exile, whispering, "Arise ye and depart, for this is NOT your rest!"

You may have seen in our mountain glens, in the solemn twilight, birds winging their way to their nests. There may be lovely bowers, gardens of fragrance and beauty, close by,groves inviting to sweetest melody, Nature's consecrated haunts of song. But they tempt them not. Their nests their homes -are in yonder distant rock, and thither they speed their way! So with the soul. The painted glories

of this world will not satisfy it.

There is no rest in

these for its weary wing and wailing cry. It goes

singing up and home to God. crevices of the Rock of Ages.

It has its nest in the

When detained in

the nether valley, often is the warbling note heard, "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I flee away, and be at rest." And when the flight has been made from the finite to the infinite-from the lower valleys of sense to the hills of faith-from the creature to the Creator-from man to God,—as we see it folding its buoyant pinion and sinking into the eternal clefts, we listen to the song, "Return unto thy rest, O my soul !"

*Micah ii. 10.

Reader! may this flight be yours.

"Seek ye the Lord while He may be found!" The creature may change, He cannot. The creature must die, He is

eternal. O God, thou art my God; early will I seek THEE my soul thirsteth for THEE, my flesh longeth for THEE in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. . . . Because Thy loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee.” (Ps. lxiii.)

II.

The Hart Wounded.

"I was a stricken deer, that left the herd
Long since. With many an arrow deep infix'd
My panting side was charged, when I withdrew,
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades.
There was I found by One who had Himself
Been hurt by th' archers. In His side He bore,
And in His hands and feet, the cruel scars.

With gentle force soliciting the darts,

He drew them forth, and heal'd, and bade me live!"

-Cowper.

"It was in this extremity it occurred to her that, in the deficiency of all hope in creatures, there might be hope and help in God. Borne down by the burdens of a hidden providence (a providence which she did not then love, because she did not then understand it) she yielded to the pressure that was upon her, and began to look to Him in whom alone there is true assistance."-Madame Guyon's Life, p. 38.

“As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."-Verse 1.

IL

THE HART WOUNDED.

ARE we not warranted to infer that it was the wounded stag which David now saw, or pictured he saw, seeking the brooks?the hart hit by the archers, with blood-drops standing on its flanks, and its eye glazed with faintness, exhaustion, and death? But for these wounds it would never have come to the Valley. It would have been nestling still up in its native heath-the thick furze and cover of the mountain heights of Gilead. But the shaft of the archer had sped with unerring aim; and, with distended nostril and quivering limb, it hastens to allay the rage of its death-thirst.

Picture of David, ay, and of many who have been driven to drink of that "river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God." They are wounded spirits; the arrow festering in their souls, and drawing their life-blood. Faint, trembling, for