as also from all such heavy personal trials as those with which the patriarch Job was visited, a like conclusion as to the undesirableness of a protracted earthly sojourn is forced on every meditative mind by the incessant change going on in all visible things, and by the perishable nature of every present human relationship. Could what we see most frequently and love most heartily be only preserved to us unaltered by the lapse of years, the attractive charm of the life that now is would be greatly enhanced. But this, as every one knows, is not so. The law of change is stamped on all that is here below. The seasons chase each other in rapid succession. The flowers and foliage which come forth so brightly in spring, have no sooner attained to their full growth than they begin to wither and die. Nor is this change, this rapid alternation of growth and decay, confined to material nature.' The friends of our early years, the parents and loved ones with whom we took sweet counsel, and whom, in the very looks they were wont to wear, we can still in memory recall, where are they now? They, too, have withered, and are gone from our eyes like the verdure and the flowers of the past summer. They may, indeed, be replaced by others. We may be surrounded by as many animated faces as before. But the friends of our youth once departed, the freshness and fervour of first attachments can never be resumed; and the farther the journey of life extends, so much the more forlorn and void of living interest does it become.

And further, all this experience of the passing nature and vanity of our earthly life would appear in a still clearer and more impressive light, did that life extend much beyond its present term, the threescore and ten or fourscore years by which it is almost invariably bounded. There is a legend that the Jew who mocked the Saviour when He hung on the cross, was doomed, as a punishment of the awful guilt of so presumptuous an act, to wander over the earth without the power of dying. One form of the story represents him as possessed of every kind of earthly good, in as unmeasured abundance as his soul could desire; the uninterrupted enjoyment of the full health and vigour of manhood; and the close friendship and kindred of those he deemed the greatest, the wisest, the loveliest, and the best on earth. Encompassed by all this attractive luxury and greatness, he nevertheless soon found himself the loneliest and most miserable being beneath the sun. The wife of his early affection was taken from him by death; thereafter in due time he followed his children one by one to the grave. Then by-and-bye the oldest and best loved companion of his youth bade him farewell, and, disappearing through the same gloomy gateway, left him surrounded by a crowd of strangers. These, too, after living their appointed years, vanished from the scene as had done their fathers. But he, the accursed despiser of the holy and suffering One, lived on as strong, as healthy and wealthy as ever, longing for death, yet unable to die. Το lighten, if possible, the load of cheerless solitude which weighed down his spirit, he betook himself to foreign lands; he visited cities and nations the most remote. Still all was unavailing to dissipate the spectral gloom with which his soul was incessantly haunted. Driven to despair, he courted that very death which others shun. He contrived to get himself accused of capital crimes, and was subjected to excruciating tortures of body. All, nevertheless, was powerless to set his agonized and lonely spirit free from its prison-house of clay. He continued, spite of himself, to live on in the midst of the greatest earthly grandeur, gaiety, and riches, the most miserable

of men.

But, once more, every follower of Christ may with still deeper emphasis

and earnestness affirm, 'I would not live alway,' when he realizes and anticipates what is above him. All that has been already urged would in many minds be unable to repress the love of life, or at least to create the desire to leave it. The world might be felt to be sufficiently empty, and existence itself to be a crushing burden; yet the fear of something after death more dreadful still, might, and probably often does, reconcile the sufferer to his present lot: : yea, so deep and strong is the natural instinct, that the love of life might after all be excused, were there no hereafter, or no certainty attainable of that hereafter being happy. It is the thought, the wellgrounded hope of the glory awaiting him, that can alone dispose any one to give hearty utterance to the sentiment of our text. This was the case in a

very special manner with the Apostle Paul. He could say that he was 'willing rather-that is, would have preferred, had it been put in his choice'to be absent from the body,' separated at once from every earthly enjoyment, knowing that he would, as a necessary consequence, be present with the Lord.' For me,' he could exclaim, to live is Christ.' He is the great aim and end of my earthly life. I love and value it only so far as it may be spent in His service and to His glory; but to die is gain:' yet what I shall choose I wot not; for 'I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better,' or better beyond all comparison-that is, so far as his personal happiness was concerned.

