilege and obligation, within the proper boundaries of which that happiness was offered to them for continued and perpetual enjoyment: and you will see that to trespass those boundaries was wrong, inasmuch as it was the want of a state of character corresponding to their relation to God as their benevolent author and the source of all their good. View them as surrounded by illustrations of the knowledge and wisdom of God, and it will be clear that what we term their sin was a wrong state of character, inasmuch as it was the substitution of their own wisdom, which proved to be folly, for the wisdom of God, which is unerring. View them as living and moving amid displays of the power of God-themselves the work of his hand-living in a Paradise, and partaking of fruits of the earth, all of which God had made out of nothing—and it will be clear that their sin was wrong, inasmuch as it was to act contrary to reason-to strive with their Maker-to expose themselves to the opposition of the power by which they were brought into existence. These are only some illustrative views of the sin of our first parents, as being a state of moral character essentially wrong: now all sin is wrong, and therefore hateful to the righteous God that loveth righteousness.

But it is also abhorred of God because it is injurious. Because God is benevolent, he hates sin. The injurious tendency of sin has been fearfully unfolded. It has diminished the number of holy and happy beings in heaven, and occasioned the existence of hell. It corrupted human nature at its spring, and has rendered this globe a burial ground. It has deluged nations from age to age with human blood, and forged fetters for human beings, that under those fetters they might be sold and employed as goods and chattels. It has taken possession of the apparently quiet homes of thousands of the children of men, and without the calamities of war-without the horrors of slavery—it has wrung the hearts of their inhabitants with anguish, thus rendering the wide world a "vale of tears." From age to age it has

converted opportunities of good into materials of present and endless remorse. It has benighted the understanding, polluted the imagination, deluded the reason, enslaved the will, seared the conscience, poisoned the feelings, and ruined the souls, of who shall say how many immortal creatures? Its evil will be illustrated by the fires of the final conflagration, when this world, that has been cursed for man's sake, shall be enveloped in flames. Its evil will perpetuate itself in the pit of destruction and whilst, amid "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth," its enormous evil will be ever felt, the magnitude of that evil will never be fully comprehended. When we consider these things, and remember that "God is love," need we wonder that he abhorreth all manner of iniquity?

Having offered these remarks upon God's aversion to sin, we shall close this paper by noticing one practical reflection which this truth suggests, viz.—that we are "labourers together with God" just so far as we are practically opposed to sin.

The gospel of Christ is a system of righteous, holy, and gracious opposition to sin, and interposition for sinners. "God is love;" and in order that he might exercise that love in the form of mercy on behalf of sinners, "he so loved the world as to give his only-begotten son," that partaking of human nature, yet “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners,” he might atone for human guilt, give himself a sacrifice for sin; and thus hold up in the great moral empire of Jehovah, such a display of his righteousness, his holiness, his aversion to sin, as that all his moral subjects in every part of his vast dominions might clearly see that whilst God pardoned sinners, he hated sin; and that all might feel that the mercy of God in Christ towards human creatures, afforded no warrant to any moral creatures in the universe to think it a light matter to sin, and come short of the glory of God. Thus the sacrifice of Christ had evident reference to the whole moral creation. It was a declaration of God's righteousness for the remission of sins; it was a condemnation of sin in the flesh, that it might be the ground of pardon and peace with God.

In all our efforts, therefore, on behalf of souls, if we would act in unison with the spirit of the "glorious gospel of the blessed God," it behoves us to exercise compassion for sinners in a spirit of opposition to sin. Whether Sunday school teachers,