and wicked companion. Be not a disgrace to me, and cause of condemnation to yourselves, by keeping company with idle talkers, swearers, drunkards, tipplers, frothy or lewd persons. Scarce any thing more infallibly brings persons to misery in this world, or to hell in the next, than loose and trifling companions. 'He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.' 'Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son; but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father.' Never make any your companions with whom you would not wish to oppear at the judgment seat of Christ, and with whom you would not wish to live for ever.-Brown. Familiar, condescending, patient, free, Come not in terrors, as the King of kings, But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings; Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea; Come, Friend of sinners, thus abide with me. Thou on my head in early youth didst smile, And though rebellious and perverse meanwhile, Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee; I need Thy presence every passing hour, What but Thy grace can foil the Tempter's power? Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be? Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me! I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless, I triumph still, if Thou abide with me! 9 THOSE Christ. HEIRS OF CHRIST. actually Christ's are heirs of An empire,' says Luther, 'is but a crust, which the Father of mercies may cast to a dog.' An empire without Christ is nothing; but Christ without an empire is any thing, is every thing, is all things. There have been few but the Nimrods and Nebuchadnezzars of the world, but the Sauls and Sennacheribs of the world, but the Pharaohs and Pilates of the world, that have been the lords of the world. Christ is the object of the nation's desire, the object of the Father's delight; and yet those actually His are heirs of Him. Christ is the Being of beings, as God; the Beauty of beauties, as man; and the Blessing of blessings, as God-man; and yet those actually His are heirs of Him. " My Beloved is mine, and I am His: He feedeth among the lilies.' Those actually Christ's are heirs of the weight and worth, that the topaz of grace of Christ. Grace is a pearl of that Ethiopia is but a pebble to this pearl, and not to be valued with it; and yet those who are actually Christ's are heirs of the grace of Christ. Grace is such a pearl that it entitles and entails glory; such a pearl as will go into glory when time goes into eternity; and yet those who are actually Christ's are heirs of the grace of Christ. Grace is so pure that there is no sin in it, and so precious that the whole fabric of salvation is laid upon it. grace are ye saved.' Yet those who are actually Christ's are heirs of the grace of Christ: since the day ye heard it, and knew the grace of God in truth.' By Those actually Christ's are heirs of the Spirit of Christ. What the body is without the soul, that the soul is without the Spirit. What the soul is to the body, that the Spirit is to the soul; and yet those who are actually Christ's are heirs of the Spirit of Christ. A man without the gales and gifts of the Spirit, without incomes and influences of the Spirit, is like a ship becalmed and weather-bound; and yet those, who are actually Christ's, are heirs of the Spirit of Christ. It is the Spirit that searcheth all things, yea, the depths old before she could distinctly articulate of God; it is the Spirit that witnesseth the letter R, if indeed she ever mastered together with our spirits, that we are the children of God: and yet those who are actually Christ's are heirs of the Spirit of Christ. Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father.' GLEANED GRAPES: OR, GLIMPSES OF GLORY FOR EARLY DEATH-BEDS. In a small burying-ground attached to the Popish Chapel in Wooler, we read the following epitaph : : 'JESUS AND MARY, I LOVE YOU. HENRY HORNER, Aged Five Years. His soul is with God! the difficulty. Her mother used to say to her, 'Now, Helen, you are growing up a big girl, and you must learn to say Father and Mother, and not be always lisping Papa and Mamma. These names, you know, are only for little children.' 'O yes, Mamma,' she would answer; 'I shall do what I can.' One day, she stood behind the counter in the Laboratory, when some one came in and asked for her father. Helen answered, 'Papa is in the house, but my Father is in heaven.' Her mother had taught her to repeat the Lord's Prayer at her knee, and the sweet upturned look she gave, when she made the above remark, seemed to imply that she felt what she said that it was no mere hold of the thing by memory that she had, but a heartfelt experience. When a funeral passed by, she used to tremble much, and cry out, 'Oh dear! shall I die? shall I die?' What a strange revelation to the mind of a child is the sight of the first funeral! The hearse with its dark, nodding plumes-the mourners in sable