calling and election sure. Every morning let us ask, “What course shall I pursue this day, to put the reality of my religion beyond doubt?" And every evening let us inquire, "What have I done this day to make sure my own salvation?" May the words of the Holy Spirit sink down deep into our hearts : "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." MY BEST FRIEND. My Saviour is my best Friend. It was in proud contempt that Jesus was called a "friend of publicans and sinners," by men who had chosen the friendship of the world as their portion. Most gladly will I class myself among the outcasts of mankind, if I may but acquire an interest in the friendship of the Lord Jesus Christ. The mutual attachment of David and Jonathan was a beautiful example of human friendship. But it was a faint, feeble, and cold affection compared with that subsisting between Christ and the soul He loves. Oh, that mine for Him was more nearly proportioned to His for me! When through sin I stood friendless in the world, Jesus undertook the fearful office of "surety "under circumstances so difficult, that had all the created intelligent beings in the universe stood forward, their single or united bond could not have been accepted for me. While I have had to lament the humours and fickleness of human friendships, he has proved himself to be the "friend that loveth at all times." My heart has often been cold, and my regard wavering. He has never changed. When even near kinsmen have treated me with neglect and indifference, He has shown Himself a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." The cross, on which He died for me, and by which I am crucified unto the world for Him, is the bond of our union, and allows of no separation. The piercing nails fastened Him to my soul, and fastened me to Him in an indissoluble attachment. Times occur when the best of Friends proves His loving by giving me pain. "But faithful are the wounds of such a Friend," for they are inflicted to save me from the deceitful What intercourse of friendship so effectually "sharpeneth the countenance "" as Christ? Jesus I can and do esteem above all others, and He merits supreme regard. He has (Lord, enable me to say it in sincerity) no rival in kisses of the enemy. my heart. Many share His love with me, but this lessens not my portion. In all my perplexities I can open my mind to Him, and repose in His wisdom. In all my difficulties I can have recourse to His power, and in all my wants to His rich bounty. He not only permits me to call Him my Friend-a liberty often given by a superior to an inferior-but He also addresses me by the same endearing title. Thus He spoke of Abraham: Thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham, my friend ;" and the Lord said to His disciples, "I have called you friends." I have tasted the sweetness of this life. It will allay the bitterness of death. It will diffuse its fragrance over my eternity. "This is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem," Sol. Song, v. 16. A VISION OF THE OLD YEAR. THE sun had dropped down be- | 66 his frail and gentle form rather excited my compassion and curiosity; his face was withered and pale; his long gray locks hung scantily about his shoulders; he stooped as if with extreme age, and looked sad and melancholy. I gathered courage to speak; "Who are you?" I said. A hollow and cavernous voice replied, "I am an aged one, who has but one month to live." You seem near the close of your life," I said; "what do they call you?" "They call me Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-one," was the answer: "I am of an ancient stock, and am the year which is just now departing." When I heard this I felt glad; for there was nothing that I wanted more than an interview with this old man, for I had been thinking of him all the day long. So I said, "Welcome here; you have been much in my thoughts lately, and I wished to see you, to ask you a great deal; you have much to say, no doubt?" "I have much," was the answer; 66 no mortal sees so much as we years see. Even the sun which looks down from his high and lofty seat upon your world as it goes round at its rapid pace, sees but half of what we see; we see you men night and day, every one of you what you do; and I have, in my turn, seen much." "And will you tell me something of what you have seen?" said I. "Alas! " was the answer, "alas! what I have to say, would take many centuries of my kind to relate; and many things there are which I could not tell you, which you could not bear to hear; many things I have seen, which no eye but One has seen. I perceived he was inclined to be communicative, so I merely motioned assent, and he proceeded. "I saw, some months ago, a throng of people leaving their towns and villages by dozens, out of every country under heaven, till they all collected together, and flowed in one vast living stream within a palace of glass; and here they spent many hours, admiring the wonders of the place, for indeed it exceeded in magnificence all that my ancestors had ever seen, and they lived for their pleasure, and enjoyed themselves." "Do you blame them for this?" said I. "Many of them I do blame," was the answer; "for they never thought of me, though I was passing by busily amongst them every minute; but they seemed to be taken up too much with this world, both using it and abusing it too. They never seemed to know what time was given them for-for grace and salvation." "This seems to make you sad," I said. 66 "It must needs make me sad," he returned in answer, to see myself so neglected, and used to so little purpose.' "And what else have you seen?" I asked. "I have seen," he said, "a great enemy in your country making rapid progress; I did not see him let in, but one of my predecessors did. He sneaked in almost unawares, crouching and cringing, but is now assuming a much bolder front, and