the foot-it is so full of graves.

Ah! how few are the

gardens where death has not left his footprints, when he came to steal away some of our sweetest flowers. Few are the trees standing on this earth, from which his axe has not lopped some goodly boughs. In this world, have I not seen one and another stand bleak and branchless; and oh, how blessed for the father who has laid the last survivor in the dust, and returns from that saddest funeral to find God waiting for him in his empty home!

When the believer is alone-God in his Holy Spirit abiding with him-he is not alone. How happy, yet how strange a man he is! Those paradoxes by which Paul describes him-"Unknown, and yet well known; dying, and behold we live; sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing all things”—admit of important additions. Kill him, and he lives; bury him, and he rises; exalt him, and he is humbled; humble him, and he is exalted; curse him, and he prays for you; hate him, and he loves you; an orphan, he clings to a living father; a widow, she weeps on the bosom and sleeps in the arms of a living husband. "A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widow is God in his holy habitation." Piety sits on a husband, a father's grave, confident in that living relationship, and calm beneath the shield of him who says "You shall not afflict any widow nor fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry unto me, I will surely hear their cry. And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and

your wives shall be widows, and your children shall be fatherless." Let a believer never count himself desolate. Nor let others ever call him so. If thy heart lodges this noblest guest, it matters not how mean thy dwelling be; God shall abide with thee there on earth, till thou art called up to abide with him in heaven.

I will

THE NEW LIFE.

cause you to walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them.-EZEkiel xxxvi. 27.

THE Divine Being has established a variety of lawssome of a physical, others of a moral nature. And it is as impossible to violate with impunity a moral as a physical law; although the consequences in the former case may be more remote, and the suffering may not follow so closely on the heels of the sin. Solomon asks, "Can a man take fire into his bosom and not be burned?" "Can he touch pitch and not be defiled?” You at once answer no. He who drops a red hot coal into his bosom shall certainly be burned; he who falls into the water shall certainly be drowned; and if any man were mad enough to pitch himself over a lofty bartizan, he lights not on the ground like a winged bird or angel-he shall certainly be crushed to pieces. Not only so, but a passive as well as active violation of nature's laws is followed by suffering. Let a man resist her demand for sleep-let him turn a deaf ear to the calls of hunger-let him deny his body the rest and refreshment that nature needs, and he must die. Now, no less certainly shall he suffer who neglects or violates

those moral laws which have also been established by the decree of God.

It may seem a strange, and even foolish thing to assert, but it is not the less true, that it is safer to touch fire than sin-safer in a sense to quaff off a cup of poison than taste the cup of devils. He, certainly, stands a better chance of escape who violates a physical than moral law. And why? Just because, in the breach of moral, judgment does not, as in the breach of physical laws, follow speedily on the transgression, nor succeed it as the peal thunders on the flash. Yet it is not more strange than true; and true, for this plain, satisfactory, and unanswerable reason, that the God who instituted the laws which govern the physical world, may modify, may change, may even altogether repeal them. He has already done so. Iron is heavier than water; yet did not the iron axe float like a cork at the prophet's bidding? Did not the unstable sea stand up in walls of solid crystal, till the host passed over? Did naked foot, bathed in morning dew, ever feel the green grass cooler, than those three Hebrews the floor of the burning furnace, when they trod at once beneath their feet a tyrant's power and the red hot coals of fire? Fire may not burn, and water may not drown. He who gave to these elements their laws may alter them as he sees meet; but that moral law, which is a transcript of his own mind and will, is, must be unchangeable as himself. Be sure, therefore, that you cannot sin with impunity. Be sure that your sin will find you out. Be sure that what you sow you shall reap. Be sure,

This is difficult to be believed.

that although the cloud is long of gathering, it shall one day explode. Be sure that sin and sorrow are linked together by an adamantine chain-durable and eternal as that which binds the creature to the throne of God. When, therefore, Satan, the flesh, or the world solicit, remember, that if your weakness yields, you are more certain to suffer, than you would be to burn the finger which you thrust into the fire. Sin is the fire that a man cannot take into his bosom, and not be burned.

Is it urged, by way of objection, that God's people are exempted from suffering-commit sin, and yet escape the penalty? True. But their exemption from future punishment forms no exception to this rule. In their case, indeed, the debtor escapes, but then the creditor is paid. The sufferings from which they are exempted were endured by their substitute, and in a dying Saviour their sins were punished. "He bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed."

Entertaining these views, we ought not to be suspected of losing sight either of the dignity or claims of the law in our faith in a crucified Redeemer. That holy law was not interred in Jesus' sepulchre, nor left behind with the grave clothes in his tomb. We no longer hope, indeed, to be saved by the law, yet we hold with the Apostle-hold as strongly as any can do —that "the law is holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good," and that these moral laws which were enshrined in the ark of Moses, and most awfully illustrated on the cross of Christ, have lost none of their