was the object of the Saviour's mission, to make the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be fully and distinctly known to all the nations of offered unto my name, and a pure offering; for the world. And the whole of what intervenes my name shall be great among the heathen, saith between these two points,-between the promise the Lord of hosts,' Mal. i. 11. made in regard to the seed of the woman, while the guilty progenitors of mankind were still lingering in the garden of Eden, and the fulfilment of that promise in the fulness of time, was but the progressive unfolding of the great mystery of godliness, of that glorious plan of redemption by which unto the Gentiles was at length to be granted repentance unto life. When God said that by the seed of the woman the serpent's head should be bruised, he was manifestly bestowing a blessing that was not to be confined to one tribe or nation of Adam's posterity. Accordingly, in the ages subsequent to the flood, when men had for the second time increased, and multiplied, and replenished the earth; and when it pleased the Almighty to choose out an individual, with whose personal posterity the bringing of the promise to its final accomplishment was to be immediately connected, there is the clearest intimation given, that the blessing to be thus gradually revealed was not to be limited to one corner of the world; for to Abraham it was said, both in the plains of Mamre and at Jehovah-jireh, in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.' And further, when the descendants of Abraham had indeed, according to the prophecy, become as the sand of the sea-shore for multitude, and when amid the peculiar privileges they enjoyed as the immediate depositories of the revelation of God, they began to wax wanton, perverting the promise for which they had been appointed to prepare the way, and arrogating to themselves, as exclusively their own, what was designed for the seed of the woman without any such limitation, prophets were from time to time raised up to expose an error originating in national pride, and to proclaim the original and more universal object which the promise had in view. It is a light thing,' said the Lord, by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, speaking of Messiah 700 years before his coming,—it is a light thing that thou shouldst be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will also give thee for a light of the Gentiles, and that thou mayest be my salvation to the ends of the earth,' Isa. xlix. 6. Indeed, this calling of the Gentiles is a prevailing theme throughout all the prophetic books of Old Testament scripture,—and in the very latest of their number it is thus expressly foretold: 'From the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among There was hardly anything which the Jews, and even the apostles themselves, were more slow to understand, than the great truth which these prophetic scriptures had foretold. It was in consequence with all the force of a discovery,—a discovery made by a special revelation to his reluctant mind,—that by the conversion of Cornelius, in all the remarkable circumstances detailed in the preceding context, the fact was at length suddenly made to flash upon Peter, that to the Gentiles also God had granted repentance unto life.' Up to this time there had been a wall of separation between the Gentiles and the Jews,— but now it was done away in Christ. It had been set up to keep the idolatry of the heathen, from coming in to corrupt Judea; it was taken down to give free course to the gospel, that from Judea salvation might flow out to purify and bless all the nations of the earth. And while the former state of exclusiveness may teach the Christian that, as one of God's chosen people, he is called to be separated from every unclean thing; the latter state of free intercourse and communion may equally teach him that the privileges he has received, it is his bounden duty to do what in him lies to extend to all his fellow-men. But above all, while the text declares that there is now no covenant of peculiarity,—that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, that salvation is equally accessible to all,-it proclaims this momentous fact, that the way to life lies through a vale of tears, that without repentance there is no salvation for the sinner. This repentance, like every other grace connected with the redemption of the soul, is the free gift of God. From him it must be sought with earnest desire,—for till we see and sorrow over our sins, the offer of a Saviour will be made to us in vain. And what is repentance unto life? It is that saving grace, whereby a sinner out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God, in Christ, doth with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of and endeavour after new obedience.' If we confess our sin in this lowly and contrite spirit, the Lord is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. FOURTH DAY.-EVENING. For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death,' 2 Cor. vii. 10. In our fallen estate the days of the life of man are both few and evil, and sorrow accordingly is but the common lot of mortality. No doubt the cup of suffering is very variously administered; the measure may be less or more, and the ingredients may differ in the degree of bitterness, but still it is a cup of which none are exempted from drinking. The man, it is true, who is entirely absorbed in his own peculiar grief-and grief, when unsanctified, is ever a most selfish passion-is ready to conclude that no sorrow can be equal to his sorrow. Instead of reviewing the history of his past life and dwelling on the many mercies which have been made to pass before him, contrasting the extent of God's goodness with the measure of his own ill desert,-instead of looking abroad to contemplate the condition of others, and allowing himself to perceive how little his trial appears when laid side by side with the misfortunes of many others, at least as worthy as he can pretend to be, of his fellow creatures; or instead of turning to his bible, and learning from its instructive page that affliction is the just inheritance of a race by nature out of covenant with God while every blessing is an unmerited gift, instead of allowing his meditations to take such salutary directions as these, he centres his thoughts upon himself; and brooding in unsanctified bitterness of soul over the loss he has sustained, or the suffering he has been called to endure, the secret murmur of his heart is, 'what have I done that this should have been sent?' The purpose of God is either unthought of altogether, or is remembered only that its wisdom may be questioned and its justice denied. His conviction virtually amounts to this, that the selfish desire which providence has crossed, ought to have been gratified and therefore that he has been wronged. His grief accordingly is the