Review and Herald, Vol. 22, No. 2. (6/9/1863)

Review and Herald

Jun 9, 1863

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 9, 1863

Longing for the Advent.

Prisoners of hope, we are called now, and we patiently abide the restraint, because we know that the Lord is near, and our deliverance is at hand. Soldiers of Christ are, we know, standing in our armor and enduring all needful hardnesses, for we know it is the time of conflict and suffering now, but the victory is sure, the enemy cannot prevail; and we can wait till the appointed hour, when he shall reign whose right it is to reign, Lord of lords, and King of kings, and our voices with "the great voices in heaven" shall swell the triumph-song, "the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever." Who feels not the inspiration of such a bright hope? Who can help longing and praying, when he regards his own personal experience, or looks out upon the throes and convulsions of this disordered and unquiet world around him, for that hour, so long prophesied and waited for, when all that is incomplete shall attain its perfection, when every discord shall be resolved into harmony, every holy desire find full satisfaction; and our faith, which to the children of the world appears as an offense or a folly, shall be justified in the sight of the whole world? Who can help breathing, when he reads the glorious prophecies yet to be fulfilled, and the precious promises yet to be realized, and studies the signs of the times which seem to declare the ripening of the divine counsels, the earnest supplication that the Lord may soon come and bring his mediatorial work to its sublime consummation?

But it is sometimes feared that there is danger in the indulging of this bright expectation. Its tendency is thought to make us careless or impatient; to damp our zeal in Christian enterprise, and give us over to day dreams and idle reveries. And doubtless the danger is not wholly a fictitious one. There may be those who in their conduct and language have given too great occasion for the suspicion. But it is a danger which lies near every great truth. The grandest doctrines of our faith have close beside them the most dangerous errors. They may all be perverted to the falsest issues. But they stand as truths still, not to be gainsayed or concealed because the weak sinful heart misconstrues or distorts them. They are the good seed of the kingdom, though after it is sown, the enemy comes and sows his tares with it. So with the hope and longing for the appearance of the Lord, the danger which lies close beside it, is a quietness which falls into listlessness, or idle fancies which lead to sad delusions. The history of the doctrine abundantly proves its besetting dangers. But it is not for that reason to be abandoned or neglected. It must not be displaced from its true position in the teaching of the Christian Church. The comfort and inspiration which it breathes cannot be disregarded in the rightly dividing of the word of truth. It forms as we have seen a large element in the Apostle's doctrine. It wrought in them as a continual inspiration amid all their exhausting labors and fearful sufferings for the gospel's sake. It was in their stern admonitions against all sluggishness, and in their earnest appeals to the believer's constant zeal in proclaiming everywhere the unsearchable riches of God's grace while it is a day of salvation. It was a bright and joyful hope, as they offered it, only to the diligent laborers in the vineyard of the Lord. Wearied they might be, and saddened under the pressure of their burdens, bruised and wounded in their long strife with the adversary, and sometimes quite cast down at the apparent fruitlessness of their most faithful labors. Still they must occupy till he comes, knowing that he will surely come, though he tarry, for his promise is "—Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me to give to every man according as his work shall be." How can it be that they who are most under the power of this hope should now be the most efficient agents in the service of Christ and his Church? They can rest who see no vision beckoning them forward, to whom all things remain the same as when the fathers fell asleep, who feel no interest in the unfolding signs of the times, and make a mock of all ardent hope and earnest enthusiasm. They may perceive no occasion for zeal. They may keep aloof from all active enterprises in the cause of the gospel, and smite off all appeals to their sympathetic co-operation. They may be for no movement, no aggression, no advance or forced marches, saying, "There is no haste; the Lord delayeth his coming." But it cannot be so with those who are inspired with the vision of the things that shall be, and are "looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ."

