DOINGS AND DANGERS OF
IMAGINATION.

WITH What care we swell the idea of things that please us, by the efforts of an heated imagination, which ascribes to them a beauty and a value they do not possess. The imagination, seduced by the heart, endeavours to dignify the passions; it sometimes strives to remove that which is too large, or too small, in order to impart more delicacy, spirituality, and elevation. It conceals from us the short duration of pleasures-the vanity of the riches of the world; and, uniting the past and the present, with new expectations of the future, it gives them all the value and all the solidity in its power; not being able to hide their brevity, it compensates it by the vivacity of the sentiments which it excites in us, and by the force of that sensibility which it imparts to us in their favour.

SOPHISTRY OF SIN.

Ir is astonishing by how many devices, disguises, and sophisms, our heart, that corrupter of our reason, conducts us to sin, and encourages us to commit it. The pleasures of sin are not forgotten. It represents to us all that can feed our concupiscence, sensuality, and profit. If we have, at other times, derived any advantage from some object, if we have tasted of its sweets, it calls in our memory to its assistance, which seduces us by the remembrance of the past; and our imagination, swelling upon it, promises itself imaginary felicities, which are quite opposed to truth. It tells us that the pleasure of sin is present; that the punishment of it is at a distance and uncertain: "Every man," saith St. James, "is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed." He makes use of two very significant terms, which mark both the force and the deceitfulness with which lust attacks us, and takes us as fish with the bait. But our heart is a deceiver, which does not show us the hidden hook, the bitter. ness and pain which accompany or follow the crime. How much more doth it often do? It disguises vice, it paints it with the colours of virtue; it makes pride pass for magnanimity; covetousness for prudent economy; prodigality for liberality; severity for justice; cowardice for charity; wrath, passion, and blind zeal, for a true zeal of God. Under these fine names, under these specious appearances, the crime appears not only lawful,

but sometimes necessary, and our heart impels us to it. We may remark, that the Hebrew term, which is here translated "deceitful,' comes from another, which signifies "to supplant;" and from which Jacob derived his name, because he supplanted Esau, his brother. Strictly speaking, he supplanted him when he obtained the blessing, which had been invariably given to the first-born; but which he obtained by deceit-by disguising himself, by clothing himself with the garment, and, as much as possible, with the form of his brother. Our heart is a supplanter, which often deceives blind Isaac-I mean our understanding leading it to approve, and embrace, vice for virtue, after it has disguised it and covered it with a borrowed figure. Thus it presents to us the counterfeit; it causes us to take the motions of the flesh for the motions of the spirit: "To call evil good, and darkness light."

When it cannot go thus far, and hide evil entirely from us, what doth it? It extenuates it. This crime, it saith, is not very great; age, constitution, and company render it excusable. Let us not always believe these preachers, they often proceed to extremes; let us give the reins a little to our desires; our faults are only the follies of youth, although they are faults; we will go no farther than a certain point, we will avoid extremes. But how many find themselves brought to ruin by this method? How many, without thinking of it, go on by degrees to greater crimes, after having begun with little ones? How often is that which appears to us little, very con demnable in its consequences, and of the number of those sins, concerning which St. Paul saith: "Let no man deceive you; for because of these things, cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience?" Nothing which is fatal in itself; nothing which may be pernicious to the soul, whether by the number of crimes, or by their consequences, ought to appear to us little. What shall I say more? In how many other ways does our heart contrive to render us more daring in sin? Sometimes it secretly represents to us, either that some great good may be acquired by a small evil; that a fault, in some cases, may be necessary to answer a good end; that the intention sanctions it; that it will redound considerably to our advan tage, or to some good end, under such and such circumstances. "Let us do evil that good may come," we sometimes