livery, and with measured step pacing along-the black coffin and the dark grave! What a strange idea to a young child is death! What a disturber of the peace and pleasantness that hover around the nursery of childhood! How does its deep shadow come, like 'the palpable obscure' of the poet, to hide the sunshine of gladness, to remind the little learner in the school of experience that life has its limits, that things are not what they seem, and that the grave is the gathering place for all flesh! Even we ourselves can solve the solemn mystery of death. The eye may gaze upon the features "Our Helen was a most interesting babe. that are now shrivelled, distorted, and wan, She engaged all our love, and attention, and ghastly pale; the lips from which the and care. When barely a twelvemonth life-blood has been pressed; the eye, that old, she had a severe attack of inflammation has grown dim with anguish, and has at in the lungs, from which, however, she length closed for ever on the beams of the considerably recovered. Her strength was sun. We may conjure up a dismal, much shattered thereafter, and my heart dreary, forlorn case, where the kind hand was more than ever bound up in the dear of friendship cannot reach us, nor the child. I thought and felt as if no amount silver accents of sympathy and love fall of anxiety were enough to bestow upon her. like music on our ears, and the awful Every night she slept in my bosom ; and if | loneliness of the traveller through 'the at any period in the dark watches her dark valley,' seem to fall upon our hearts. chest became painful, and the suppressed | But it is in vain that we try to cheat cough grew audible, I immediately arose ourselves into the conviction that we have and gave her some little comfort to soothe | grasped the thought of death, and grappled the irritation. She was fully three years in earnest with the strength of the last Such an inscription is a gross and palpable forgery, perpetrated, too, in the name of a little child. If that soul is now with God in heaven, he is not giving a divided heart to the Saviour and the Virgin Mary, but gazing with a love pure and unmixed on the face of the glorified Jesus. That one object absorbs and swallows up every other. Take heed, therefore, that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.' The following Sketch is not intended to furnish a memorial of precocious piety, so much as to show that the death of little ones is dear in the Saviour's sight. It is drawn in part from the statement we received from the lips of the parents of the little cherub; while the remainder of the paper is descriptive of the death-bed of another little girl whom we often visited during her last illness. enemy. Neither the doctor that counts the patient's ebbing pulse, nor the minister that offers up the prayer for Divine help, nor the friends and neighbours that wait on at the bed-side, have access to the invisible arena, where the dying one is wrestling with 'the king of terrors.' It is one of those things which, to us, doth not yet appear what it shall be.' But, yet enough is revealed, both of its antecedents and accompaniments, to prepare us for venturing into the mouth of the dark Jesus has been there before us, and has returned with the joyful intelligence, 'I am He that liveth; and was dead, and behold, I am alive for ever more, Amen: and have the keys of hell and of death.' cave. "Helen's death happened in very painful circumstances. I had just returned from professional visits to dinner. Helen was that moment by my side, saying, as she came,' Papa can't take dinner without me.' We had some fruit at table. Helen had taken some without having cleaned the kernel from the seed. I had scarcely told her to clean the plums, when she put one in her mouth; and, dreadful to relate, she sucked it into her throat. Every means which medical science could apply was made use of, but all to no purpose. The alternative of an external operation was had recourse to, and then our fear and suspense came to a pause. It was no longer a matter of hesitation or dubiety whether life or death were in the cup. I knew that lose her we must, and, in the strength of all-sufficient grace, I yielded her to the Lord. The effort to do so was costly but it bore no equality to the terrible overwhelming power of the suspense. I trembled lest reason should reel, and fling me at once into the arms of mental bankruptcy. But good was the will and way of the Lord. We had grace given us to say, 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'" : As the doctor rehearsed his plain tale, the big tears rolled down his manly cheek-the whole scene rushed past in review before his mind, with the freshness of yesterday. And when he showed us the calotype of the departed one, taken after death, with the eyes glazed in sleep, the little teeth, partially decayed, seen in the half-opened mouth, we seemed to hear the Redeemer's loving voice repeat those beautiful