All Christian enterprises interest them. All labor in the service of their Master is dear to them. They love to see the army break up its encampments and go forward to the new conquests in the name of the Lord. It is from their lips and hearts that the prayer is breathed with deepest fervor and desire, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." And though the Lord still delay and no voice heralds his coming, they know that it is because his work is not yet finished, the number of the redeemed not yet complete, the hosts not all gathered. It is in mercy that he tarries; and they must not only watch to be themselves ready but labor unweariedly that his long-suffering mercy may swell the number of voices out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, which shall join in the hour of final triumph in the holy ascription, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing." That hour is no dream to please an idle fancy in silent reverie and private seclusion; it is a reality to inspire the heart with all energy in the active labors which Christ has appointed for his Church. It does not relax the sinews of the soul in despondency for the little already accomplished, but braces them to the utmost for the much yet to be effected. The most efficient workmen for Christ's sake and the gospel's, from the Apostle's day to our own, are those who watch and pray most earnestly for his coming again in all his glorious majesty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blessed will be those whose lamps are trimmed and burning! They shall enter with him to the supper; and then, the door will be shut. Right and true, then is the constant longing for the second advent of our Lord. Well does one write, "Nature and grace alike proclaim a glorified Messiah as indispensable to complete their appointed course. Nature, through all her regions cries aloud for him who is to rectify her unwilling disorders, to repair her shattered structures, to restore her oppressed energies, to vindicate her voice of conscience long despised, her sublime testimony to the Creator, so long questioned or overlooked. But what is even this to the demand of grace for the coming of him, who is "our Saviour?" If the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain for the manifestation of the sons of God, what shall be the desires of the Sons of God themselves? What shall be their ardor to realize that "liberty of the children of God," of which so great things are spoken; to behold their own lowliness glorified in the glory of the man of Nazareth; their humble labors recognized by the approval of God, their persevering faith vindicated, their hope consummated, their charity brightened into a reward eternal and infinite? They rejoice to think, that as a humiliated Redeemer came first to point us the path of humiliation, so must a glorified Redeemer point us to the path of glory; that the Captain of our salvation, who bore the cross in front of his army of believers, must come to teach them also how to wear the crown. It is by the recollections of the marvels of his mercy that he would attract us to see in his appearing, the advent of one, who, if mighty to avenge, is yet mightier to save; and thus in every heart and soul to move the prayer with which, as if to bind them both forever in our thoughts, the volume that records the First advent closes, anticipating, desiring, beseeching the Second: "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"

"And went and Told Jesus."

MATT. XIV. 12

Go and tell Jesus, weary sin-sick soul; He'll ease thee of thy burden, make thee whole: Look up to him; he only can forgive: Believe on him, and thou shalt surely live.

Go and tell Jesus, when your sins arise, Like mountains of deep guilt, before your eyes; His blood was shed, his precious life he gave, That you might mercy find and pardon have.

Go and tell Jesus, in temptation's hour, When thou seem'st sinking 'neath the tempter's power; He too was tried and tempted, and he knows All our deep sorrows, and he feels our woes.

Go and tell Jesus, thou who feel'st the need Of some strong arm; he'll give thee strength indeed— Will keep thee in the straight and narrow way, And cheer thee in the long and toilsome day.

Go and tell Jesus, when the hand of death Enters thy home, and with the faltering breath Thou hear'st the parting word from lips so dear: He will not chide thy tears; "He wept" when here.

Go and tell Jesus, when thou too must part With earthly scenes, and with a trembling heart Cross the deep ocean, lying cold and dark; He will uphold thy steps and guide thy bark.

Go and tell Jesus; he'll dispel thy fears, Will calm thy doubts and wipe away thy tears, Will take thee in his arm, and on his breast Thou may'st be happy, and forever rest.

Luck and Pluck.

THESE are common words, and suggest a common subject. We are common men and women, and wish to take a common view of it.

Since we were boys and girls we have heard of luck. Our fathers and mothers talked of good luck and bad luck, of lucky and unlucky days. What was meant we did not exactly understand, nor is it probable they did; but the most vivid impression conveyed was, that things happened so and so; some happened well and some happened ill, without any particular cause; or, in other words, certain things chanced to be as we wished, while other things chanced to be contrary to our desires, undirected by any steady and unvarying laws.

The word luck is suggestive of a want of law. This idea has passed into many common proverbs, such as these: "It is more by hit than good wit;" "It is as well to be born lucky as rich;" "Fortune is a fickle jade;" "Risk nothing, win nothing;" and more of a similar import, all ignoring the grand rule of law, and resting on the atheistical idea of chance.

