health, long life, secular property, has no reason to expect an answer to his prayer, only so far as these things are sought with the grand motive of promoting holiness. God has not promised to answerany prayer that has not the desire for holiness as its inspiration. Secondly: Successful efforts are efforts for holiness. Efforts after wealth, influence, power, fame, may, and frequently do, succeed in the getting of these things; but what when they are got? If the inspiring desire has not been holiness, the end, which has been happiness, is not obtained. Since God's will is our holiness, no human effort for happiness not aiming at the same grand end, has ever been, or can ever be, successful.

Whatever may be the appearance of things, this is the fact, all human prayers and human efforts not aiming at holiness are failures.

THE FUNDAMENTAL FACTS OF EVANGELISM.

"For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."John iii. 17.

CHRISTIANITY is built on facts. Those facts are connected with the history of a person, and that person is the Son of God. Three

such facts are in the text. They lie at the foundation of the evangelical system, and they reveal the infinite mercy of God.

I. The first fact is this, that "GOD SENT HIS SON INTO THE WORLD." This fact implies (1) Separateness of existence. (2) Subordination of existence. These no philosophy as yet has reconciled to the doctrine of divine unity. The fact that God sent his Son into the world is the greatest fact in the history of the world, perhaps in the history of the universe. It constitutes the great epoch in the annals of the race.

II. The second fact is this, that "God sent his Son into the world NOT TO CONDEMN IT." This is not what might have been expected. Two things might have led one to expect that if God sent his Son from heaven to earth, it would have been to condemn, to inflict condign punishment. First: The wickedness of the world. Before Christ came the world was full of ingratitude, idolatry, corruption, rebellion. It was ripe for vengeance. Secondly: The ill-treatment his other messenger's had received. The world had persecuted, tormented, murdered his prophets. Would it not, therefore, be natural to expect that if He sent his Son

it would have been on an errand of judgment?

III. The third fact is this, that "God sent his Son into the world TO SAVE IT." What is salvation? It does not consist in physical, intellectual, or local changes. It is a restoration in the soul, of what it has lost through sin. First: Supreme love to God. This is the life of the soul. Secondly: Constant fellowship with the great Father. This is the happiness of the soul. Thirdly Useful service in the universe. This is the mission of souls. All these things are lost to the soul through sin, and Christ came to restore them, and the restoration is its salvation.

ASPECTS OF LIFE. "For what is your life?"Jas. iv. 14.

Consider-I. A GREAT MYSTERY. Birth, growth, sleep, waking, volition, death, &c.

II. A PILGRIMAGE TO IMMORTALITY. But for this thought death would be a mystery of despair, a mystery casting its black shadows beforehand on every scene we tread. Have we any confirmation of this glad thought the Gospel gives us? If "God is love," we cannot doubt that "Death is but the beginning of immortality."

For how could God be love, if we live just long enough to know the rapture of a hallowed love, and then live too long in the knowledge that the heart's treasure is torn away, &c. But the bad! They want no confirmation of the thought; that is a demonstration too awful for me.

III. A POTENT INFLUENCE. "No man liveth unto himself." Life is communicative. We are the parents of men's thoughts and habits, speech and actions. Our very glances are sometimes shaping the destinies of men; the combined result of our behaviour, who can measure it? This regal power is wielded by the beggar in his rags. There are some who sway with this power over a domain almost boundless-Carlyle, Voltaire, Emerson, Knox, Calvin, &c. The power for good or evil that is in the hands of the popular thinkers, &c., ought to overwhelm them. But how we all ought to stand in awe of ourselves! Sometimes, we see life reappearing, as beneath the painter's hand I have seen the portrait grow in canvas, as beneath the sculptor's chisel I have seen the statue take form and shape, &c. And, therefore, it is

IV. A SACRED TRUST. The God who gives it, says, "Usa it for me." It is the talent

which again He will require. You may use its power for evil, if you will, but you then rob God. He lent it to be a bright star to light man in the night, not a cloud; to be a propitious wind upon the sea, and not a hurricane to wreck, &c. And therefore, it is

V. A MOMENTOUS PROBATION. It is the condition of your future. You are sowing the seed of which you shall hereafter reap the harvest. Your life is not a disconnected link, but the germ out of which your heaven or hell shall come. 1. Your own consciousness suggests this. 2. Analogy suggests this. If each period of the life we now live is simply the outcome of what went before, there is at least the probability

that the future will be the outgrowth of the present. 3. The condition of things suggests it. Looking at the opportunities for good and evil, &c. 4. The inevitable result of living suggests it. How do we come out of every temptation Greater slaves or truer men. How out of pressure? How out of sorrow? We are going to our own place. 5. The attributes of God suggest this. Righteousness and justice demand it. And therefore it is

VI. A THRILLING DRAMA. "The world's a stage." &c. A Mephistopheles dogs the steps of every man. How will the plot end? God looks on, angels, &c. VII. A BRIEF EXISTENCE. H. J. MARTYN.

no cognisance of thought, feeling, desire, and the unexpressed things of the soul. Industry, sobriety, veracity, honesty, these are the extent of its demands, and if these are conformed to, society approves, and applauds. Thousands consider these conventional rules to be the standards of character, and pride themselves in their conformity to them. Because they are diligent in their business, they deceive no one, they pay every man his due, they consider their way right. Without disparaging in the least this social morality we are bound to say, that what is conventionally moral may be essentially wrong. It may spring from wrong motives, and be governed by wrong rea

sons.