words, 'Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' It was Saturday evening. We were in other scenes and circumstances. It was one of those bright days of June, when the sun flings his beams athwart the sky, till the shadows deepen into midnight, and the fall of the eventide is a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. There stood a lowly cottage, having nothing remarkable about it to attract attention. It had two apartments, commonly called 'the butt and ben,' with a small closet or pantry leading off one of them, and a garret above. Its situation was solitary, but it presented an inviting aspect for all that. With its two front windows, all laced round with honeysuckle and bushy white roses in summer, and its garden-hedge all clipt and shorn so neatly, and the neighbouring plantation looking verdant in the long summer evenings, no rural spot could vie with it in real simplicity and beauty. We had lived so long under that old roof, that we felt as if no other spot in the world could so draw forth our love, and wear around us such a spell of attachment and of fascination. It is always thus with the home of childhood. There is a dream of poetry encircling it. The bud of being is just piercing the leaves in which it is shrouded. The little gambollers ask questions at the stones, the houses, the trees, every thing and every body that comes within the circle of their perceptions. They repose full faith in each other, and listen to the tales of other times which their seniors repeat to them. Hope shines in their clear young faces: love glances in their dark eyes. But the loveliest scene of earth has its shadow, and the joy of life is followed by the gloom of death. In that cottage there lay a little one sick unto death. Tossed on her sleepless pillow, she could find no repose. We had marked the advance of the disease, from the first hectic flush that rose and fell on the wan and delicate cheek, to the dry cough, and the faintness and feebleness of approaching death. But death was not coming on her unawares. She had seen him afar off, and seen him undismayed. The church and the minister and the Sabbath School were objects dear to her soul. The lessons there taught her, now gladdened and cheered her drooping soul. And in her illness she repeatedly gave expression to her feelings of submission and calm, holy fortitude in the view of her change. That evening saw her a corpse. Her last wishes were, 'Auntie, I want'-and for a moment speech failed her-'I want to leave my Bible to my brother, Willie: he kens fine what I did with it. Tell him to read it as often as I did, and mind me when I'm awa'. It's the Lord's hand that's on me, an' the Lord's richt arm supportin' me. I'm going to happy company to the Captain of Salvation, an' a' the spirits of the just made perfect. I think I'se meet ye there, auntie.' With these words she expired. Her face looked serener than ever. Her eyes, half closed, spoke volumes of the calm and peace within. So earnestly upturned to heaven as she lay with folded hands, while the red rays of sunset stained the window pane, it seemed as if an angel had come down to earth and robed himself in the dress of death. The Sabbath dawned on a house of mourning. The room shone in the garish light of mortality, and the muffled footsteps and whispered words made the silence painful. In the little mountain churchyard we laid her body to rest among kindred dust. The green turf was spread neatly over the grave; while her soul, sanctified through the blood of the Lamb, was arrayed in snowy robes of glory in heaven above. It is for the Paradise on high that the Reaper, whose name is Death, gathers the flowers of faith from our world below. To every bereaved parent he addresses these words: "They shall all bloom in worlds of light, W. B. PERFECT UNITY HEREAFTER. HERE' Ephraim envy Judah, and Judah vex Ephraim,' but it shall not be so hereafter. Luther and Calvin did not agree upon earth, but they do not disagree in heaven; they are of one mind in heaven, though their disciples are not of one mind upon earth. Those two blessed martyrs in time of peace and liberty could not agree about black and white; but as their expression is, in time of persecution could agree about red; when laid under passion they could forget all differences of judgment. The first rent that ever was in God's family was the pride of the angels, and ever since it hath borne the like fruit. What Seneca said of philosophers, that the clocks would sooner agree than the philosophers, may be said of some professors. It was a good saying of Baxter, though we must not unite with any in their sin, yet we must unite with all that are Christians in their Christianity. Our chronicles tell us that the Saxons and Danes had never conquered us had it not been for our own divisions. Division is a cursed weed, and it grows apace; but is it not a pity that Abraham and Lot should fall out by the way, for they are brethren? United