died, and was buried in the large family vault, side by side with his ancestors, men of worldly power and renown; his funeral obsequies were attended with great pomp and solemnity; tearless mourners were there-mourners who loved his gold far more than they did him. Let us draw our attention to the funeral of the poor man. He was carried to the grave; his wife and children were the only mourners, but they were real ones. They had lost one whom they dearly loved. The poor widow left the grave, consoling herself with these words, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." But where was the soul of this rich man? Like Dives in the parable, he was now in unutterable misery, where the worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched; and this poor man, who in his life-time received evil things, now he is comforted, and this once rich man is tormented. Be not deceived, God is not mocked, "for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Dear reader, which would you prefer to be the man of wealth, whom all the nation worshipped, and be consigned to endless misery; or to be that humble servant of God, work early and late to earn your daily bread, and at last receive a crown of glory, a robe washed in the blood of the Lamb, and sing glory to the Lamb for ever and ever? This is but a feeble picture I have drawn, but one of every-day occurrence. Let every one consider that wealth will be no use the other side

of the grave. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where the rust and moth doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal." We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. How true it is that whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth! How often it has been observed that a man rising from the greatest obscurity, with a hatred to God and His glorious Gospel, making his way in the world, gold pouring into his coffers, as if by magic; he rises to eminence, is a man of great popularity, has a seat in parliament, spending his life in every thing that is evil; but these have their portion in this life. On the other hand, you see some of God's chosen people who never seem to succeed in anything; troubles rush upon them, disease, and other trials, which God sends to try the faith of His servants; but they have not their portion in this life, by the grace of God they are more than conquerors through Him who hath loved them. Now is the accepted time, delay not till to-morrow; you are neither dead nor damned, you may be both soon.

"Sinner, come, the Lord entreats,
Come thou to His mercy-seat;
Pardon He will freely give-
Sinner, come whilst still you live.”

Time is short, eternity is long; this world is for employment, heaven for enjoyment; this world for the cross, heaven for the crown, W. MORLEY. Stoke Ferry, July 6th, 1861.

WE are often in a prodigious hurry in our devotions. How much time do we spend in them daily? Can it not be easily reckoned in minutes?

Probably many of us would be discomposed by an arithmetical estimate of our communion with God.

It might reveal to us the secret of our apathy in prayer, because it might disclose how little we desire to be alone with God. We might learn from such a computation that Augustine's idea of prayer, "as the measure of love," is not flattering to us. We do not grudge time given to a privilege which we love.

Why should we expect to enjoy a duty which we have no time to enjoy? Do we enjoy anything which we do in a hurry?

Enjoyment pre-supposes something of mental leisure. How often do we say of a pleasure, "1 wanted more time to enjoy it to my heart's content ?"

But of all employments, none can be more dependent on "time for it" than stated prayer.

In the royal gallery at Dresden may be often seen a group of connoisseurs, who sit for hours before a table painting. They walk around those halls and corridors, whose walls are eloquent with the triumphs of art, and they come back and pause again before the masterpiece. They go away, and return the next day, and again the first and the last object which charms their eye is that

canvas on which genius has pictured more of beauty than any other in the world. Weeks are spent every year in the study of that one work of Raphael.

Lovers of art cannot enjoy it to the full, till they have made it their own by prolonged communion with its matchless forms. Says one of its admirers "I could spend an hour every day, for a year, upon that assemblage of human, and angelic, and divine ideals, and on the last day of the year discover some new beauty and a new joy."

I have seen men standing in the street before an engraving of that gem of the Dresden gallery a longer time than a good man will sometimes devote to his evening prayer. Yet, what thought, what ideal of grace, can genius express in a painting, demanding time for their appreciation and enjoyment, like those great thoughts of God, of heaven, of eternity, which the soul needs to conceive vividly, in order to know the blessedness of prayer? What conditions can art imagine of the "Divine Child," which can equal in spirituality the thoughts which one needs to entertain of Christ in the "prayer of faith?" We cannot hope, commonly, to spring into possession of such thoughts in the twinkling of an eye.

Prayer, as we have observed, is an act of friendship also. It is intercourse; an act of trust, of hope, of love, all prompting to interchange

infinite,

between the soul and an spiritual, invisible Friend. We all need prayer, if for no other purpose, for this which we so aptly call communion with God.

Zinzendorf, when a boy, used to write little notes to the Saviour, and throw them out of the window, hoping that He would find them. Later in life, so strong was his faith in the friendship of Christ, and in his own need of that friendship as a daily solace, that once, when travelling, he sent back his companion that he might converse more freely with "the Lord," with whom he spoke audibly.

So do we all need friendly converse with Him whom our soul loves. He alone is a thousand companions. He alone is a world of friends. That man never knew what it was to be familiar with God who complains of the want of friends while God is with him.

But who can originate such conceptions of God as are necessary to the enjoyment of His friendship in prayer, without time for thought, for self-collection, for concentration of soul? Momentary devotion, if genuine, must pre-suppose the habit of studious prayer.