threatens to poison your land with his pestilential influence; to overwhelm you with a moral and intellectual darkness; and to endanger the safety of your immortal souls. If you Protestants are not up and doing, and defending yourselves manfully, resisting your foe, Popery will be upon you, and will bind you, blind, helpless, hand and foot, shorn of your strength, as the Philistines did Samson." "You speak truly," I said; "what else have you seen?" "I have seen," said he, " a vast nation, whose men are all soldiers by nature, on the point of being let loose, without a law, and without a government. As soon would I have seen the keeper of a menagerie throw open the doors of his dens, as see your neighbouring country in such a state. What can you expect but a tide of war, murder, pillage, bursting out, and flowing over the world? Let Europe beware of France." "Do you expect all this? I asked. "I do not see," he said, "what my successors will see." "What else then have you seen?" I inquired. "I have seen a vast country, undermined with subterranean explosions, which must one day break out. Did not I see you in the land of mountains this year? Were you not sleeping one night under the shadow of the monarch of mountains-Mont Blanc? 66 'Yes,” I said, “your knowledge is correct." "Then were you not roused from your sleep in the dead of that night, by a shock which made your house to tremble over your head? That shock roused you, and it also roused people a thousand miles off, at the foot of Italy. It merely woke you, but it buried thousands beneath the ruins of their cities in Sicily; it ran the whole length of the country, and made the whole surface to tremble like a quicksand, though Mont Blanc and the Alps lay upon it. And this is an allegory. What is going on under ground, is going on above ground. There is a movement among the people in those countries, which has already shaken them to their very centre; and though Popery, and bigotry, and ignorance, and superstition, backed by force of foreign arms, like the Alps, lie as an incubus on the enlightening mind, the power that can make the vast mountains to tremble, can shake down the papacy; and it is coming, and great will be the fall of it. Vesuvius belching forth its flames, and the flowing lava-streams of Etna, and the earthquake you | The present is yours; the day and the hour of the future is God's." I then inquired, what else he had seen. He proceeded,— And "I have seen most promise of good things to come, in that hitherto barren and desert continent, whose recesses I alone on this earth have as yet penetrated. Into Africa, so benighted and so withering, under Canaan's curse, the light is breaking, and the streams of Gospel truth are flowing fast. From the East, and from the West, are they pouring in; and one of my successors will see them meet. I have seen," he continued, "swarms of human beings flowing from all quarters of your earth to mountains of gold in Australia. They are draining your land of its people, strong is the thirst for gold. But who leaves his home, and his family, and his friends, and undergoes an equal amount of fatigue, and labour, and suffering, in order to secure the treasures of heaven? Alas, who? And is silver and gold worthy to be SO compared with the glory that shall be revealed? Alas! human folly makes me little to lament my approaching dissolution." I saw he was now getting restless, and feared he might be moving, before I had obtained all the knowledge I wanted, so I begged him to come again nearer home, and tell me what he had seen there. Then he said, "I have seen the afflictions of God let out upon men, and some have they converted, some have they hardened, -some have they caused to curse God and die. I have seen the angel of death hovering over men; I have seen thousands in their last agonies; I have seen some spirits carried upwards into Abraham's bosom; I have seen others led away into the shades of darkness for ever. I have seen God's ministers busy at work among men, for the salvation of their souls; I have been present at many religious services, and heard many thousands of sermons preached." he returned, "but what you know not now, you shall know hereafter. Of the future, you may know nothing but what God has revealed; and he has revealed to you a coming day, when all the doings of this year shall be judged. What would take me centuries to describe, he has all written down in his book of remembrance. By faith, glancing into the future, you may see that day, and those books; and yourself and all the world arraigned before his judgment seat; and there by your doings shall you all be judged. Happy they, who at that dread time, shall see a friend in the Judge ;-who has taken their sins upon Himself, and given them already a free pardon, through his free grace. Prepare to meet thy God.'" 6 I now seemed gradually to lose sight of the old man. His figure had by degrees vanished. Something had disturbed my slumbers; I awoke, and behold, it was a dream! But the last words of the old man still kept ringing in my ears; "Prepare to meet thy God!" C. THE BALIZE PILOT. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." THERE came to my knowledge a striking verification of this great truth, when I was anchored in a merchant-ship, on the bar at the south-west part of the mighty Mississippi. As illustrative of the power of conscience, and shedding a warning light upon the character, and history, and mental exercises of a bad man, it is well worthy of record. We were seventy days from Marseilles, with a cargo of claret wine for New Orleans, and had taken a Balize pilot, in one of those dense fogs that hang over the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the great father of waters, in the months of March and April. When the tow-boat Hudson fastened alongside of us, for the purpose of lightening our ship |