The Scribes and Pharisees of old were conventionally right. Albeit they were rotten to the core. He who read their natures through denounced them as whited sepulchres. The end of such a way is death. Death to all the elements of well-being.

II. THE FORMALISTICALLY RELIGIOUS WAY SEEMS RIGHT, BUT IS NEVERTHELESS RUINOUS. Religion has its forms, it has its places, and its times of worship, its order of service, its benevolent institutions. A correct and constant attendance to such forms are considered by thousands as religion itself. Regularity in Church, attention to all the recognised rites of religion, contributions according to the general standard of the congregation, all this passes for religion, but is not religion. It is mechanism, nothing more. The motions of machinery not the actions of the soul. There is no life in it, and it cannot lead to life, but to death. "The letter killeth." "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

III. THE WAY OF THE SELFISHLY

EVANGELICAL SEEMS RIGHT BUT IS NEVERTHELESS RUINOUS. Evangelical religion, in the sense of a participation of the spirit of Christ, is the religion of man. There is no true religion apart from a living faith in Christ. But the thing that is come to be called evangelical is to a fearful extent intensely selfish. It is the religion of selfishness. Its appeals are all to the hopes and fears of men. Its preaching makes men feel, but their feelings are all concerned for their own interest; makes men pray, but their prayer is a selfish entreaty for the deliver ance from misery, and the attainment of happiness. Fire and brimstone bring men together into congregations and churches. We fear that much that is called the evangelical religion of this age stands in direct opposition to the teachings of Him who said, "He that seeketh his life shall lose it," and also to the teaching of Paul, who said, "Without charity I am nothing." A selfish evangelicalism is the way of death. Men go to hell through churches. What, then, is the way that is really right? Here it is; "I am the way." Following Christ is the only way that leads

to life.

CONCLUSION: Right and wrong are independent of men's opinione, what seems right to men is often wrong, and the reverse. Men are held responsible for their beliefs. A wrong belief, however sincere, will lead to ruin.

(No. CXIX.)

SINFUL MIRTH.

"Even in laughter the heart is sor rowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness."-Prov, xiv. 13.

THERE is an innocent' mirth, a sunny, sparkling, cheerfulness, arising from a happy natural temperament. There is a virtuous

mirth. A mirth that has moral worth in it, springing from holy states of heart. This mirth, all should have. We are commanded "to rejoice evermore." There is a sinful mirth, and of this the text speaks. Three things are suggested concerning this mirth.

I. IT IS BOISTEROUS IN EXPRESSION. The "laughter" to which Solomon here refers is of a certain kind. Laughter in itself is not wrong. "It is," says Steele, "that which strikes upon the mind, and being too volatile and strong breaks out in the tremor of the voice." And this author speaks of different kind of laughers- the "dimplers," the "smilers," the "grinners," and the "horse laughers." A man's laugh is often the best index to his character. "How much," says Carlyle, "lies in laughter-the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies the cold glitter, as of ice; the fewest are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but only sniff, and titter, and sniggle from the throat outwards, or, at least, produce some whiffling, husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool. Of none such come good. The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; but his own life is already a treason and a stratagem." The laughter of which Solomon speaks, however, is not a natural laughter. It is a hypocritical laughter; it is the laughter of a man who has little or no joy in him-a man ill at ease. It is what Solomon calls elsewhere, "the laughter of the fool," and he said of it, "It is mad." The laughter of a corrupt heart. It is the roar of the maniac; the laugh of the drunkard, who is about stepping over a fearful precipice, is not more mad

VOL. XXI.

than the laughter of him who goes through life with a heart in hostility to God.

II. IT IS SAD IN SPIRIT. "Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful." The jovial merriment of the social board, the joke, and the laugh, as the glass goes round, are but a veil drawn to conceal a world of misery within. Beneath all, the heart is sorrowful, with dark moral memories of the past, with gloomy forebodings as to the future. Sinful laughter is but misery mimicking happiness. Judge not men by appearance. The most miserable may often show the most merriment. A sorrowful heart lies under all that's gay, and jovial and sparkling in the circles of wickedness.

III. IT IS WRETCHED IN END. "The end of that mirth is heaviness." (1.) Sinful mirth will have an end. Its jestings and carousings will not go on for ever. Disease, age, decay, death, hush all for ever. (2.) "The end is heaviness." There is no laughter in the agonies of death, no laughter on the day of judgment, no laughter in hell.

(No. CXX.)

THE MISERY OF THE APOSTATE, AND THE HAPPINESS OF THE GOOD.

"The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways; and a good man shall be satisfied from himself."Prov. xiv. 14.

I. THE MISERY OF THE APOSTATE. "The blackslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways," First: The character of the apostate. "He is a backslider in heart." There is a sense in which all men are backsliders. Sin is an apostacy; souls turning away from virtue and from God. The blackslider here, however, refers to one who, by God's grace, had been restored to moral goodness, but who had

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