elegant and beautiful in the doves flying to their windows, or dove-cots. The Holy Ghost, who inspired the prophet to use this figure, and who is himself the Author of all true conversion, is himself represented in Scripture as a dove: and just as he is called the Holy Ghost, not only because he is holy himself, but because he makes sinners holy, so is he the dove because of his own gentle, gracious character, and also because he works similar effects on all whom he converts. While you think, then, of converts flying as doves to their windows, remember that the Holy Spirit leads the way, turns, guides, and sustains them, as the parent bird teaches her young to fly.

The figure of doves flying to their windows appears to represent the eagerness with which converts fly to the church of Christ, as to a place of rest and safety. As Noah's dove came back to the ark when she could find no rest for the sole of her foot, so does the sinner, weary of wandering up and down the world in folly, vanity, and sin, rejoice to come to Christ, who is his ark. Storms may rage without, judginents may desolate the world-in Christ there is no condemnation, all is safety, security, and peace.

Brethren, would you not help the poor heathen to find their way to the place of rest and safety for their souls in Christ? Why, you would all, if you could— I am sure you would-all show to a benighted traveller his right way. Who would refuse to help a poor blind man to avoid the precipice? If a poor affrighted dove flew to you for shelter, who would not open the window and admit the trembling bird? Will you be less kind to the souls of the heathen, benighted with worse than Egyptian darkness, and gone very far astray from God and holiness, sadly blinded by the god of this world, applying to you—some actually by their voices, and all through their misery-to show them the place of refuge and safety?

Now, while this is the general meaning of the doves flying to their windows, that it represents converts flying eagerly to the Church of Christ as to a place of rest and safety, I cannot but think, with some of the greatest commentators on Scripture, that there is a reason why converts are here especially likened to doves. Other birds fly to their nests, and there find rest and safety; why, then, is the dove selected here? The dove, you will remember, is the bird of purity : "Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." The Gospel finds all men naturally inclined to be impure in heart and imagination, delighting in unholy thoughts: it comes, also, and it finds them, persons of polluted lips, and very often, unless graciously stopped, of unclean life. The Gospel proposes, first of all, to forgive men freely all their unholiness and sin through the atoning cleansing blood of Christ, and then it proposes also to sanctify and make them pure in heart: it converts men, who resemble unclean birds, into doves in respect of purity.

Are any inclined to mock at this thought? "Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap: he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life eternal." "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." Young persons, can you bear this test? Are you pure in heart? Are you becoming so transformed by the Spirit of our God, that you have no pleasure in the wanton jest, the impure allusion, the bad book, the vile picture, the filthy conversation of the wicked? Do you feel a sense of pleasure where licentiousness shows her brazen forehead? Are your prayers carnest for grace to purify and preserve you? Old Christian, what say you to purity of heart? Can you

see God without it? Have you gone to the fountain open for sin and for uncleanness? Are you delighting in spiritual and holy pleasure?

But, here, my thoughts again turn towards heathen lands. They are all, without exception, I believe, regions of impurity. Idolatry is uniformly licentious as well as cruel: the car of Juggernaut, which rolls its blood-stained wheels over so many pilgrim devotees every year, is also decorated (I should rather say is disfigured) with representations the most obscene and filthy. The gods of heathen Greece and Rome were the patterns of licentiousness; and if such were the deities, what were the people? No nation ever arose in morals above the character of their deities. So, also, Mahometanism is a religion which encourages licentiousness and sensuality. Now, although these things abound here, as we cannot but know, yet here, in this Christian country, they are against our religion, in direct opposition to the gospel; and are, we must confess it, our shame and our disgrace; but there, in those lands, their religion sanctions them; none feel shame; there is no moral principle to counteract them. And will you not feel for them-you who feel for the decencies of Christian society, who cherish the purity which raises a man above the beast, and who acknowledge that to the gospel of Christ and the grace of God you owe it all-will you not send that gospel, and pray for that grace to be given to the poor heathen?

The dove is also a bird of affection. I have spoken of the union among Christians; let mutual affection cement that union. We heard it this morning in the epistle: "Be ye kindly-affectioned one to another." "The fruit of the Spirit is love, gentleness, and goodness." The gospel then, though opposed to licentiousness, is not opposed to the charities which bless, the sympathies which soothe to the deeds of gentleness and kindness: far from it: Christianity forbids only what is sinful and injurious to man; it recommends "whatsoever is lovely and of good report." The friendship, which has Christian principle for its basis, will alone prove permanent: no change of circumstances, no distance of time, can separate those who are one in Christ. It is Christianity which teaches to bear one another's burdens, to "Weep with them that weep, and rejoice with them that do rejoice." If you know how to love as brethren-if you have tasted the sweets of Christian friendship-will you not shew the poor heathens the gospel, which alone can teach them what genuine affection means?