6

The representation of the heavenly state given in Scripture is necessarily obscure and imperfect; but even as there set forth, it is, when contemplated and vividly realized, far more than sufficient to cast completely into shade all the short-lived glory and attraction of this earthly life. Then there will be an entire absence of grief and care, no fretting anxieties, no sorrowful disappointments, no feeling of insecurity or alarm. God Himself, we are told, shall wipe away all tears from the eyes.' But He shall also "feed" the redeemed, and shall lead them to living fountains of waters;' implying that for every faculty and feeling of their souls, every part of their being, the fullest and most suitable provision will be made, and this directly and personally by Him who first loved them, and washed them from their sins in His own blood, and whom in turn they have learned supremely to love; they will not only enjoy an entire deliverance and repose from whatever causes trouble and distraction here-from all sin, and pain, and sorrow; they will be put in possession of an amount of positive blessedness large as their loftiest wishes, and which shall never end. They will furthermore hold uninterrupted communion with all the redeemed from among men; with all, in Old as well as New Testament times, who have believed to the saving of their souls, and in every age and in every clime have fought the good fight of faith; with angels and archangels, and untainted seraphim, whose supreme delight it is to perform Jehovah's will. There, too, will be the divine Redeemer Himself, encircled with matchless majesty, yet still bearing in His person the marks of His humiliation and death for them. In the enjoyment of His presence and love, as He reflects all the glory of the Father, and is Himself the express image of His person,-in the transporting consciousness of the immediate presence and favour of the three-one God,-heaven may be said essentially to consist. This, like an invisible atmosphere, will surround and fill the soul of every glorified believer to overflowing, imparting an ineffable joy and delight never experienced on earth, and crowned and consummated by the assurance that it will not only endure, but go on increasing for evermore.

Now, all this exalted glory and blessedness is no mere poetic dream or

pleasing fiction of the fancy, but a sober truth is 'Absent from the body, and present with the Lord." To the believer there is no alternative betwixt these two. So soon as he quits the body, he enters on the enjoyment of all to which reference has just been made. With so transcendently blessed a hope beyond the grave, oh, what is it to die! Many and strong as are the ties which bind to the present life, they are slender, and cannot fail to be snapt asunder by such a weight of glory as this. The emigrant, as he quits the home of his childhood, casts, perchance, many a longing, lingering look behind him. When the ocean with its swelling surges comes in view, his reluctance to quit his fatherland is increased; but he bethinks himself of loving friends and relatives awaiting him on the farther shore, and of his present penury and toil as contrasted with the wealth and comfort he will there enjoy; and he commits himself to the deep, braving all its dangers in the cheering expectation of soon treading a better country by far than that of his birth. So, too, is it, but in an unspeakably higher sense, with the child of God. When he listens to the pleadings of nature, he would fain linger in the present world. The things seen and temporal seek to throw their fascinating spell over his spirit, and he trembles at crossing the dark sea of death. But he calls to mind that there is a bright and blessed state beyond; that his Father, and a holy and happy company of believing friends, of angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, are awaiting his arrival on the other side, and with exultant faith he exclaims, 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?' 'I would not live a

life of exile from my heavenly home; I, the "heir of all the ages," not of the earthly past merely, but of the measureless cons which are to come, and these lighted up, illumined, flooded with radiance, stored like an unfailing, unfathomable mine, with all that this yearning soul can ever want, or crave of great, and good, and pure, and fair; I would not, in so dark and dreary and desolate an outpost of creation as this-I would not, if I could, live alway.'

Such is the lofty language of the believer. Can we, brethren, unfeignedly adopt it as ours? Is each of us, after serious reflection on what is within, on what is around, and especially on what is above him, able in all sincerity to declare, 'I would not live alway?' Let each press this inquiry home upon his own heart without delay. Is it so with me, or is it not? Were I given to know for certain that this is the last year of my life, would the information be suggestive of delight or of aversion? Were a voice of thunder from the skies to tell me so, would I tremble or rejoice?' This is a question which cannot be determined too soon. If inclined to shrink from a plain answer, there is much reason to fear that all is wrong, that we still remain strangers to the quickening and elevating power of Christian faith.

Yet, be it remembered that it is not a matter of voluntary choice between death and an endless or even indefinitely protracted life. Whoever is unable to affirm, 'I would not live alway,' is nevertheless compelled to declare, ‘I shall not, I cannot live alway.'. Whether we prepare for it or no, death will very speedily be upon us. The million-tongued experience of the past, no less than the voice of Scripture, tells us this. That every one not only may, but must die, is one of the tritest of all truisms; yet is it not on that account the less true or the less solemn and profoundly interesting to all. Every revolving year brings us nearer to the final hour. Before that on which we have now entered has closed, some one or more of us now present, it is more than likely, will have made personal trial of the sublime

realities of the state beyond. There is, however, a gambling propensity deeply inherent in the depraved heart of man, prompting him to convert the possible into the probable, and that again into something almost like settled certainty, that he or she at least will form one of the exceptions, and survive, die whoever else may.

