sympathise. A calculation, not very difficult to make, of the proportion due by each family of a Christian congregation to their minister's stipend would render the bond between them more enduring, and add a consciousness of upright and honest dealing to their intercourse.

The missionary and other schemes of the Church may be in the same manner considered, and each apportioned as choice or interest may direct. Each servant, each child, should be asked to contribute. Let it be the household offering, larger or smaller as God has prospered each.

In charity to the poor the family principle is equally applicable and helpful. The child is easily taught to save its dainty or to mend its old frock for the poor child who thankfully receives the boon. The servant is well pleased to collect the fragments of food or to make them into a nourishing soup for the destitute family whom she is thus encouraged to assist. The family tie will be strengthened, and each will be more interested in another's work, if every hand is thus open and every heart engaged in general benevolence and charity.

Giving must not be left to impulse and occasional generosity. God's Word is always definite and regular in its directions, and we find the giving of a tenth very strongly urged on our attention. It is good to have a rule, and those who have tried this one are general in its commendation. It is not unreasonable that at least the tenth of all that God gives us should be spent on others. Let us each try it cheerfully, perseveringly, as we are entering on this season of cold and poverty, assured that in so doing a double blessing will crown our family joys and our household E.

stores.

PREACHING CHRIST.

It is often said that there is little danger of excess in setting forth Christ objectively to men. We do not only assent to this, but we would give it all possible emphasis. He is the object of hope and of every Christian affection. It is imperative in the nature of the case that men look away from themselves to One who has in Himself all fulness, on whom they are to lean, and to whom they are to look as the Giver of life everlasting. To look to themselves or to others is despair. Is it not possible, however, to present salvation too much as an external affair, a something superimposed, or into which the man is introduced as a place affording certain great advantages and means of happiness, to the exclusion of the radical and more important idea that, in forgiving sin by the virtue of His death on the cross, He is to us a Saviour from our sins, the new ideal and sanctifying power of life? We are quite inclined to think that faith is in some quarters considered too rigidly as a condition on which future benefits are to be bestowed, rather than as an instrument by means of which, or state of mind in which divine and sanctifying powers begin immediately to flood

the life.

Are we wrong in suggesting, also, that Christ is sometimes urged, we had almost said, on the wrong persons? The Gospel is the gift of God to all men. But is there not a wider difference between offering the Gospel to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, and urging it upon

sympathise. A calculation, not very difficult to make, of the proportion due by each family of a Christian congregation to their minister's stipend would render the bond between them more enduring, and add a consciousness of upright and honest dealing to their intercourse.

The missionary and other schemes of the Church may be in the same manner considered, and each apportioned as choice or interest may direct. Each servant, each child, should be asked to contribute. Let it be the household offering, larger or smaller as God has prospered each.

In charity to the poor the family principle is equally applicable and helpful. The child is easily taught to save its dainty or to mend its old frock for the poor child who thankfully receives the boon. The servant is well pleased to collect the fragments of food or to make them into a nourishing soup for the destitute family whom she is thus encouraged to assist. The family tie will be strengthened, and each will be more interested in another's work, if every hand is thus open and every heart engaged in general benevolence and charity.

Giving must not be left to impulse and occasional generosity. God's Word is always definite and regular in its directions, and we find the giving of a tenth very strongly urged on our attention. It is good to have a rule, and those who have tried this one are general in its commendation. It is not unreasonable that at least the tenth of all that God gives us should be spent on others. Let us each try it cheerfully, perseveringly, as we are entering on this season of cold and poverty, assured that in so doing a double blessing will crown our family joys and our household E.

stores.

PREACHING CHRIST.

It is often said that there is little danger of excess in setting forth Christ objectively to men. We do not only assent to this, but we would give it all possible emphasis. He is the object of hope and of every Christian affection. It is imperative in the nature of the case that men look away from themselves to One who has in Himself all fulness, on whom they are to lean, and to whom they are to look as the Giver of life everlasting. To look to themselves or to others is despair. Is it not possible, however, to present salvation too much as an external affair, a something superimposed, or into which the man is introduced as a place affording certain great advantages and means of happiness, to the exclusion of the radical and more important idea that, in forgiving sin by the virtue of His death on the cross, He is to us a Saviour from our sins, the new ideal and sanctifying power of life? We are quite inclined to think that faith is in some quarters considered too rigidly as a condition on which future benefits are to be bestowed, rather than as an instrument by means of which, or state of mind in which divine and sanctifying powers begin immediately to flood the life.

Are we wrong in suggesting, also, that Christ is sometimes urged, we had almost said, on the wrong persons? The Gospel is the gift of God to all men. But is there not a wider difference between offering the Gospel to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, and urging it upon

those whose religious nature has never been awakened, and who nevertheless have some prudential thought of their future well-being? Christ is to be preached to all men. That must not be called in question. But is it not also true that Christ is to be set forth as the revealer of a spiritual life quite as conspicuously as the ransom from perdition? In other words, that a searching repentance, in which the whole heart is made contrite, be insisted on more, and that Christ be exalted as the giver of repentance as well as the remission of sins.