As the dove is a bird of purity and affection, and so is a fit emblem of the Christian convert, is it not also a plaintive bird? Who that has ever visited woodland scenery has not listened to the plaintive moaning of the dove? Need I tell you that prayer and earnest confession for sin are marks of every convert? Was it not thus with Hezekiah of old; "Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upwards: O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me." Is it not so with the prophet Ezekiel ? "They that escape of them shall escape and shall be on the mountains like doves of the valley, all of them mourning every one for his iniquity." It is at the same time true that the believer has songs in the night; he mingles thanksgivings with his praises and supplications. Yet he has many sorrows, frequent heaviness, and much tribulation; sin tempts and hinders, the world tempts and hinders, the flesh tempts and hinders. And hence he has much to mourn over in his slow progress and his manifold corruptions. He sees much to grieve him in the world; much in the church around. Hence, like Hannah, he is often "one of a sorrowful spirit:" like David, his harp is oft-times tuned to notes of

sadness: he weeps, as his Lord did over the impenitent; he sighs, as his Lord did, over the sufferings of humanity; he mourns, as his Lord did, over the graves of beloved friends.

Some perhaps, may despise this topic, and think it a lowly thing to resemble the moaning dove. God does not. Surrounded by the praises of heaven, he bends to hear you, though only a little child, or a poor beggar, while you pour out your sorrows into his paternal ear. And if you have done this, have you not found how gracious are the consolations of Jesus! Is it not truly written, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted?"

And, then, will you not on this ground likewise aid us in teaching the heathen to sorrow with a godly sorrow, that they may be comforted as you have been with a joyful consolation? Is it not music in the ears of Jesus, our glorified Saviour, to hear the moaning of penitence ascending to his throne of grace from among the heathen? Have angels no pleasure, think you, in hearing of fresh victories gained by the Saviour over sin and Satan? Have the spirits of the just made perfect no matter for fresh delight when told that prayers are ascending from spots for which they laboured and prayed while on earth? there no joy, also, to yourselves if any thing of the same mind is in you which was also in Christ Jesus, to hear through our missionaries and Christian travellers of good report, the murmurs, as it were, and the faint echoes of the prayers and praises of heathen converts beginning to worship your Saviour, who agree with you in all main points of Christian experience?

Is

But you will help, if you yourselves are true converts, resembling the dove in purity, affection, and plaintiveness of spirit. If you have fled for yourselves to Christ and his church, as a place of safety to your souls-if, as our first part urged, you have hastened with earnestness, many or all of you, in a united spirit to join Christ and his people-then, I am sure, the cause of Christian missions is quite safe in your hands; you will then rejoice to do what you can: and I can neither ask nor wish for more. The widow's mite, the poor man's penny, the servant's sixpence, will be as welcome as the rich man's gold. I rejoice to learn that your auxiliary association is in a very improving state, because I trust it is a gracious proof and sign that true conversion and genuine devotedness to God are increasing among you. But let me exhort you to go forward for very much more remains to be done. Millions of heathen are still perishing for lack of knowledge; your time for exertion on their behalf is but short: O do what you can, and do it while you can. And I especially entreat that whatever you are pleased to give to this cause may be accompanied and followed by a prayer for the blessing of God upon it; for without that blessing missionary work certainly never can prosper at all. Fly to the throne of Christ in prayer, like doves flying to their windows: let your supplications ascend like a cloud of incense. Soon, very soon, my Christian friends, the time will come when you must take your flight into the eternal world: then with what joy will angels see you if indeed you are numbered among the true converts and faithful disciples of Jesus-with what joy will they see you come flying as a cloud, a bright and glorious cloud to the happy regions; with what gratulation will they welcome you as doves to their windows, falling gladly at the feet of Jesus, and admitted to the mansions which he has gone to prepare for you. There, dear brethren, may we meet with multitudes of our fellow Christians, of all nations and kindred and people and tongues, to praise, to adore, and to glorify the Triune God throughout eternity.

THE "CLOUD OF WITNESSES."

