upon him, "He will take his own way, and waik in his own counsel; I shall cease from striving, and let him alone”—against Satan, to whom every day of his life he has given some fresh advantage over him, and who will not be willing to lose the victim on whom he has practised so many wiles, and plied with success so many delusions. And such are the enemies whom you, who wretchedly calculate on the repentance of the eleventh hour, are every day mustering up in greater force and formidableness against you; and how can we think of letting you go, with any other repentance than the repentance of the precious moment that is now passing over you, when we look forward to the horrors of that impressive scene, on which you propose to win the prize of immortality, and to contest it single-handed and alone, with all the weight of opposition which you have accumulated against yourselves-a death-beda languid, breathless, tossing, and agitated death-bed; that scene of feebleness, when the poor man cannot help himself to a single mouthful-when he must have attendants to sit around him, and watch his every wish, and interpret his every signal, and turn him to every posture where he may find a moment's ease, and wipe away the cold sweat that is running over himand ply him with cordials for thirst, and sickness, and insufferable languor. And this is the time, when occupied with such feelings, and beset with such agonies as these, you propose to crowd within the compass of a few wretched days, the work of winding up the concerns of a neglected eternity!

5. But it may be said, if repentance be what you represent it, a thing of such mighty import, and such impracticable performance, as a change of mind, in what rational way can it be made the subject of a precept or an injunction ? you would not call upon the Ethiopian to change his skinyou would not call upon the leopard to change his spots; and yet you call upon us to change our minds. You say, "Repent ;" and that too in the face of the undeniable doctrine, that man is without strength for the achievement of so mighty an enterprise. Can you tell us any plain and practicable thing that you would have us to perform, and that we may perform to help on this business? This is the very question with which the hearers of John the Baptist came back upon him, after he had told them in general terms to repent, and to bring forth fruits meet for repentance. He may not have resolved the difficulty, but he pointed the expectations of his countrymen to a greater than he for the solution of it. Now that Teacher has already come, and we live under the full and the finished splendour of His revelation. O that the greatness and difficulty of the work of repentance, had the effect of shutting you up into the faith of Christ! Repentance is not a paltry, superficial reformation. It reaches deep into the inner man, but not too deep for the searching influences of that Spirit which is at His giving, and which worketh mightily in the hearts of believers. You should go then under a sense of your difficulty to Him. Seek to be rooted in the Saviour, that you may be nourished out of His fulness, and

for

strengthened by His might. The simple cry a clean heart, and a right spirit, which is raised from the mouth of a believer, brings down an answer from on high, which explains all the difficulty and overcomes it. And if what we have said of the extent and magnitude of repentance, should have the effect to give a deeper feeling than before of the wants under which you labour; and shall dispose you to seek after a closer and more habitual union with Him who alone can supply them, then will our call to repent have indeed fulfilled upon you the appointed end of a preparation for the Saviour. But recollect now is your time, and now is your opportunity, for entering on the road of preparation that leads to heaven. We charge you to enter this road at this moment, as you value your deliverance from hell, and your possession of that blissful place where you shall be for ever with the Lord we charge you not to parry and to delay this matter, no not for a single hour-we call on you by all that is great in eternity-by all that is terrifying in its horrors-by all that is alluring in its rewards-by all that is binding in the authority of God-by all that is condemning in the severity of His violated law, and by all that can aggravate this condemnation in the insulting contempt of His rejected gospel ;—we call on you by one and all of these considerations, not to hesitate but to flee— not to purpose a return for to-morrow, but to make an actual return this very day—to put a decisive end to every plan of wickedness on which you may have entered to cease your hands from all that is forbidden-to turn them to all that is required-to

betake yourselves to the appointed Mediator, and receive through Him, by the prayer of faith, such constant supplies of the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, that, from this moment, you may be carried forward from one degree of grace unto another, and from a life. devoted to God here, to the elevation of a triumphant, and the joys of a blissful eternity hereafter.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

TO THE

CHRISTIAN'S DAILY WALK

IN HOLY SECURITY AND PEACE.

BY THE REV. HENRY SCUDDER.

It is well known that though Christianity was persecuted by the Jews from the very outset of its promulgation, it was some time before this religion. provoked the wrath or the intolerance of the Romans. The truth is, that on the part of the government at Rome, there was a very general connivance at religion in all its numerous varieties. And the reason of this was, that under the system of Paganism no one variety, or modification, was thought to exclude another. Each country was conceived to have its local deity—and each element of Nature to have its own pervading spirit—and each new god of the provinces over which they extended their power, offered no disturbance to the habits of their previous theology, but was easily disposed of by the bare addition of another name. to the catalogue. At this rate there was no conflict and no interference. By learning the religion of another country, they simply extended their acquaintance with the world of supernatural beings; just as by the conquest of that country, they