say, in opposition to St. Paul. Of two evils we must choose the less, we still say on certain occasions. But you who speak thus, should remember, that this maxim is only true in the evils of sorrow, in afflictions, and misfortunes, in which we are permitted (and it is natural) to avoid, as much as lies in our power, the greater evil, by suffering the less. But this can have no reference to moral evil; that is, to sin. No, we must never avoid an evil, by committing a sin; nor one sin, by committing another: but we must fly from both, and commit neither the one nor the other. At other times, sin is committed even upon the hope of mercy, and upon a pretended repentance to which we lay claim in our last moments; so that we encourage ourselves in offending God. Our heart flatters us in the following manner: "Oh! this evil will not be without remedy; mercy is prepared for it; God hath abundantly pardoned thousands of others; sin hath its time, and so hath conversion; that of the latter is not yet come. In waiting we give more glory to God; we have faith, we love our religion, we are exact in public worship." Finally, if we do not say, expressly, "Let us sin that grace may abound," we act as if we had secretly made that determination. See how our heart seduces us, in causing us to sin. It is not less skilful in deceiving us when the sin is committed; it labours either to make us forget it, or excuse and defend it. When our conscience would awake, it endeavours to lay it asleep by flattering it, or else to deafen it by cla mour; it excites other passions; it presents to us other pleasures, and, in keeping us thus occupied, it prevents our listening to the voice of conscience. Thus those who sacrificed their children to Moloch, made around the idol a great noise with drums and trumpets, that they might not hear the pitiable cries of those innocent creatures whom they caused to pass to it through the fire. We also stupify ourselves by worldly business, by thoughtlessness, by the turbulence of our passions, that we may not hear the reproaches of our conscience; on the other side, ingenious in making and finding excuses in order to defend our faults, or, at least, to extenuate and diminish them, we complain of ourselves. What can we do? is our cry; temptations are powerful, occasions pressing, examples prevalent; and we are feeble, we are only flesh; we have not power to defend ourselves; we are rather to be pitied than blamed.

But, oh! what a great deceiver is our heart! This weakness, which proceeds from our corruption, from our bad habits, and the defect of our will, can it excuse us? After all, our power is greater than our will. And to prove this, we have only to observe, that, in the most violent temptations, it often happens that a little thing enables us to surmount them. For instance, when a man, inflamed by the violence of a brutal passion, which he is ready to gratify in a place secluded from observation, suddenly sees a person whom he fears or respects; or even when he is apprehensive that the eye of some one witnesses his crime; his passion is instantly arrested; shame or fear is sufficient to calm him, or to suspend his most impetuous motions. Let a judge appear before two men, whom revenge and fury have impelled to fight a duel, immediately their whole concern is to fly or hide themselves. Only convince the greatest drunkard that the wine which he is about to drink is poisoned, and you destroy the desire which he had to drink it. Hence it appears, that, although the soul hath not sufficient strength to overcome illicit passions by a true conversion without Divine grace; nevertheless, it has always, if it will make use of it, some power which, on certain occasions, it might still exert to resist the most violent fits of passion. It is, therefore, the defect of the will which causes our weakness, and which only aggravates our guilt, instead of excusing it.

A SEARED CONSCIENCE.

THIS phrase of the apostle has in it a terrible significance. It is derived from the burning of flesh by a hot iron until it has become cauterized, and utterly insensible to anything that is brought into contact with it. There are such consciences in the world. We are sometimes shocked at the spectacle of such a moral deformity as this; where the whole moral sense has become callous, so that the contact of evil, even in its most aggravated form, produces no emotion and no compunction. After a long course of tampering with it, of neglecting its better promptings, and of poisoning it by the slow process of sophistry and falsehood; after despising it, and repressing it, and strangling it by habitual contempt for its monitions, and by habitual indulgence in the sins against which it once remonstrated; the conscience may sink at last

into a dead indifference which no transgression can alarm, and no outrage can arouse. No profanity, or blasphemy, although it makes the ears to tingle, can startle it. No fraud can disturb it. No atheisms can fright it. No sort of ungodliness which may be devised by the unrestrained passions, can draw from it a sound of warning or reproof. It lies dead and insensible; while he who has crushed it into this torpid submission, stalks forward on his career of guilt with an appalling independence, victorious over the last remnant of his better self, and glorying in his miserable triumph! Vain boaster! that insulted and outraged conscience, which thou hast so foully smothered, will yet rise again--and rise like a giant refreshed by sleep! It will arise at the dying hour, startled from its long slumber by the crash of dissolving humanity. It will awake into a new and more vigorous being, with the mortal body, on that morning when the Archangel's trumpet shall sound. It will be alive, with an intensity of life unknown before, in that day when "the books shall be opened;" and it will live amid the agonies of perdition, to die no more for ever!

Reader! would you escape the intolerable curse of a "seared conscience?" Then seek, by a constant study of the word of God, and by continual prayer for the direction of the Divine Spirit, to enlighten your conscience, to make it quick to discern and embrace the right, and alive to every approach of evil. To such a conscience yield a constant obedience. Tamper not with its monitions. Never seek to pervert its free utterances by sophistry; and listen to its first suggestions, as Elijah listened to the "still small voice," when he wrapped himself in his mantle, and went forth to meet his God. Compare its monitions, from time to time, with the word of the Most High, and follow them with a prompt and ready obedience. Remember, that among all the propensities of the soul, this, the moral propensity, is—what the great Chalmers once truly pronounced it-" the lawful sovereign;" and every other passion that may assume the throne, is to be dethroned as an usurper.

