divine light and life? And this longing for the life of God is the very life of the prayer for the uplifting of the bright face of God. For the penitent soul is conscious, most of all, of separation from God, and of ruinous self-dependence, from which it desires to escape, that it may no longer live away from God, and His will, and His life, but truly abide in Him, and walk in His light, and submit to His laws, and trust itself to His guidance. Hence this is its truest prayer ;—a prayer against its self-life, and against the world's enthralments;-a prayer that seems to lift the soul out of all its miserable pride, and its poor dependencies, to lie at the mercy of God, and live in Him for all things. And this is religion-the truest and the profoundest. For, to give up self, and the poor strengths and lights of time, and yield the heart, and bind the life to God, this is all that God's greatest heart can do this is indeed to live in God, to follow Christ, and to be a citizen of the heavenly land.

"LET THY BEAUTY BE UPON US."

Y GOD! fain would I nearer come

M

To Thee, the Life of every soul;
Why should my heart so distant be,
Or deal its love with such poor dole?

Full well I know that Thou art nigh,
But let me feel Thee inly near:

Not only in Thy silent works,

But to my longing soul appear.

How dost Thou spend Thy love and grace To make Thy dear world goodly still, How brightly fair-how grandly firm, Each tiny flower, each towering hill!

Thy sunlight falls upon their face,
And beauty answers to each ray;
Thy dews bend to them all the night,

And fragrance answers in the day.

And flowers wave, and grasses shine,

And all their beauty is from Thee: The valleys have their singing brooks, And every hill its jubilee.

And yet they cannot see Thy hand,
Nor do they know how fair they are,
But, Father! when Thou com'st to me,
I feel Thy glory from afar.

They cannot feel as I can feel,

Whene'er Thy presence draweth nigh; Nor can they know as I have known, When Thy great glory passes by.

Shine then on me, and let Thy dews
Descend upon my soul, unheard;

Let beauty answer to Thy smile,
And fragrance to each winning word.

Arise, arise, Fair Light of Life,

And pour on me Thy fruitful ray; Then all my life a psalm shall be,

And all my heart a summer-day.

SAVING FAITH.

HE phrase "saving faith" is the key-note to so much that is confusing and perplexing, in religious books, and much of our modern preaching, that one almost shrinks from it as an enemy, and a hindrance. Who is there that has been, at any time of his life, an earnest inquirer about religion, that has not been startled and saddened by the endless distinctions that men have laid down, in the matter of Faith? Distinctions and divisions too, which would never trouble a true heart, if left alone with God, and which seem, in every way, opposed to the simplicity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For if a soul is earnest in religion, an unreal or an unright faith is impossible for it, because everything that is believed will, in such a case, be believed with the heart, and that is the only condition and test of a true faith. So that really it is only confusing to the earnest soul, to enter into discussions and draw schemes respecting a right and wrong sort of faith, just as though the difference between a faith that is saving

and a faith that is not, were a difference of quality and kind, instead of object-the thing believed. Hence, in speaking of saving faith, the whole inquiry will go awry, if we proceed to discuss various sorts of faith, as though one were saving and another not; because, as just now intimated, if the soul be earnest, an untrue kind of faith is impossible to it, for whatever it believes, it will believe heartily, and therefore, so far as quality is concerned, truly.

Saving faith, then, is not a faith of a saving kind, but a faith in a saving thing. For the earnest soul that believes a lie, or only half a truth, may have its faith as true and thorough in quality as he who knows the whole truth and accepts it as such. To escape much confusion and perplexity then, and to make this great matter of faith simple and plain, it is of the first importance that we utterly put away from us the worse than profitless distinctions of the schools, keeping to the simplicity of the Gospel, and the testimony of the heart, to teach us that, in this matter, "the word is nigh us, even in our mouth and in our heart." Take a very common case, as to this question of saving faith being one of object and not of quality. A certain man believes in the Gospel narrative about Jesus Christ. He has no doubt that He lived and died, as the Gospels represent, and he accepts the narrative as true history; he heartily believes thus much respecting