Our fathers were good, religious people, and did not mean to foster atheism when they talked about luck, and gave a half-way assent to its godless reality. If the universe were an infinite chaos; if order had no throne in its wide realm; if universal law were a fable of fancy; if God were a Babel, or the world a Pandemonium, there might be such a thing as luck. But while from the particle to the globe, from the animalcule to the archangel, there is not a being or a thing, a time or an event, disconnected from the great government of eternal law and order, we cannot see how such a game of chance as the word luck supposes, can be admitted into any corner of the great world. Luck! What is it? A lottery? A hap-hazard? A frolic of gnomes? A blind-man's-buff among the laws? A ruse among the elements? A trick of dame Nature? Has any scholar defined luck, any philosopher explained its nature, any chemist shown us its elements? Is luck that strange, nondescript unmateriality that does all things among men that they cannot account for? If so, why does not luck make a fool speak words of wisdom; an ignoramus utter lectures on philosophy; a stupid dolt write the great works of music and poetry; a double-fingered dummy create the beauties of art, or an untutored savage the wonders of mechanism?

If we would go into a country where the sluggard's farm is covered with the richest grains and fruits, and where industry is rewarded only with weeds and brambles; where the drunkard looks sleek and beautiful, and his home cheerful and happy, while temperance wears the haggard face and eats the bread of want and misery; where labor starves, while idleness is fed and grows fat; where common sense is put upon the pillory, while twaddle and moonshine are raised to distinction; where genius lies in the gutter, and ignorance soars to the skies; where virtue is incarcerated in prison, while vice is courted and wooed by the sunlight, we might possibly believe that luck had something to do there. But where we see, as we everywhere do in our world, the rewards of industry, energy, wisdom, and virtue, constant as the warmth in sunlight or beauty in flowers, we must deny in toto the very existence of this good and evil essence which men have called luck.

Was it luck that gave Girard and Astor, Rothschild and Gray, their vast wealth? Was it luck that won victories for Washington, Wellington, and Napoleon? Was it luck that carved Venus de Medici, that wrote the "Æneid," "Paradise Lost," and "Festus"? Was it luck that gave Morse his telegraph, or Fulton his steamboat, or Franklin the lightning for his play-thing? Is it luck that gives the merchant his business, the lawyer his clients, the minister his hearers, the physician his patients, the mechanic his labor, the farmer his harvest? Nay, verily. No man believes it. And yet many are the men who dream of luck, as though such a mysterious spirit existed, and did sometimes humor the whims of visionary cowards and drones.

Many are the young men who waste the best part of their lives in attempts to woo this coy maid into their embraces. They enter into this, or that, or the other speculation, with the dreamy hope that luck will pay them a smiling visit. Some go to California, or Australia, or the "Far West," or to the Torrid or the Frigid Zone, or some wondrous, away-off place, with no fair prospect or hope of success from their own energies and exertions, but depending almost wholly on a gentle smile from capricious luck. Poor fellows! they find that luck does not get so far from home.

Some less daring and more lazy loiter about home, drawl around town, or loll through the country, whose only trust or expectation is a shuffle of luck in their favor. They know they deserve nothing, yet with an impudence hard as brass they will pray to luck for a "windfall," or "fat office," or a "living," and foolishly wait for an answer. These are the men that make your gamblers, your house thieves, your counterfeiters, your gentlemen loafers. They are not the men that originally mean any harm. But they believe in luck, and their trust is in luck, and they are going to have it out of luck some way. They despised meanness at first, perhaps, as much as you and I do; but somebody told them of luck, and they believed, and lo! they got duped. Little by little they went over to meanness, waiting all the while for a shake of the hand from luck.

Some of the believers in luck, of more moral firmness, dally with all life's great duties, and so do about the same as nothing, but eat the bread of disappointment. They do a little at this business, and luck does not smile. They do a little at that, still luck keeps away. They do a little at something else, they hear not a foot-fall from luck. And so they fritter away time and life. These are the do-littles. Hard-working men they are frequently. It is with them as though they had started to go to a place a thousand miles distant, leading to which there are many roads. They set out at full speed on one road, go a few miles, and get tired, and so conclude to turn back and try another. And so they try one road after another, each time returning to the starting-place. In a little while it is too late to get there at the appointed time, and so they mope along the road they happen to be on till the day is over.