Who ever knew an eminently holy man who did not spend much of his time in prayer? Did ever a man exhibit much of the spirit of prayer who did not devote much time in his closet? Whitefield says, "Whole days and weeks have I spent prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer." "Fall upon your knees and grow there," is the language of another who knew whereof he affirmed. These, in spirit, are but

specimens of a feature in the experience of the eminent which is absolutely uniform.

It has been said that no great work in literature or in science was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay down as an elementary principle of religion that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often and alone with God. "This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." No otherwise can the great central idea of God enter into a man's life, and there dwell supreme.

GOOD FAMILY WORK. ONE Hundred Thousand Subscribers for the Christian's Penny Magazine. Will the friends of the Magazine please look to its interests, by securing prompt and energetic efforts to extend its circulation for the ensuing year?

Is it useful? Is it a cheap means of awakening sinners, reclaiming backsliders, and encouraging the toiling disciples of Christ? Who doubts it? And who, not doubting it, can deny that it ought to have a circulation of at least one hundred thousand? Mark the number! AT LEAST ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND.

How should the Penny Magazine be circulated?

The following are some of many ways-

1. By placing it in the pews of chapels. Let from fifty to two hundred copies, according to the size of the congregation, be placed monthly in the pews. Let the pastor call attention to them from

the pulpit, requesting the people to take them home, read them, and give them to their neighbours. This means alone, if generally employed, would secure us a circulation of hundreds of thousands, and be instrumental of great spiritual good.

2. By distributing it in the Sunday schools, at the rate of one to every family represented. It can be given to the children to carry home as a gift from their teachers to their parents. This plan would make every child a tract distributor, and would carry the good news of salvation to multitudes of persons otherwise inaccessible. Will Sundayschool men see to this?

3. By individual distribution. We have thousands of brethren and sisters in our churches who can easily afford to buy a pound's worth of copies per annum to give away to callers at their places of business, to their servants, to persons in the street, on the rails or steamboats, and to such other parties as they may providentially meet. Thus Scattering holy truths, they may, at

a trifling cost and trouble to themselves, save many a soul from death. If five hundred brethren would thus circulate one hundred copies each, they would annually scatter 600,000 numbers of this little Magazine among the people.

4. By volunteer tract distributors. Every church should have its corps of tract distributors, particularly in large cities. For example, there are hackmen, sailors, labourers, mechanics, whole classes of communities unreached by the Gospel, but within reach of faithful tract distributors. Many of these would take the Penny Magazine readily, and read it with interest and profit, if placed in their hands. We might in this way usefully circulate 500,000 copies a year in London alone.

Finally, Christian love is full of device, and were the church inspired with a strong WILL to circulate even half a million copies of the Penny, she would easily find a WAY. May God work among us both to will and to do this great work!

a priest, and founded his order by meeting with a few friends, amongst whom was the celebrated Francis Xavier. Luther had been thundering against the Pope, and the church was losing ground. The new order undertook to defend the papacy, and took the title of the Society of Jesus, and hence the name Jesuits. The

Popes showered privileges upon it by special bulls, and Benedict XIV. called them the "Janissaries of the church." They flattered the vices of the rich, and indulged the superstitions of the ignorant. But Macaulay shall paint their accommodation to human vanity and vice in his magnificent prose:

"It was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit which made the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his liberty, and of his life, made him also regardless of truth and of mercy; that no means which could promote the interest of his religion seemed to him unlawful, and that by the interest of his religion he too often meant the interests of his Society. It was alleged that, in the most atrocious plots recorded in history, his agency could be distinctly traced; that, constant only in attachment to the fraternity to which he belonged, he was in some countries the most dangerous enemy of freedom, and in others the most dangerous enemy of order. The mighty victories which he boasted that he had achieved in the cause of the church were, in the judgment of many illustrious members of that church, rather apparent than real. He had, indeed, laboured with a wonderful show of success to reduce the world under her laws; but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to the noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered the standard till it was beneath the average level of human nature. He gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the remote

regions of the East; but it was reported that from some of those converts the facts on which the whole theology of the Gospel depends had been cunningly concealed, and that others were permitted to avoid persecution by bowing down before the images of false gods, while internally repeating Paters and Aves. Nor was it only in heathen countries that such arts were said to be practised. It was not strange that people of all ranks, and especially of the highest ranks, crowded to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples; for from those confessionals none went discontented away. There the priest was all things to all men. He showed just so much rigour as might not drive those who knelt at his spiritual tribunal to the Dominican or the Franciscan church. If he had to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in the saintly tones of the primitive fathers; but, with that large part of mankind who have religion enough to make them uneasy when they do wrong, and not religion enough to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a different system. Since he could not reclaim them from vice, it was his business to save them from remorse. He had at his command an immense dispensary of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of casuistry which had been written by his brethren, and printed with the approbation of his superiors, were to be found doctrines consolatory to transgressors of every class. There the bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin, secrete his goods from his creditors. The servant was taught how he