We do not believe the precious doctrine of propitiation for sin need be at all obscured by insisting that salvation is not more a deliverance from hell than it is a deliverance from inclination and the "power of this present evil world." Nor do we believe the Gospel would be limited at all by dwelling less on the good bargain one makes by faith, and more on its healing power to those who are wounded, and its satisfying power to those who are seeking rest. And, what is quite to the purpose, we believe that such a method of preaching Christ would help to adjust the relations of morals and religion.-American Paper.

ANGELS AT THE DEATH-BED.*

A CIRCUMSTANCE connected with the death of a Christian lad came under my notice a short time since. I was sitting beside the dying-bed of a poor working-man, whom I had long known as an earnest and devoted believer. He had been a terrible sufferer for the last eighteen months from cancer, and was now very near his end. His poor worn face brightened as we conversed together of that better land where poverty and pain are alike unknown. In the course of conversation, I learned that during his illness three of his children had been removed by death. On my asking if he had hope concerning them, he replied, with an exclamation of thankfulness, "I expect to meet them all in heaven." The first died in infancy; the second, a grown-up daughter, was taken ill while at service, and removed to one of our London hospitals, where she died ́as she had lived, trusting in the precious merits of her Redeemer. about eight or nine years of age-a true child of grace. lay on his little bed, by the side of which stood a fond brother, he turned to the latter and inquired the time. four," was the reply. "Then I shall soon be home," exclaimed the dying boy. "I can see the angels coming for me; they are a long way off now, but at four o'clock they will be here. Come, mother, give me another squeeze, for I shall soon be gone." About two or three minutes to four he again inquired the time, and then, turning to his weeping mother, said, "Give me one more squeeze, dear mother, for the angels are here and I must go." Exactly as the clock struck four this dear boy departed to be with Jesus.

The third was a boy One afternoon, as he mother and an elder "Twenty minutes to

A few days after relating to me this touching incident connected with the death of his child, the father himself went home; and now all four are at rest, and that "for ever with the Lord."

The extract in our September number from Dr. John Duncan's thoughts about the angels has brought to us this interesting communication from the Rev. Frank H. White, of Chelsea.

I often think of this little boy and the angels, and never without a vivid remembrance of the Saviour's words in Matt. xviii. 10:-"Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven."

ANGELS IN THE LORD'S TOMB.*

THE angel seen within the tomb looks like a young man (Mark xvi. 5). But when they saw him the disciples were "affrighted." There was nothing in his appearance to cause terror, but this fear is instinctive. It was the sudden and unaccustomed contact with the invisible world. To many even the beloved dead brings the same strange fear. A world of mysterious life is brought near them by death, and the mystery unmans them. The fear is not to be reasoned with, but replaced by another feeling. And this new feeling the vision of angels was fitted to introduce. It is not chiefly an angel world now that Jesus is Lord of it, but very specially a human world. Even an angel appears now as a young man. They are all young there, even when millenniums are past. Although they grow they never grow old. God's love and Christ's grace and heaven's glory bring no wrinkles and no grey hairs. There is no care nor guilt, no fear, nor doubt, nor distrust. Years do not make the sky nor the stars look old. Travel through heaven so long has not made the earth decrepit, nor impaired her force nor beauty. The grass grows as green now as a thousand years ago; the streams are as fresh and the sunshine as sweet. And so those once mortal but now immortal are, like the angel, young and clothed in white to the feet. And see! he sits in the sepulchre! It has no earthiness, nor loneliness, nor terror for him. The sun is only dawning, it is yet dark-but he moves in an atmosphere of light. The disciples are flurried and affrighted; he sits there quietly waiting for them. The speed that carried him like lightning from heaven had no hurry, but was quiet and restful as a ray of sunshine. In the eternal there need be no haste as in time; in the holy there is no disobedience and no delay. Each may be swift as a planet, and yet to us at a distance like a fixed star. The resurrection has brought the disciples to the borders of this wondrous life. It says: Be not affrighted: the angels are fellow-servants and of kin in look and speech, in life and love, there is already the basis and beginning of full fellowship: they can come and minister among you, and you can rise and serve among them. "Ye seek Jesus which was crucified": that is enough. Ye have the password among all angels. If ye went on and on through myriads guarding the holy heights, one word would greet you, “Be not affrighted: ye seek Jesus." From the central throne the same gracious greeting would come. Because the Sabbath drew nigh the cross had to disappear from Calvary; but here thus early it reappears, for the true Sabbath has come, and the cross is its sun. The shame is past. The world of angels already speak of Jesus the crucified. "He is not here" in the tomb; He is before you; follow Him; ye shall see Him; yet seek "Jesus that was crucified."

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From the Rev. D. Maccoll's "Disciple Life," noticed at page 263.