speeding your way. If such are your chief plans, let them at least bear some proportion to the probable terms of occupancy; unless you should have a certain lease of possession for ten or twenty years to come. In what state are your barns? Are they well stocked and stored? soundly built, and proof against wind and weather? Are the foundations strong and the building throughout firm and free from dilapidations, neither inclining to the right nor to the left; no mouldering or tottering; no breaches in the roof, nor cracks in the walls? Then take your ease and enjoy the fruits of your toils. But does the comparison hold in all respects with the frail body of him who owns them? Already are not some of the pins loosened; and does not the fabric begin to totter? Or if, as yet, the structure remains firm and entire, for how many bleak winters yet to come, think you, will it remain impervious to the blast? Perhaps some rude shock may even now be on its way, to effect that which no

human skill can repair, and inflict a ruin final and irretrievable, except by the renovating blast of the last trumpet!

See you not those withered arms, still uplifted, catching at every spray, and clinging to every object they meet, as though it were an entire novelty; although time is visibly employed in loosening their grasp, and death stands waiting his commission to inflict the final blow. Can it be that these have arrived at the sixth stage of their journey! are they laden with the experience of so many winters; or have they carelessly left it behind them on the road, and now come in, forlorn and destitute, as though they had been plundered? O! that men were wise,'-'that such dying men were wise,' and would now at last consider their latter end.'

And now, in the rear, advance a few, a very few travellers, still with feeble steps pursuing their toilsome way: it cannot be termed a group; for they are as thinly scattered abroad as are the silver

hairs on their own foreheads.

Seventy

winters have been gradually whitening those scanty locks, bending those once erect forms, and enfeebling those once agile limbs. To a favoured few, past scenes appear indeed in their true light

as a tale that is told; as a watch in the night.' Hear you, among them, that plaintive moan? What says it? My house is not so with God; yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure.' Ah! traveller, there are many such houses many, where the heads of them have not this consolation; but be you of good cheer: a few more weary steps, and you shall look back on this your pilgrimage, and say, 'Of a truth he hath led me by a right way to a city of habitation.' Therefore gird up your loins; yet a little while, and all tears shall be wiped from your eyes, and the days of your mourning shall be ended.'

Learn, fellow-traveller, at whatever stage you are now arrived, that as you

have in some degree yet found it, so it will still continue to be, a howling wilderness, a wearisome journey, notwithstanding the resting-places and refreshments with which you are occasionally indulged. So it proved to Israel; but they were travelling towards a better country : this gave them patience and courage; this crowned their labours, and amply rewarded all their toils, though the thorns, and the drought, and the fiery flying serpents were in their way. They expected not an Elim at every turn: and an Eden, they knew, could not on any track be found. Thus the christian traveller looks forward to Canaan's happy land, where he shall feel no more the long toils of the sultry desert; and where, having got beyond Jordan, he shall ascend the hill of Zion, and enter upon the possession of his exceeding great reward.'

No. XV

The way of the wicked he turneth upside down.
PSALM cxlvi, 9.

WHAT a different aspect would this wilderness wear, through which our passage lies, did that description of travellers, who by divine wisdom are termed the wicked, duly estimate the tremendous consequences attached to that character! Were they to look no further than their temporal interests, it might well have a visible operation on their ways, and on their works, and produce a striking change in all we observe around us. They would hesitate ere they ventured to erect those edifices of pride, of ambition, and of covetousness, at the price of so much toil on their own part, and frequently of so much suffering on the part of others, could they be convinced that these towers and