There is a bad philosophy in the world. Our boys are full of it; our young men are its victims; our middle-aged men have not outgrown it, and our old men cannot make themselves believed on it. It is the idea that the good which man needs, comes, or may come, some other way than by wise application and hard industry.

Besides the moral evil and intellectual stupor which come upon the men who adopt this philosophy of luck, their lives are embittered by constant forbodings of evil, clouds overshadow them; blue spirits of evil gather around them; they occasionally have strange fits of laughter, and at times enjoy a delirious happiness, when their natures break away from the cold load of doubt that is laid upon them. But they soon go back to the speculating, dreamy mood; they know not the joy of the man who trusts in his own good right arm; they know not the peace of him whose ambition is to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow; they feel not the exultation of him whose life is a constant series of victories over the impediments which oppose his progress. The exuberance of the honest laborer's spirits is not in their hearts. Again, their philosophy breeds dishonesty within them. They crave a good they do not earn; they pray to luck to give them what does not belong to them; their whole inward life is a constant craving wish for something to which they have no just claim. It is a morbid, feverish covetousness, which is very apt to end in the conclusion, "The world owes me a living, and a living I'll have," and so they go out to get a living as best they may. They fancy that every rich and honored man has got his good by some turn of luck, and hence they feel that he has no special right to his property or his honors, and so they will get either from him if they can. They look upon the world, not as a great hive of industry, where men are rewarded according to their labors and merits, but as a grand lottery, a magnificent scheme of chance, in which fools and idlers have as fair a show as talent and labor.

In my humble opinion this philosophy of luck is at the bottom of more dishonesty, wickedness, and moral corruption than anything else. It sows its seeds in youthful minds just at that visionary season when judgment has not been ripened by experience nor imagination corrected by wisdom. And it takes more minds from the great school-house of useful life, and more arms from the great workshop of human industry, than any other one thing to which the mind reverts. It is a moral palsy, against which every just man should arm himself. The cure of the evil is found in pluck.

It is not luck, but pluck, which weaves the web of life; it is not luck, but pluck, which turns the wheel of fortune. It is pluck that amasses wealth, that crowns men with honors, that forges the luxuries of life. I use the term pluck as synonymous with whole-hearted energy, genuine bravery of soul.

That man is to be pitied who is too fearful and cowardly to go out and do battle for an honest living and a competence in the great field of human exertion. He is the man of luck, bad luck. Poor fellow! He lost his luck when he lost his pluck. Good pluck is good luck. Bad pluck is bad luck. Many a man has lost his luck, but never while he had good pluck. Men lose their luck by letting their energies eke through bad habits and unwise projects. One man loses his luck in his late morning naps, another in his late evening hours. One man loses his luck in the bar-room, another in the ball-room; one down by the river holding the boyish fishing-rod, another in the woods chasing down the innocent squirrel. One loses his luck in folly, one in fashion, one in idleness, one in high living, one in dishonesty, one in brawls, one in sensualism, and a great many in bad management. Indeed bad management is at the bottom of nearly all bad luck. It is bad management to train up a family of bad habits, to eat out one's living, and corrupt his life. It is bad management to drink liquor, and eat tobacco, and smoke, and swear, and tattle, and visit soda-fountains, and cream-saloons, and brothels, and live high, and chase after the fashions, and fret, and scold, and get angry, and abuse people, and mind other people's business, and neglect one's own. It is bad management to expose one's health, or overtax one's powers, and get sick, and take drugs to get well; to be idle or extravagant, or mean, or dishonest. All these things tend to bring that evil genius which men call bad luck.

But notwithstanding all these species of bad management, if one has genuine pluck he can reform. The man of energy can quit his drams, and hold his temper, and direct his life by the maxims of common sense.

