I Hope to be a Christian.

versed from any given point of space, and still the heavens appear illimitable. Infinity is stamped upon them. And with You do! Why, then, do you what gorgeous splendor and not seek to be a Christian? magnificence is that curtain "Ask, and ye shall receive: seek, adorned! In every direction it and ye shall find; knock, and it is studded with worlds, suns, shall be opened to you." "Ye and systems, all harmoniously shall seek me and find me, when moving in perfect and undeviat- ye search for me with all your ing obedience to the Almighty heart." Are you seeking for will. The soul in such a con- God with all your heart? No templation is absorbed. Earth man ever yet escaped from the ceases to hold us with its silver thraldom of sin and Satan who chain. The mind, set free from did not earnestly struggle to be grovelling pursuits, mounts up, free; no man ever entered the as on the wings of an eagle, and strait gate who did not agosoars away through immensity of nize to accomplish that glorious space, surveying and admiring end. Carelessness and inattenthe innumerable revolving orbs, tion afford no foundation for a which, like so many "crowns of hope that you are to become a glory" and "diadems of beau- child of God.

ty," bespangle that firmament You hope to be a Christian! "whose antiquity is of ancient Why, then, do you not give up days," and which so powerfully your sins, renounce the world attest that "the hand that made as your portion, and cheerfully them is divine!" surrender yourself to Him who The immense distance of the is the Way, the Truth, and the fixed stars claims our attention, Life? He is ready and willing and awakens the most enraptur- to receive you. He gave his life ing feelings in the mind. Reason a ransom for sinners; he freely is compelled to give the reins to gives his Spirit to all who earnimagination, which tells us there estly ask him; he has filled his are stars so distant that their light revealed word with invitations has been shining since the crea- and encouragements to those tion, and yet amazingly rapid as who desire his grace; he has light travels, no ray from them long been knocking at the door has yet reached us! of your heart for admission. "The heavens truly declare How then can you hope to be the glory of God," and in be- a Christian?

holding such a display of glory You hope to be a Christian? and beauty, we are deeply im- When? Not now. You are pressed with its manifestation of too busy, or have something in the power of the Creator, who view which must first be accomsustains, upholds, and preserves plished, or are so indisposed to such myriads of ponderous re- give yourself to the work, that volving bodies, each in its orbit, this is not felt to be the "conmoving in unerring obedience venient season." After a while, to his will. when you have accumulated a

fortune, or passed the period of your fallen race, he needs when you can partake in the Christian intercession on his beworld's pleasures, or when there is a revival of religion, or at furthest on a dying-bed, you hope to be a Christian. But God's commands and promises are for the present. He gives no encouragement to wait for a future season. You have no assurance that there shall be any season beyond the present. Before the anticipated time comes, you may be in eternity.

half that he may be enlightened by the illumination of divine truth, sanctified by the grace of the Gospel and strengthened by might in the inner man.

He has his trials as a private Christian, just as you have yours. He must groan with his body of death; he must encounter the ever-besetting sin of worldliness; he must struggle with the remaining evil passions of a corrupt nature. He must bide the buffets of the great adversary and all his dark servitors, and fight all the battles of a Christian's conflict with his legion foes. Steep and narrow for him, as for you is the way that leads to holiness and God. Strong are earth's cords that hold him back from climbing as those that chain your mounting feet.

You hope to be a Christian? So multitudes of others like yourself, who were living in sin, have hoped; but where are they now? Long ago have they been cut down as cumberers of the ground. Their day of grace and day of life have closed. They lived without Christ, and they died without him; they trifled away their precious time on earth, in the delusive hope that He has his own peculiar trials some day or other they would and perplexities as a minister of be Christians. That day never the Gospel, and these constitute came to them, and never will a powerful appeal to you for come. "Their harvest is past, your kindly intercessions on his the summer is ended," and their behalf. Many an anxious hour souls are not saved.

Help your Minister. PREACHING the Gospel and watching to win souls is the most solemn employment of man on earth. "Who is sufficient for these things?" exclaimed the very chiefest of the apostles? The power and success of a minister and pastor in his solemn work lie in a praying Church who wrestle with God for the blessing.

Then help him by your prayers for him. Like any brother

does he consume in selecting themes for your spiritual profit and edification. What message of inspiration's many lessons, he asks, do the circumstances of my people next call for? What does this brother need-what that? What truth will be most timely for that straying member of the flock-what will summon the whole church most effectually to the help of the Lord? What argument shall be addressed to the impenitent? What entreaty will win them by the Spirit's seconding.

When his pen is laid aside and cares you can reach him with the the last page is writ, comes an- arm and help of prayer. You other question that weighs like a can ask God to direct him in the mountain upon his heart. Will choice of truth, to help him in the Holy Ghost bless it, will it its exhibition, to make it in manreach any breast, will it move ner and form what he will bless. any soul, or will it be chargeable You can ask God to sustain him with the deadly sin of having in all his toil and solicitude, that used a divine thought without he may roll the burden of souls blessing a hearer with it? for whom he watches upon the Saviour, and in all his way take hold of a hand divine, a strength from above.

