laborious and quiet walk, that the Spirit of Christ, notwithstanding all our fervour and silence, does not render us slothful and inactive.

FEBRUARY THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.

"Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods? Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders ?"-Ex. xv. 11. "O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto Thee?"-Ps. lxxxix. 9. "The desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee ?"-Is. xxvi. 8.

WAS the

AS the Lord, to the pious hearts of the old covenant, the highest good, with which nothing was to be compared? Did He communicate Himself so abundantly to them, while the cloud yet hung over the sanctuary? Had they such experience of Him that their delight in all things else vanished, and He, and His memorial, was the only, the highest joy of their heart? What, then, shall be our experience in the new covenant, in which all, with clear and unclouded vision, behold, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, and are changed into the same image ? 2 Cor. iii. 18, and iv. 6. What has He done for us? What does He do daily for souls that wait upon Him? What will He do for us in eternity, according to His promises? He that knows this, and lives in the enjoyment of His salvation, surely exclaims a thousand times for wonder: Lord, who is like unto Thee? In him can rise up no thought of aught else; he can harbour in his soul no wish to have any possession outside or

beside Him. ciful as He

Who is so good, so kind, so merWho gives and forgives so much and so often as He? Who would have so much patience and long-suffering with our weak hearts, which are ever prone to go astray, which so often diverge from Him? Nay, there is none like Him. Let His name be for ever the only delight of our hearts. Let us love nothing so much as Him. Be it as fair, grand, charming, and inviting as it may, it shall not drive Him from our hearts; nothing shall occupy His place in our hearts. Him alone let our souls embrace, hold, and never more let go. To Him all must give way; He must expel everything from our hearts, that cannot co-exist with Him. Let our whole being say, every moment, as with a thousand tongues, Who is like unto Thee, O Lord!

FEBRUARY THE TWENTY-NINTH.

"He shall feed his flock like a shepherd."-Isa. xl. 11. "He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock."-JER. xxxi. 10. "Behold I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock, in the day that he is among the sheep that are scattered."-EZEK. xxxiv. 11, 12.

THE three great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah

THE

and Ezekiel, testify to Jesus' watchfulness as a shepherd, which He himself has so beautifully and touchingly pictured to us-John x. and Luke xv. He is not a frightful terrible master, He is our Shepherd: He looks upon us not as

His slaves, but as His sheep; He seeks not wool, profit, or advantage of us, but our weal and blessedness. He despises no one of His sheep, not even the meanest, not even the strayed and lost ones, but seeks them with unwearied zeal; and when He finds one, He looks upon it as if he had found a kingdom. He accepts all as His sheep. What the world despises and rejects, He collects with care and love, tends and preserves with loving watchfulness. He does not leave His sheep to the care of hirelings, He takes charge of them all as His own sheep. What advantages therefore has a sheep of Christ's, which knows Him as its good shepherd. experiences His faithfulness as a shepherd, and is under His keeping! Alas! why do not men hasten to Him? Why do so many despise the great happiness of being one of Christ's sheep? When will the hour come when there shall be but one shepherd and one flock? It will, it must come: He that hath scattered Israel, will likewise gather him again.

MARCH THE FIRST.

"And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts."-ZECH. xiii. 6, 7.

DID finds should love Thee, the people

ID thy friends inflict on Thee these wounds?

which is called by thy name, which desired to

have made known of it in all the world, and was proud, that it knew the true God, and expected His son, as Messiah, Redeemer, and Saviour down from heaven. This people, the so-called beloved and chosen ones, the children of Israel, have wounded Thee. Who now wounds the Lord? Who else, but His people again, that calls itself by His name, and desires to be known for believing in Christ, for loving and honouring Him. The heathen wound him not, they know Him not. But His own people, who ought to love Him, fall upon Him with all the weapons of sin. And He lets Himself be wounded that he may heal them that wound him! The Father likewise has the same love to these ungrateful ones, so that He calls forth the sword of death over His son, over Him that is next to Him in divine nature and eternal existence. What a word in the mouth of God: Awake, O sword, slay my shepherd-for the sheep,-slay Him that is nearest, likest to me,that those who are far from me, those who are sunk deep, may be brought near, and lifted up out of the depths of sin, and out of the abysses of perdition. Behold the decree of God, His sentence against His beloved son, for thy salvation! The Father hath heaped all these pains upon His son, not because He did not love Him, but because both equally loved man, by whom they were not loved but hated. O love, take our hearts captive to Thee! Here is mine!

MARCH THE SECOND.

"He made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross PHIL. ii. 7, 8.

HIS self-resignation and humiliation we cannot

mity and glory, which He had with the Father from the beginning. We cannot measure the height on which He was, and therefore cannot fathom the depth to which He descended. But enough we do know, that He was the Highest, and became the lowest; He was the All-powerful, and became the most powerless and the weakest ; He was the Holiest, and He took the sins of all the world upon Him. His love to us impelled Him into these depths. For He was obliged to descend to the same depth as that to which we were sunk and fallen, to bring us up from the deepest depths of perdition. He, the God of truth, hath done this, and will have in return nothing but that we should love Him, and that we should enjoy and possess with thankfulness what He hath won for us, by His humiliation, even to the death on the cross. We must live and be saved, because He suffered and died. Everything was lost to man by the fall, everything was found again and restored by the humiliation of God. All men were captives and slaves to sin, death, and hell; all became free, all were redeemed and bought into liberty by the selling, the bonds, the