Moral courage is the right arm of reform. True reformers are men of pluck. All men should be reformers. Life, when properly understood, is one great work of reform. Reform is but another word for improvement, progress. Progress is life's business, life's duty, life's end. Luck is not progress. It is getting to the end without the journey; it is getting rich without making money; it is getting honors without deserving them; it is having good things without knowing how to use them. Such luck is an evil. It is no luck. Indeed, there is no luck. Life's great good is wrought out, aye, wrought on, the anvil of industry. We cannot cheat Providence of its rule. Life is a vineyard, and men are rewarded in it for what they do and deserve. Talent and labor gauge the pay. Fortunes are made, not won. Wealth and honors are not a fortune. Give them to a youth and he knows not how to use them. They will prove his ruin. Steal money, steal a million of dollars, and lock it up in your coffers, and with it you steal a curse. You will be poorer than before. No man knows how, or can know how, to use stolen money well. There is no receipt-book or commercial regulation in the universe by which it can be disposed of to profit. It must be a losing game. Wealth is not good, money is not a blessing. The good lies in knowing how to use it. Honors are of themselves of no avail. They are not a good. The good is in knowing how to wear them. Where wealth and honors come unearned and undeserved, they are not a good, nor can they be. They are an evil, and work a terrible ruin. An edged tool in a mechanic's hand is a good thing; but in the hand of the unskillful it is a danger. A steam-engine in the hand of its master is a useful machine; but to one

who knows not how to use it, it is an instrument of death.

The generous and noble horse, under the care of his groom, is a most useful animal; but the man unused to such creatures had better let him alone. So it is with the things men covet in this life. They are blessings only as they are wisely used. The good they confer is not in themselves, but in the using. To use them is the thing to learn. This can be learned no way except by patient application in their attainment and use.

The rule is, to learn how to use wealth, we must make it; to learn how to wear honors, we must earn them; to learn how to enjoy pleasures, we must create them. Out of ourselves the good comes. The fountain is within us. If we would drink the water we must draw it from the well. If we would have statuary, we must carve it; if we would have fame, we must do something to secure it. If we would live well in life, we must do well. If we would conquer, we must fight. Labor is the price of success. He who has pluck to labor, and labor wisely, has naught to fear. Men may be what they would be, and have what they would have, if they only will. All lies in the resolute will. The stalwart arm and the determined soul will work out life's greatest good. Good is in work. Not in the thing made or earned is the good, so much as in the making and earning. He who does the most is truly the wealthiest man. In activity is our bliss.

Idleness is death; activity is life. The worker is the hero. Luck lies in labor. This is the end. And labor the fruit of pluck. Luck and pluck, then, meet in labor. Pleasure blossoms on the tree of labor. Wisdom is its fruit. Thrones are built on labor. Kingdoms stand by its steady props. Homes are made by labor. Every man of pluck will make him one, and fill it with the fruits of industry. In doing this, he will find no time to wait for, or complain of, luck.—Ways of Life.

Straining after Popularity.

By Dr. Plumer

THE lack of piety shows itself in our day, in straining after popularity. One is truly popular by the force of his talents, and the fervor of his piety; another, because he seeks it as a main end. Between these there is a wide difference. One is simple and solemn; the other is magniloquent and affected. The one impresses by his thoughts; the other by his manner and words. The one attracts by the solemnity and power with which he presents and applies Divine truth; the other by his newspaper notices, his quaint subjects and texts, his odd illustrations. The one wins converts to Christ; the other, admirers of himself. The one preaches boldly the doctrines of the cross; the other withholds or modifies them lest they should offend, and blunts every arrow lest it should penetrate, emulous only of the reputation of a popular preacher!

How many and sad are the lessons taught us by the history of the church, as to the great evils arising from an unconverted ministry! How sadly the Jewish church suffered from false prophets! It was an unconverted apostle that betrayed the Lord of Glory! For how many ages were the boasted successors of the apostles the vilest of men? And how, even now, in Germany, the lowest infidelity is decked in the robes of the ministry; and in England, the merest worldling, because second or subsequent sons of the gentry, are promoted to church benefices; and how, in communions regarded as evangelical, an unsanctified ministry are prostituting the order and ordinances of God's house to the purposes of superstition, and to the supplanting of a spiritual by a formal and ritual religion.

Piety, then, is the first great, essential element of a true minister of the Gospel. Without this, a preacher is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. He is a minister only in the technical sense of the word.---Dr. Plumer.

"Look Well to Your Faith."