T. L. C.

THE ONE THING NEEDFUL.

1. RELIGION constitutes the duty and dignity of the immortal mind. As intelligence raises man above the brutes,

so religion raises him almost to a level with angels. Sin is a derangement of all the affections-a prostitution of all the powers. The most excellent things are abhorred; the most odious things are loved. Holiness is the composure of this derangement. It restores the soul to the most noble use of its powers; it unites it to God and to his vast and holy kingdom; it takes it up from the jakes of pollution to be a member of the body of Christ, an heir of glory. If the most dignified and glorious state of immortal being be the one thing needful, religion brings him to that state.

2. Religion is the one thing needful, as it is essential to present happiness. Nothing in heaven or earth can satisfy the mind but God. The poor weatherbeaten wretch, who has spent his life in courting the world, and has been only crushed by its frowns, finds in religion that balm to his wounds which he sought in vain in every corner of creation. His vagabond thoughts, which wandered through the world and found no rest, return and settle in God, and there live together in the sweetest harmony. No desire which conscience condemns-no object recommended by reason from which desire revolts. Long wandering from the centre of rest with a vacant and uneasy mind, he has at length returned, and found that rest in God which the world denied him. Tormented with ungovernable passions, and the restlessness of guilt, he was like "the troubled sea" which" cannot rest;" but now he enjoys the luxury of pardon, and a conscience purged "of dead works to serve the living God.' Before he was cursed with a feverish desire for objects which he could not obtain, and which, if obtained, could bring nothing but uneasiness; but now he embraces the eternal God, who, while he fills his arms, satisfies his heart. When he looks abroad into the works of God, his eye is filled with grateful tears; he is assured that a wise and faithful providence governs all. When he lifts his eye to Him whose love gave being to angels, and fills all heaven with light and with song—whose agency ranges through numberless worlds, upholding, and governing, and benefiting all; when he plunges into the ocean of the Divine perfections, and loses himself in the immensity and eternity of Godin his boundless love and mercy; and when he is conscious of being embraced by the everlasting covenant, and of having God for an eternal portion, he is en

JACOB'S LADDER.

A WELSH pastor, invited to assist in the ordination of a minister in England, was appointed to deliver the address to the church and congregation; and having been informed that their previous minister suffered much from pecuniary embarrassment, although the church was fully able to support him comfortably, took the following method of administering reproof:

In his address to the church, he remarked: "You have been praying, no doubt, that God would send you a man after his own heart to be your pastor. You did well. God, we hope, has heard your prayer, and given you such a minister as he approves, who will go in and out before you, and feed your souls with the bread of life. But now you have prayed for a minister, and God has given you one to your mind, you have something more to do, you must take care of him; and, in order to his being happy among you, you have need to pray again. Pray again! pray again! What should we pray for? Well, I think you have need to pray again.

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Pray for what?' Why, I'll tell you. Pray that God would put Jacob's ladder down again to the earth. 'Jacob's ladder? What has Jacob's ladder to do with our minister?' Why, I think if God would put Jacob's ladder down that your minister could go up into heaven every sabbath evening after preaching, and remain all the week, then he could come down every sabbath morning, so spiritually-minded, and so full of heaven, that he could preach to you almost like an angel. 6 Oh, yes, that may well, and, if it were possible, we should like it; but then we need our minister through the week, to attend prayer-meetings, visit the sick, hear experience, give advice, and therefore must have him always with us; we want the whole of his time and attention.' That may be, and I will admit the daily necessity of his attention to your concerns; but, then, you will remember, that if he remain here he must have bread and cheese; and I have been told that your former minister was often wanting the common necessaries of life, while many of you can enjoy its luxuries; and therefore I thought, if God would put Jacob's ladder down, your present minister might preach

into heaven after the services of the day, save you the painful necessity of supporting him.

"QUENCH NOT THE SPIRIT." BETWEEN two mountains, in a rough and narrow valley, lived M——, a man careless and indifferent about the spiritual interests of himself and family, as was his wife. Within a few weeks past I visited his daughter, on the verge of eternity, dying with consumption, who

for a season was aroused to a sense of her

danger, and desired prayer and counsel. But stupifying drugs being administered to neutralize physical pain, she soon sank into a state of insensibility, and there was no possibility of arousing her to an interest for her soul, so soon to appear before God! She is now in the cold grave, and her soul, we fear, closed its probation without being "washed in the laver of regeneration."

