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do any thing on which you can honestly implore God's blessing.

In the beginning God appointed the lights of the firmament for signs and for seasons, for days and for years. Just as the value of gold in the mine is vague and indeterminate until it is apportioned in coin or other uses; just as the extent of continent and island is vague and indeterminate until it is apportioned out in leagues and miles,-so God has measured out human life in days and seasons and years, that we may perceive the full value and importance of each, These divisions of time may teach us an important lesson. There are certain pursuits in life which are best fitted for certain times in life, and these again have their correspondence for these duties. You cannot adequately discharge in one part of the day that which more properly belongs to another. Man goeth forth unto his work and his labour until the evening, and you cannot crowd into the evening the proper business of the day. There are certain duties which are best for youth, and others which are best for manhood. In youth you collect the materials which in after life you arrange, combine, and build upon. Youth has an aptitude for much where advanced life has a positive inability. On the other hand, advanced life has its own peculiar duties and graces. Surely, those of us to whom the care of Christ's little ones is committed, who can make or mar so much of their future happiness by the wisdom or unwisdom by

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which we dispose of their time, ought to be very thoughtful, very prayerful, in their behalf.

The Apostle tells us to redeem the time; and the exact force of the expression is, that we should lose no opportunity, that we should avail ourselves of every opportunity. It is not as if our time lay clear and unbroken before us; unhappily much, very much, has been wasted and misspent. The Apostle St. Peter exhorteth us, that as Christ has suffered for us, we should no longer live the rest of our lives in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. “For," continues the Apostle," the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles ;" and he proceeds to give a dark list of the sinful acts to which guilty and unregenerate man is prone. Ah, that we could look back upon our time now as we should desire to look back upon it when our time is well nigh spent! It is but a little while, and all our sands of time will have stolen away. The great business of time is to prepare for eternity, and that business should be done at once, as we know not how short our time may be. The time is so short and so uncertain! How striking an illustration of the uncertainty of life-if, indeed, so trite a truth requires illustration was furnished by the sudden removal, the other day, of a distinguished writer, with whom most of us, I suppose, have been on some sort of intimacy. We dare not leave the great work of our

*

* These words were originally written at the time of the

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NO TIME AT THE LAST.

salvation to the last. The question of our state with God-a work which requires the experience of years to ripen it, and which may well tax all our keenness of intellect and freshness of spirit-must not be imperfectly huddled up in the dim, uncertain light of the evening of our days. When the lamp of life burns low, when the quivering frame is racked by pain, or tossed by fever, or steeped in stupor, or maddened by delirium,—is that an hour in which you can calmly listen to the Gospel offers of acceptance with God in Christ, in which you can realise the blessed hope set before us, in which the intellect and the spirit can achieve its highest and most solemn work? O fools— O immeasurably more than fools!-who have let their season of grace and hope and opportunity pass away, and no preparation to meet their God! We dare not trust to the uncertain future. O Father, "so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom"! In Thy dear Son, forgive us; in Thy Holy Spirit, renew us!

Then shall we be enabled to watch with calmness the flight of the rapid years. Thus only may we learn to look on the past without regret, and forward to the future without dismay: to look back on the past without regret, because we feel that it is purified and forgiven; to look forward to the future without

death of Mr. Thackeray, whose sudden death furnished a lesson, even more impressive than what we gain from his books, of the uncertainty and vanity of life.

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dismay, because God is our guide, and heaven is our home. Thus, then, may we seek to redeem the time; thus pass through things temporal, so as to lose not the things eternal; and be found ready in the day when the mighty Angel shall stand on sea and shore, and swear by Him who liveth for ever and ever that time shall be no longer.

IN one of the Pauline Epistles the Apostle says, "Give attention to reading." This "reading" doubtless refers to reading aloud the Scriptures in the assembly of the faithful. But they may well be taken for a motto in the daily concerns of life. The rules of the Gospel, without an effort, fit themselves with great exactness into the ever-varying phases of life. Had St. Paul's lot been cast in a reading age, we may believe that the great Apostle would have given some express counsel on a department which occupies so large a portion of the best part of life. But here, as elsewhere, there is no "over-legislation," legislation of details, but we are left to gather up the measure of revealed truth concerning the subject, which is readily revealed to those who seek for it.

First of all, then, reading is a great gift; it is one of the pounds and one of the talents for which we have to give account. The world of books is that established heritage which is given, in our own day and in our own land, almost alike to all, and so far goes a long way towards equalising human conditions