WE would remark on the term "witnesses," that, possibly, we somewhat overstrain its import when we imagine those who had departed in the faitli looking down from their resting places, spectators of the combat which we carry on with evil. It is an idea which we are all prone to entertain, but one of whose justice it might be hard to demonstrate, that the dead are not wholly withdrawn from intercourse with the present scene of being; but, that, though we upon earth can hold no communings with disembodied spirits, our actions lie open to the scrutiny of those who have thrown off this frame-work of flesh. There is something which we may not suspect commends itself to the romance of our nature in the supposition, that dead kinsmen and friends take an interest in what we do, and in what we endure, and that with much of the attributes of guardian spirits they tend our pathway, and watch solicitously our every action. There is something which partially does away with the bitterness of separation when we imagine it confined to ourselves, and not extended to those whom we love and lament: and it seems almost to rifle the grave, and strip death of its power, when we imagine fastened on ourselves the eyes of the departed ones who most enjoyed our affection, and feel that, however broken the ties of companionship, we still move and still act in their presence. Yet the complacency we may feel in the entertainment of the opinion is not to be received as a proof of its existence; and if we remember how sorrow preponderates over joy in human allotments, and how, in the conduct even of the holiest amongst us, corrrupt principle manifests itself as still fearfully powerful, we shall find cause to think it could not consist with the happiness of separate spirits that they should be, as we suppose them, acquainted with transactions of which earth is the theatre, and admitted to the inspection of our toil and our warfare. It might add to the bliss of a parent delivered from the flesh, and received into the blessedness of heaven, to be allowed to behold his orphan child pressing on bravely in the pathway of godliness; but if this child forsake the law of his Maker, and walk in the broad road to destruction, it surpasses our power to conceive that the parent could look on from his own state of felicity and feel no disquietude, though he dwell where sorrow cannot enter: the supposition is impossible that he should know grief or anxiety. Thus the ascribing to them the power of witnessing, according to the common acceptation of the term, what is done and suffered on earth would involve us in a labyrinth of ideas. If we suppose them acquainted with one part, we cannot suppose them kept ignorant of another part of the actions and circumstances of their bereaved households. If they looked upon the righteous child, and not upon the unrighteous, the very division would seem to tell them the fact, which, so far as we can judge, must interfere with their happiness.

It is indeed true-and perhaps no truth more overpasses our present comprehension that the eternal blessedness of the saints is independent of re-union with kinsfolk or children. It is an overwhelming thought, but, nevertheless, one which we dare not put from us as unfounded, that many a parent shall be unspeakably and everlastingly happy, and yet know that his child is lost. In our present state we naturally imagine that the absence of a beloved one would cause a blank in the circle, and that the certainty of his misery would mar all our enjoyments; yet nothing is more evident that the imagination must be

incorrect. The case will undoubtedly occur of parents who miss their children and of children who miss their parents among the shining groups of the heirs of the first resurrection: but since we know that there shall be no more crying, neither any more pain, we are sure that thus failing to meet the object of earthly affection shall be attended with nothing that approaches to disquietude, and that even he who stands the alone saved one of a household has the same felicity in this his loneliness as though girt around by the beings whom he once held most dear.

Inexplicable it may be, but easily supposed, that so shall the man admitted into the privileges of immortality be swallowed up in God, that every manifestation of the divine attributes will add something to his happiness, and that in whatsoever the Creator is glorified, in that will the ransomed find materials of delight and awe and solemn adoration-aye, even though it be the destruction of an impenitent and impious multitude, and that multitude comprehend some or many of their own flesh and their own blood. We cannot be Christians and doubt that the affections of our nature seem to recoil from the statement that God shall so literally be "all in all" through eternity to the glorified soul, that, from whatever the one reaps honour, from that does the other reap happiForasmuch as it lies beyond all peradventure that the Almighty shall be glorified in the condemnation of the reprobate as well as in the deliverance of the righteous, it must also be incontrovertible that the saved ones shall recognize, and that with thankfulness, the displayed attributes of the Deity in the awardments of the fire and of the worm, and that they shall not be withheld from pouring out the confession that "the Lord is known by the judgments which he executes," by the consciousness that, in the cry of anguish which comes up from the pit there are the moanings of those who called them parents on earth, and that the glory of their Maker is wrung from the stretched sinews and the agonized spirits of those who had once been the centre of the warmest and most powerful affections.

ness.

Now whilst we most unreservedly admit, that the final happiness of the redeemed shall in no degree be interfered with by the failure of relatives to win the like portion, we think it unfair to argue, that the spirits of the righteous may be spectators of what passes amongst the members of their bereaved households. It is quite true, that God shall be hereafter glorified in the punishment of the disobedient, and that in this punishment as manifesting the divine justice and holiness of character, the children of the resurrection shall find righteous satisfaction: but then it is to the fullest extent true, that God is not now glorified in the disobedience of the disobedient, but that, on the contrary, he is grievously dishonoured by their life and conversation. We cannot therefore infer, that because the redeemed shall behold without disquietude the punishment, they may also behold without disquietude the disobedience: that which in the last instance annihilates disquietude, and fills the mind with complacency, namely, the ingathering of glory to the Creator, is wanting in the first instance. If you bring them in as witnesses of the things done on this theatre of probation, you must consider them as alike interested in the struggle and the success of the combatants; and you cannot, we think, reconcile with this taking of interest, a truth of which we can allow no infraction, that the deep repose of separate spirits is never disturbed; but that, whether those whom they loved in the flesh yield to them or become their antagonists, in each an unbroken tranquillity shall encircle them to the day of the resurrection.-REV. H. MElvill,