force is most forcible, and a threefold cord is not easily broken. Saintship must not be confined within one party. The new creature is found in circumcision, as well as in uncircumcision; and as eminent in the one as the other. It were the highest sacrilege in the world to make a monopoly of Christianity, to monopolize that title of saints and godly party, to any one party. Why should we gratify the Turks, who pray that, seeing the Christians cannot love them, they may therefore hate one another? Grynæus, writing to Chrytæus, saith, though we should never see one another more in this world, yet we shall meet in that place where Luther and Zuinglius agree very well together.' The combination of sinners have not so much prejudiced the power of godliness as the contention of saints. Division of tongues obstructed the building of Babel; and if I mistake not, division of hearts, heads, and hands obstruct the building of Jerusalem. The Romists improve their utmost endeavour to break the vanity of Christians, and what would they not give to effect it? Quarrel not the moon out of her orb, and think her unworthy of the skies, because she wears a spot, for she is a glorious ball of light. Whoever is right or wrong in point of judgment, I am sure he is wrong that is not right in point of affection. I cannot but approve what God is now reducing unto Protestant and Papist. Why is Mahomet set like Dagon, where the ark once stood? And Paganism hath thrust Christianism out of doors? Israel is not true to Judah; the renting of the ten tribes from the two hath made both the two and the ten miserable. Oh that Jerusalem were at unity within herself! Oh that Zion may not die like Antiochus or Jehoram, of a disease in her own bowels! All that I can say or will say, is love, love, love; the God of love and love of God, constrain beloved ones to love one another, that it may be said at last as at first, 'Behold how they love one another!' In all the loud cries about differences, this toucheth my heart, that some can trample a poor saint into the dust, and, if they might, into the grave, for a peccadillo, a little difference in opinion. Now, though Christians of Christ's making disagree npon earth, they shall agree in heaven, When pale death arrests those actually Christ's for an eternity, and they be graciously passed through the gates into the city, they shall not find faith there, for that is gone into vision; nor hope there, for that is gone into fruition; but they shall find love there, yea, there they shall find nothing but love. There abideth faith, hope, and love; these three, but the greatest of these is love.' The greatest, because the longest lived.-Mayhew. CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP. О, now unlike the friendship of this earth Each weeps with each affliction's scalding tears; Each joys with each when doubts and fears are gone, When shines the Sun of Righteousness alone; Each comforts each upon the dying bed, And each rejoices when the soul has fled, Relieved from sin and every earthly load, Into the bosom of its Saviour God; And each one walks by faith till the time 1. Give up with our old masters.-We are all by nature the servants of Satan and sin; 'for their servants we are to whom we obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness.' And no less sure it is, that we all naturally serve and obey divers lusts: but now we must renounce these, before we serve the Lord; for we are assured that there is no serving two masters. The Lord will not halve it with sin. 'No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other: ye cannot serve God and Mammon.' And, I assure you, this is no easy matter, to get a sinner and his old master fairly parted; no less than the mighty power of God can do it. Sometimes there may be out-casts, but matters are quickly made up betwixt them, and all agreed again, until God Himself effectually persuade to a separation. 2. There must be a fair engaging to Christ as our Master.-We must accept of Him for our Lord. A master will not allow one to come in, and put to his hand to his service, unless he first covenant and engage to own him for his lord; and this is no easy matter, to bring a sinner, who is naturally an enemy, to come this length. To call Christ Lord, is something more than to resolve, under a conviction, to live better, and serve the Lord: nay, it is somewhat more than, under some work on the affections, to go to a corner, and make or write a personal Covenant. I fear, personal covenanting, however good and justifiable in itself, yet is far mistaken, and much abused by some, while it is made a ground of hope by some, who never understood what conversion meant, never were humbled, and taken off their own bottom, and engaged to the Lord by the power of His grace. If any man think this an easy matter, to call Christ Lord, he has never yet done it to purpose. I am sure the great apostle thought it no easy matter, but a thing so |