On stating this case to a brother, he remarked: "Well, if her soul is lost, her parents are responsible, for I saw her at the altar of prayer, earnestly seeking salvation, not long since; but, on going home, she was rebuked by her parents, and derided by her friends, and yielding to discouragement, she gave up the struggle. She then enjoyed health; but sickness soon came, and now she is gone, and the murderers of that soul must answer."

How fearful the account to be rendered by those guilty parents!

hour, and Satan's last buffeting; to observe the trophies of Divine love adorning and cheering the melancholy bedthe tranquil smile, the unwearied trust, the patient, contented, thankful resignation, the uplifted hand and eye, the illuminated countenance, the peaceful spirit all the while ready to wing its flight. Go, boastful science! go, vain philosophy and visit the death-beds of your votaries; mark well the doubts and fears betraying themselves under the mask of a bold profession; mark the impatience and vexation, the present burden and the miserable foreboding; go and discover your infidel champions, the proud Goliaths of your kingdom, trembling and quailing under the lifted stroke of death, and despairing under the load of unforgiven sin, under the terrors of an avenging God! Go to your despisers of the crucified Jesus, to those who have been too wise to seek or too busy to find him; see them, as I have seen, stretching out their hands in agony, and saying, "Is there no one to save a fellow-creature from destruction?" Then, when ye are sickened with such scenes, repair to the bed-side of a departing saint, and see how a Christian can die! Go and study a lesson more instructive and more precious than all your pages of human lore and learning; go and learn from a lovely example how to live and how to die!I. Slade.

THREE WAYS OF STOPPING A PARSON. A BAPTIST minister devoted several years of the last part of his life to gratuitous labour in a populous town about three miles from his residence, to which he walked every Lord's day morning, preached three times, and then walked home. On one Lord's day morning, as he walked along meditating on his sermons for the day, he met one of those important personages called parish priests. "Well,," said his reverence, "I suppose you are on your way to your preaching again?”

"Yes, Sir," was the modest reply of the humble Baptist minister.

"It is high time the Government took up this subject, and put a stop to this kind of travelling preaching; indeed, there is something like it intended."

"They will have rather hard work, Sir," said the imperturbable Baptist.

"I am not very sure of that," rejoined the priest; "at any rate, I will see whether I cannot stop you myself."

"I judge," said the worthy man, “you will find it more difficult than you suppose. Indeed, there is but one way to stop my preaching, but there are three ways to stop yours."

"What, fellow, do you mean by that?" asked his reverence, in a towering passion.

"Why, Sir," replied the Baptist preacher, with most provoking coolness, "Why, Sir, there is but one way of stopping my preaching; that is, by cutting my tongue out. But there are three ways to stop yours; for take your book from you, and you can't preach; take your gown from you, and you dare not preach; and take your pay from you, and you won't preach." The parson

vanished.

REMORSE.

CHARLES IX. of France was the perpetrator of the St. Bartholomew Massacre. Historians have attempted to relieve him of the dreadful responsibility of this bloody crime, by attributing its origin to his infamous mother, and the popish ecclesiastics that surrounded her, and by representing him as unwillingly consenting to the deed. Under whatever influence he acted, it was by his orders that the massacre was perpetrated, and he even personally assisted, by firing from his palace windows upon the flying Huguenots. His death, which occurred in his youth, was hastened by his remorse of conscience. The dreadful apparition of that wholesale murder ever afterwards haunted his imagination, and his agony of mind caused the blood to burst from the pores, and bathe his body with its crimson streams. According to Pierre d'L'Etoile, he earnestly besought his physicians to afford him relief, "for," said he, "I am cruelly and horribly tormented." They replied that they had exhausted their art, and "that God was the only sovereign physician in such a complaint." His nurse, to whom he was much attached, and who was a Huguenot, hearing him sighing, weeping, and bitterly groaning, approached his bed, when, bewailing his sad condition, he exclaimed, "Ah! my dear nurse, my beloved woman, what blood! what murders! Ah! I have followed wicked advice! Oh! my God, pardon me, and be merciful! I know not where I am, they have made me so perplexed and agitated. How will all this end? What shall I do? I am lost for ever! I know it!" Such was the end of a persecutor !