a

Take we then a period sufficiently advanced of the present to reduce any such presumption to the very lowest value. Let us conceive a century to have passed away-that the morning of the first Sabbath of the year 1964 has dawned that the worshippers have assembled that day in the house of God, and are engaged in something of the same service that now occupies us. Oh, my friends, where will you and I be then? If these walls be still standing, and devoted to the sacred purpose they now serve, who will be speaking from the pulpit? Who will be listening in the pews? Not he who now speaks, not you who now listen. We shall all have yielded up our spirits to Him who gave them, and these bodies will be mouldering in the narrow house. It will then be a matter of history, standing unchanged in the unalterable past, that we severally so lived, that we severally so died, lived to God or to ourselves, died either in brutish indifference, in terrible despair, or in serene peace and joyful hope. How will the whole of our earthly life be then regarded by others? How by ourselves? Shall we be looking back upon it from glory with the ever-growing rapture of seraphs; or from the place of woe, with the conscience-accusing agony and torture of fiends, mourning over murdered time, over careless Sabbaths and a slighted Gospel? Yes, a hundred years hence with many of us how long before! -one or other of these unchangeable states will be ours. Oh, let us attend to the voice of Wisdom ere it prove too late, saying as she now does to each, 'Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest."

THE ROMAN SHOP.

A SECOND ARROW THROUGH THE HEART OF ROMANISM.

[Translated for this Magazine from Sept Flèches dans le Cœur du Romanisme, par

Napoléon Roussel.]

PROTESTANTS say that masses are good for nothing; Catholics say that they are good for everything. Which of the two is right? We shall see by the following story.

In a certain village there lived a good curé (parish priest)-good in this sense, that he tried to please everybody. Never was any one left by him in a dilemma. Did a parishioner ask for a dispensation? the dispensation was granted. Did another seek a mass? a mass was said. What is more, if a person was anxious for rain, rain was promised; if somebody wished fair weather, fair weather was ensured. Only the rain sometimes came when it should have been the fair weather. However, in the end, either before his turn or after it, every one was served.

One day, seated at his fireside, the curé saw enter his apartment a young peasant girl, her face very red, and her air embarrassed. Come in, my

child,' said he, in a kindly tone, what brings you here to-day?'
'Your reverence, I come to ask a favour. I am very unhappy.'
'Why, what's the matter?'

'I dare not tell you.'

'Then how can I do anything for you?'

'Well, people say that masses bring good luck. If you could say a mass for what I wish, perhaps it would come about."

'But what is it you wish for?'

'I cannot tell you.'

'Why?'

'It is a family secret.'

'Ah! that is a different affair.'

'Perhaps, then, you could say a mass for what I am desirous of?'

'Certainly.'

'And it would make the thing I have in view succeed?'

Possibly it might; we call that a mass according to the intention of the donor.'

'How fortunate! It is the very thing I need. A mass according to my intention.'

•Do you wish only one?'

'Only one, if that will be sufficient; would two be better than one?' 'Most certainly.'

'And would four be better than two?'

'Not a doubt of it.'

'But then, your reverence, if four masses would procure the thing I seek for, a single mass would only procure a fourth part of it; so, with a single mass, I am not at all sure of my object.'

'Quite true. Four masses would be much better.'

'In that case, here are four francs.'

'Very good.'

'Good evening, sir.'

'Good evening.'

The young girl had come quite dejected. She now went away in high spirits; and the priest, who was a man of method, locking up the money, entered in his register, 'Four masses to be said according to the intention of the donor

Just as the young peasant girl was leaving the house, there entered it four honest country men, the boldest of whom stepped in advance of the rest, hat in hand, his arms dangling in awkward style. Good day, Big John, how goes the world with you?'

'Why, not ill with me, your reverence, but not well with the weather.' 'How so?

'Why, you see, our hay crops are rotting in the fields; for a whole month we have had nothing but moisture, when we needed sunshine and heat.' 'Ah! well, you know the remedy; get some masses said.'

'It is just about that we are here. We came to ask you to say some masses, that we may get a few weeks of fine weather.'

'With all my heart.'

'But, your reverence, it must last a while.'

'Undoubtedly.'

'And we must not have to wait long for it.' 'I understand.'

'Very well, it is a bargain—is it?'

'Yes.'