And apart from these anxieties, which vary somewhat with the mood of the mind, there is this continual and never-lifted burden-the care of souls. What will become of this people to "It is All My Own." whom I minister? Will they be saved? Will they go to A MAN of wealth, living a heaven? Will they sing and re- stranger to religion and its ordijoice at the last? Will God give nances, was walking and holding me those impenitent souls? Can this soliloquy: "What a happy I reach them with God's truth man I am! I have an ample and Spirit before death reaches fortune, an affectionate wife, and them? Can I reach them while every thing to make me comGod sees there is hope for them? How long shall I wait sorrowfully for any seals to my ministry? Will God ever own me as his messenger of salvation to lost men?

fortable; and what is more, I am indebted to no one for it; I have made it myself; I am independent of every one; it is all my own. Many persons are under obligations here and there, but I There is not a poor soul in the am not. It is all my own." At midst of you or near you that that instant, a sudden shower more needs your prayers than drove him to the nearest church. your minister. In many of his He went in, and just at that molabours the only way in which ment, the minister rose and read you can help him is to pray for his text: "Ye are not your own, him. You cannot help him di- ye are bought with a price." rectly in selecting his topics for "What," said he to himself, the pulpit. You cannot stand "this is a strange doctrine. But by him in the hours of laborious it does not apply to me; I am but unsuccessful thought, and my own, and all I have is my tell him what to say and how to own." The course of the sersay it. You cannot insure by mon exposed his obligations to guiding his pen, that the sermon God, and issued in totally revoshall be one the Spirit will own lutionizing his views and feeland bless but even in these ings.

THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ELIJAH.

"AND Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes,. and rent them in two pieces."-2 KINGS 2: 12.

THESE words vividly portray the grief of Elisha at the departure of his predecessor in the prophetical office, Elijah. As they two were talking, and as the sons of the prophets stood at Jericho, "to view" the scene, the chariot and horses of fire came down, and the heroic prophet goes up to his celestial home. Elisha is to be prophet in his stead. A prophet's responsibilities and trials are to be his. Elijah has been a wise counselor, a trusted friend, a father unto him.

This is not all. Elijah has been his country's benefactor. In the name of Jehovah, he has gone unto his countrymen, and warned them as to the wrong, and pleaded the right. He has been the organ of the Lord's communications to Israel. has been a wall of defense, a tower of strength unto the nation.

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As are the chariots and horsemen to the combatants in the day of battle, so was Elijah to the people in their dangers from within and without. When he rises from the Israel below to the Israel above, it is as if the strength, the Saviour of Israel had gone, and the bereaved Elisha cries out: "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof!" These words naturally suggest, as a subject for our consideration at the present time, THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ELIJAH.

Of his early history we have no account. Conjecture only can declare it. As suggests another, "This wonder-working prophet is introduced to our notice like another Melchisedek, without any mention of his father or mother, or of the beginning of his days; as if he had dropped out of the cloudy chariot, which, after his work was done on earth, conveyed him back to heaven." The name Elijah in the Hebrew is significant. Most of the Hebrew names were expressive of something divine or spiritual. "Israel" is a "Prince with God," "Elisha" is "God the Deliverer," and Elijah, El-Ya, () God-Jehovah. He is introduced as "Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead." Some suppose he was called the Tishbite from a place "Tishbeh;" others derive the word from a root meaning "converter" or "reformer." Gilead, whence he came, was a region lying east of the Jordan, containing the possessions of the two tribes Gad and Reuben.

We may presume that Elijah's parents were God-fearing people; for it is not likely that such a son came of a godless parentage. Doubtless his mother was a faithful mother, causing the boy's imagination to glow with the wonderful history of his ancestry. His thought was wont to climb Mount Moriah with Abraham and his offering Isaac. Did it not follow Jacob to the place of tarrying, and dream with him, and mount the ladder on which the angels were passing? and did not his ear faintly catch the words: "How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven"? The youth's imagination must again and again have pictured a Joseph with his coat of many colors, not omitting the jealous, hateful, wicked look of the elder brothers. It follows Jacob's favorite boy, as now, a captive, he rides an Ishmaelite's camel into Egypt. There it moves among the Hebrew slaves, as they make their strawless brick. It with Miriam watches the infant Moses. With him it draws near to the flaming bush; then to Sinai's glory it passes; then on to Horeb it goes; from Horeb to Nebo; and then to the land where Elijah grows from the imaginative boy into the mighty man of God.

Thus the past throws down upon him its awful memories; it kindles his soul with its inspiration. It filled his heart with the thought that the fathers were men honored of God; that the nation were slaves in Egypt no longer, because God brought them