He that has the faith of Christ, has all; he that wants it, has nothing. Well might our Lord say: "This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent." It secures the heart for God through Jesus Christ, and that secures the whole man; all his thoughts, all his words and actions; forming the whole of his conduct for life upon a perfect, a most infallible pattern. This, then, is the direction to which every Christian must turn his mind. Look well to your faith.

Beware of starving your faith, by neglecting to lay in proper provision. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. What the word holds forth and conveys through faith into the heart, viz., the grace of God in Christ, is the only support of the soul. Wherefore, as new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all knowledge and spiritual understanding. It is the Spirit of Christ indeed, which alone can kindle and maintain this Divine flame; but it is the Christian's business to lay the fuel ready.

Beware of poisoning your faith. And this may be done, either by perverse principles or practices. Both commonly go together, and mutually contribute support to each other. The milk of the word must be sincere, i. e., without mixture, in order to give nourishment; for every mixture gives it a poisonous quality.

Beware of spoiling your faith by suffering it to be idle. Exercise is as necessary in the spiritual life, as in the natural. By faith the Christian lives, and of course, he only lives so far as faith is kept in constant exercise. Just so much activity and exercise as there is, so much is there of faith; and whenever it ceases to act, the Christian ceases to live. The seed of life may be in him; but life consists in the exercises of life. At the same time we must beware of attempting to live, that is, to exercise faith, or any other grace, but in strength derived from the Spirit of life.

Queen Esther's Entrance.

By Dr. Guthrie

WITHIN the palace, but without the throne-room of Shushan, Queen Esther stands. They who enter the king's presence unsummoned do it at the peril of their life; and resolved in a good cause to dare the penalty she stands there with her jewled foot upon the grave. A noble spectacle! not so much for unrivaled beauty—still less for the splendor of her apparel, as for the resolution to venture life, and either save her nation or perish in the attempt. In her blooming youth, in the admiration of the court, in the affections of her husband, in her lofty rank, in her queenly honors, she has everything to make life attractive. Hers is a golden cup, and it is foaming of pleasures to the brim. But her mind is made up to die; and so, with a silent prayer and If I perish, I perish, on her lips, she passes in, and now stands mute and pallid, yet calm and resolute, outside the ring of nobles, to hear her doom. Nor has she to endure the agony of a long suspense. Her fate, which seems to tremble in the balance, is soon determined. No sooner does the monarch catch sight of the beautiful woman, and brave and good as beautiful, whom, he had raised from slavery to share his bed and throne, than her apprehensions vanish. The clouds break; and she finds, as we often do with Christ, that her fears have wronged her Lord. Instantly his hand stretches out the golden scepter; the business of the court is stopped; the queen! the queen! divides the crowd of nobles; and up that brilliant line she walks, in majesty and in charms that outvie her gems, to hear the blessed words What wilt thou, Queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall be given thee even to the half of the kingdom.

What wilt thou, Queen Esther? is but an echo of the voice which faith catches from the lips of Jesus; and the whole scene presents but a dim, imperfect image of that which heaven presents when the gate rolls open, and angels and archangels making way for him, a believer enters with his petitions. Was that beautiful woman once a slave? So was he. In her royal marriage was lowliness allied to majesty? So it is in his union, by faith, with Jesus Christ. And as to her royal apparel, the diadem, the cloth of gold bedecked with sparkling gems, in which her maids have attired their mistress, why, in the righteousness that clothes, and the graces of the Spirit that adorn him, the believer wears a robe which wins the admiration, not of men's but angels' eyes, and shines even amid the glories of a city whose gates are made of pearls and whose streets are paved with gold.

To the half of his kingdom, the Persian promised whatever his queen might ask: and generous, right royal was his offer; it helps us by its very meanness, as a molehill at the foot of a mountain, as a taper's feeble yellow flame held up against the blazing sun, to form some estimate of the boundless grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Half his kingdom! He offers nothing by halves. His promise is illimitable. All mine is thine. Confining his generosity neither to kingdoms, nor continents, nor worlds, nor heaven itself, he lays the whole universe at a poor sinner's feet. Away, then, with fears and cares! There is nothing we need that we shall not get, nothing we can ask that we shall not receive. It pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell. Transferring divine wealth, if I may so speak, to our account in the bank of heaven, and giving us an unlimited credit there, Jesus says, All things, whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.—Dr. Guthrie.

