ing their end and about to vanish away. It is "but for a moment," and then will come the everlasting release.

Often are even the Lord's people made to sigh and cry, O to be rid of these aches and ills, these stripes and vexations, this exposure to adverse elements, vicissitudes, bereavement, and sorrow! O to be released from the decay of age, the power of disease, the bands and gloom and horribleness of death! O to be done with disappointments, and infidelities, and the harsh ingratitudes that torture and afflict our souls! O for a life that ends not, a world that fades not, a holiness that errs no more! O for affections ever fresh, for faculties that never weary, for loving companionships which cannot be soiled nor sundered! But what they thus covet is not far away. The blessed consummation is nearer than they think. A little while, and we shall have done with earth's burdens and disabilities for ever. A little while and the ascended Saviour will come again to receive us unto Himself, to conduct us into the mansions He has gone to prepare for us, and to introduce us into the everlasting home of peace and rest. And with this we may comfort ourselves. Nor is there anything in being that can so cheer and gladden the jaded heart of man as just these assurances, which God proclaims to us by His holy word.

See, then, dear friends, the merciful tenderness of our heavenly Father. He would have us comforted. Though many a burden and trial be

upon us, He would not have us without consolation. He gives Himself to be a God to us in all our need of Him. He is most urgent in having us feel and know that our sins, though many, are all blotted out and taken clean away in the blood of Christ; and that what we yet suffer because of them is soon to be over for ever. And what more could we ask or wish? O the comfort and peace of a vigorous and confiding faith!

A Disastrous Choice.

Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.

And Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom.—GEN. 13: 12.

W

HEN people are called upon to make choice in life, and to branch out for themselves, they often make very unfortunate work of it. Even where there is nothing wrong or sinful in their choice, it is often very unwisely made, and what was chosen. for superior good turns out for particular evil.

Lot thought he was doing a splendid thing for himself and his posterity when he choose this Jordan plain. He thought he was acting with very special foresight and consideration. "He lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, even as the garden of the Lord. And so he journeyed east, and pitched his tent toward Sodom."

Viewed from the hills toward Bethel, the Jordan circle was then a scene of enchanting loveliness. From either side of the wide outstretched plain the brooks and rivulets poured down from their mountain springs, and through the centre rolled the meandering river.

God loves beauty, and hence has imprinted it

on His works; and He has implanted the like instinct in the human soul. It was no fault in Lot that he admired and was drawn by the fascinations of the rich and splendid country that spread itself before him. It was a goodly land, and one desirable to dwell in, which, in the long after years, touched and fired the great soul of Moses himself as he looked down upon it from Nebo's summit.

Nor is it wrong in us in choosing and arranging our homes for ourselves and our children to seek out pleasant locations and to surround ourselves with what is pleasing to the eye and grateful to the imagination. As there is no sin in having elegant mansions, fair gardens, and fine pictures to look on, provided we can afford it; so neither is there evil in desiring fertile fields and wellwatered lands, instead of being confined to barren rocks and parched moors. Whatever God has given of good and pleasantness it is the Christian's privilege to like, appropriate, and enjoy, if he has his choice, the same as any other. Monkish asceticism may enjoin self-mortifications in such matters, but it is no requirement of the good Father in heaven. And if places and things have in them suggestions dear to memory, they are all the more desirable and worthy of our regard. The Jordan plains reminded Lot of the home of man in his primeval days, and the blessedness of that time and place where the primal father of the race walked in innocence with God. Nor were any of these attractions to be despised in making

choice of a land and home for himself and his children.

But there were serious drawbacks. Bad neighbors are a great depreciation to any locality; and the inhabitants of the villages in this Jordanic plain were very bad people and sinners of a very aggravated type.

We cannot avoid contact with bad people so long as we are in this world; but it is good policy to have as little to do with them as possible. Mingling with and marrying into the families of the ungodly is what ruined the antediluvian world, and has ruined the peace and happiness of many worthy people in every age and country. The greatest mischief to the Church of God is the lowering and obliteration of the walls and fences between it and the world. Contiguity with the wicked begets ties and common interests with the wicked, predisposes to leniency toward their ill ways, and tends to draw the soul into what God cannot approve. Lot was a good man and quite settled in his faith, which had served to bring him from idolatrous Ur to where he might worship the true God in peace; but even he was not proof against the deteriorating and corrupting influence of his bad associations. Human nature will always take on evil more readily than good. The contagion of a diseased man will impart disease to a dozen sound men, but the health of a sound man is not so readily imparted to one diseased. Example and the ways of society at large are very strong; but they are always the strongest