with a recompence in my heart, a gift in my bosom, a treasure of inward satisfaction, with a light conscience, with a rejoicing spirit, with great peace; I have had exceeding great refreshment in my evening prayer; I have knelt down and have been glad. I have tasted of the cup of peace, oh my God, for my obedience to Thy will. Thus hast Thou ever rewarded me instantly for my service; thus hast Thou encouraged me to do Thy will diligently.'

The life in Christ, inasmuch as it is a supernatural life, is a life of wonders; of wonders in the unfathomable deep, of wonders also in the paths of mercies, and this when it seems outwardly most commonplace and uniform; but it is not necessarily a life of upheavals and dislocations. Few things seem less friendly to the consistency and dignity that best befit it, as anything like strain and pressure, and the fearful recoils they lead to. Exhaustion is always to be avoided; irritation, gloom, self-despondency, oftentimes deepening to despair, wait upon it. Even in contending against evil itself he is wisest who contends in the spirit advocated by Madame Swetchine when she thus writes: 'We often try vainly to cut up our errors by the quick, to fight evil hand to hand on its own ground, where it has us at a dis

advantage.1 We should rather seek to overcome evil with good, to draw that life which gives evil all its strength into some innocent and useful direction, to give it an issue instead of cutting off its retreat. Evil under our present order must continue; it is in vain to look for its disappearance, or for its continual decline in direct and positive warfare. Our most sure and certain way to such victory as we can obtain over it is that of developing, feeding, and fortifying the good which exists along with it. We have within us but a certain measure of strength and of activity; as much of this as is added to the good is taken from evil. The more free and developed life of one good feeling is often the death-warrant of many guilty ones. Let us then be less vehement against error, but more careful to raise up the truth; let us endure the evil we cannot prevent, let us sometimes even tolerate it, but all the while in hasting to do good.

'Passion cannot be opposed by frigid reasoning. Evil inclinations cannot be checked one by one. Counterbalance is perhaps the only method which can be successfully employed in the great work of

1 So in the beautiful little poem Antæus, by Herder or Rückert, where Care is represented under the form of that giant, earth-born and earth-nourished, in conflict with whom there is no gain in a seeming victory, which does but throw him prostrate on the soil from which he draws fresh supplies of vigour. He must be lifted altogether from the ground, and then receive his effectual death-blow.

human amelioration. To re-adjust, to keep up the equilibrium, is perhaps in moral, as in physical life, the only way left open to useful efforts. It is not virtue which the fall of man has rendered impossible, only its peaceful and assured possession. Human corruption has not established the empire of evil, but it has condemned what is good to a mixed and partial existence.'

'I said this task is keen,
But even while I spake,
There Love Divine

Did stand behind, and gently over-lean

My drooping form, and, oh! what task had been
Too strong for feebleness with help of Thine!
Spell Thou this lesson with me line by line,
The sense is rigid, but the voice is dear;
Guide Thou my hand within that hand of Thine,
Thy wounded hand! until its tremblings take
Strength from Thy touch, and even for Thy sake
Trace out each character in outline clear.'

ON THE BLESSEDNESS OF SPIRITUAL

ACQUAINTANCE WITH GOD.

A

CQUAINT thyself with God,' said one of old, and be at peace;' and our Lord has told us that this spiritual acquaintance is itself eternal life. His last request for His redeemed was this: 'That they, O Father, may know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.' St. Paul, distinguishing between the preceptive righteousness of obedience, that of the law which saith, 'These things do, and thou shalt live by them,' and the righteousness which is by faith, says of this last, that it speaketh on this wise: The word is very nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart.' 'God,' writes the admirable Cudworth, is such a Being as if He could be supposed not to be, there is nothing which any such as are desperately engaged in wickedness, no, not Atheists themselves, could

possibly more wish for or desire. To believe a God is to believe in the existence of all possible good and perfection in the universe. It is to believe that things are as they should be, and that the world is so well framed and governed, as that the whole system thereof could not possibly have been better. There is nothing which cannot be hoped for by a good man from the Deity. Even whatsoever happiness his Being is capable of; and of such things as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor can now enter into the heart of man to conceive. Infinite hopes lie before us from the existence of a Being infinitely good and powerful, and from the certainty of the immortality of our own souls; nor can anything hinder or obstruct these hopes, but our own wickedness of life. To believe in God and to do well, are the two most cheerful, hopeful, and comfortable things that can possibly be.'

Whitfield, writing on this subject, says: It is certain that there is now a great degeneracy through all the Christian world; and though there may be many reasons assigned for the deadness and lukewarmness, both of principle, discipline, and practice, yet I am fully persuaded that one great reason is this, that many pretend to preach the Lord Jesus Christ that are strangers to the power of Jesus Christ upon their own hearts.