The Promises of God.

THE promises derive preciousness from the root and principle from which they spring. They are so many beams of Christ, the Sun of righteousness, and impart a light which discovers his excellency. They are the crystal streams of that river of life which proceeded out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, (Rev. xxii. 1), whose waters in time of drouth never fail, but with their overflowing plenty satisfy the thirsty, with their cooling virtue allay the heat of the wearied, and with their sweetness cheer and revive the drooping and dejected spirits.

They are precious objects of "precious" faith, as the apostle styles it (2 Pet. i. 1). True it is, that the quickening influence and virtue of the promises reach every grace of the Spirit. By them hope is kept alive in its expectation of good, patience is supported under difficulties, holiness is perfected, love is inflamed, and a blessed fear of God is preserved. But yet all this is not done by the immediate intercourse which these graces have with the promises; but by the intervention of faith, which first feeds upon them as the manna of the gospel, and then communicates the sweetness and virtue that it receives from them in a suitable manner to every other grace. As the root first sucks the juice and sap from the earth, of which it makes a concoction, and then sends forth a digested nourishment to the several branches and fruit that hangs upon the tree; so doth the radical grace of faith distribute to other graces that strength and life which it is partaker of from Christ and his promises. As we have nothing from God but we receive by and through Christ: so no grace is partaker of any virtue and influence from Christ but by the intervention of faith.—Spurstowe's "Wells of Salvation Opened." A. D. 1654.

Meditate Upon the Promises of God

By Thomas Watson

MEDITATE upon the promises of God. The promises are flowers, growing in the paradise of Scripture; meditation, like the bee, sucks out the sweetness of them. The promises are of no use or comfort to us till they are meditated upon. For as the roses hanging in the garden may give a fragrant perfume, yet their sweet water is distilled only by the fire; so the promises are sweet in reading over, but the water of these roses—the spirit and quintessence of the promises—is distilled into the soul only by meditation. The incense, when it is pounded and beaten, smells sweetest. Meditating on a promise, like the beating of the incense, makes it most odoriferous and pleasant. The promises may be compared to a golden mine, which then only enricheth, when the gold is dug out. By holy meditation we dig out that spiritual gold which lies hid in the mine of the promise, and so we come to be enriched. Cardan saith, there is no precious stone but hath some hidden virtue in it. They are called "precious promises" (2 Pet. i. 4). When they are applied by meditation, then their virtue appears, and they become precious indeed.—Watson's "Saint's Spiritual Delight." A. D. 1657.

Sabbath Readings.

By Editor

MRS. W., assisted by Sister A. P. Patton, is publishing a series of tracts with the above title, for youth and children. She has a vast amount of moral and religious reading which she has been collecting during the past fifteen years, from which she is selecting and compiling these tracts. They are coming from the press at the rate of about one hundred pages a week. These will be held for sale in three forms, namely:

First, in 16 page tracts, at $2,00 per hundred.

Second, six tracts bound in paper covers, making a pamphlet of one hundred pages, at 10 cents, postage, 2 cents.

Third, twenty-four tracts bound in one volume, in muslin, at 50 cents, postage, 8 cents.

Some have the idea that the enterprise contemplates furnishing Sabbath-school libraries. This cannot be done for two reasons: First, 3000 copies of only fifty-two paper covered pamphlets, one for each Sabbath in the year, would cost $7280, which is a larger sum than can at present be invested in such reading. Second, a few hundred copies of each would supply all our Sabbath-schools. No, this Sabbath reading is designed for every family. All our friends must be liberal in supplying their families, and their neighbors, or the enterprise will be a losing one. Those who print for the million can sell at lower prices and get rich, while those who in the humble path of unpopular truth publish, have limited circulation, and consequently higher prices in order that sales may equal expenses.

But the prices of these books at the present high prices of labor and stock, are low, very low; and we hope that all who look favorably upon the enterprise of furnishing with good reading, those homes which are destitute, and adding to their own libraries suitable Sabbath reading, will help sustain it. In about four weeks, we can furnish the first 384 pages in either of the above named forms. Those who order first, will be served first.

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