complaining of a rebellious spirit—a spirit that sees merit in himself on whom the suffering has been inflicted, and wrong in that order of things under which it has been permitted to befall him; a spirit, in a word, which justifies himself and accuses God. Such a sorrow can only harden the heart into a more obstinate impenitence; it is that 'sorrow of the world which worketh death.' There is another kind of sorrow which though quite distinct and different from that now described, is not nevertheless the necessary precursor of repentance to salvation.' As man was in tended by his Maker to live in society, so his nature has been endowed with all those sympathies and affections which serve to bind the human family together. The endearments of social and domestic life which contribute so largely to our earthly comfort and happiness could have had no existence, had not social and domestic affections been wisely and graciously implanted in the heart. But while these affections find from their very nature a lively enjoyment in the objects on whom they rest, an enjoyment which cheers and animates the parent in every effort or sacrifice which is necessary for his children's good, which makes him forgiving of their faults and patient of their waywardness, it at the same time belongs to these affections to be deeply wounded and grieved by every affliction with which the objects of affection are visited, and more especially by that mournful event which ever and anon is taking them away. And is there anything sinful in this natural sorrow? Assuredly no. Not to grieve in such circumstances were to manifest an insensibility which the apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, and in his second Epistle to Timothy, expressly specifies as one of the most decided indications of moral depravity. To be without natural affection,' is in both these passages distinctly recorded as the most indisputable mark of a reprobate mind. But though there be nothing sinful in this natural sorrow, so neither is there necessarily anything gracious. It may be but the quiet and passive yielding to a power they cannot control, but not the meek resignation of a heart confiding immovably in the wisdom, and rectitude, and faithfulness of God; a tame submission to the event, but not a cheerful acquiescence in the will of its great Disposer; a disposition to bear the stroke, but not to kiss the rod. But though sorrow of this kind is not therefore invariably followed by gracious effects,-its tendency is of a salutary kind. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.' Man seldom rests in the present, but is ever reaching forward into the future; and accordingly the sorrows which assail him here, lead him often to bethink himself in time of the darker and more enduring sorrows of a state of eternal condemnation. It is thus the sorrow which may have begun in a temporal calamity, is often blessed to terminate in sorrow for sin, that common source of all the ills to which flesh is heir. It is in this way that though no affliction seemeth for the present to be joyous but grievous, yet afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness in them that are exercised thereby. The sorrows of death compassed me, I and the pains of hell took hold on me; I found | tion we are taught to trace up every sorrow which grief and trouble.' Such was the experience of the has clouded this world to man's original apostacy psalmist under the fear of divine wrath. Then from God; that sin has been the fruitful cause called he upon the name of the Lord, saying, of all our woe. And from the same source let us beseech thee, deliver my soul! And straight- rejoice that we are taught to know how those way he finds that godly sorrow worketh repent- very afflictions which proclaim that it is an evil ance to salvation;' a salvation in the conscious and a bitter thing to depart from the living God,' possession of which he can now say, 'return unto are yet designed and fitted under the administrathy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt tion of his grace, to work out for us a far more bountifully with thee. Thou hast delivered my exceeding, even an eternal weight of glory.' For soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my even as in the natural world, the noxious vapours feet from falling.' Being justified freely through exhaled from the surface of the earth are dispelled the redemption that is in Jesus, he can now say, by the storms they engender; so in the moral to that reconciled God of whose anger he was world, corrupted as it is by sin, the polluted atonce so terribly afraid: "Thou hast turned for mosphere that surrounds the believer's soul is me my mourning into dancing, thou hast put off purified by the same tempest of sorrow which my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.' prostrates, it may be, even the fondest of his earthly hopes in the dust. FIFTH DAY.-MORNING. If indeed our hearts were right with God,—if by nature we were living in that state of felt and acknowledged dependence on his goodness and of entire acquiescence in his holy will, which is the 'I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of only true position of the creature in reference to my soul, Isa. xxxviii. 15. THERE is nothing which the wisdom of this world is more completely at a loss to explain than the presence or the use of affliction. Nor ought this by any means to excite our surprise, for certain it is that according to any other view of our condition and history than that which is unfolded in the word of God, affliction can be regarded only in the light of a most perplexing and unaccountable anomaly. And therefore until men consent to receive as infallible truth that mournful and humbling representation of their own state and character which the holy scriptures exhibit, it will remain a mystery to mere human philosophy, why it is that man is of few days and full of trouble.' But nevertheless as the fact itself stands out clear and indubitable that we are born to trouble,' it surely is our wisdom to learn, if it be possible at all, whence it arises and what is the end it is designed to serve. Affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground.' Its existence is not an accident,-its presence must be consistent with the righteousness of the great moral Governor of the universe, and its application in every individual case must be regulated by a wisdom that cannot err. 6 Turn we then away from the vain philosophy of man to that divine word which is 'sure, making wise the simple,' and all these rough places' in the path of providence shall be made plain,-all these seemingly crooked things' shall at once become straight. By that blessed light of revela his Creator, then indeed prosperity, however great its amount, would serve only to draw us nearer to our divine Benefactor. Each new gift would be recognized as presenting a fresh claim on our gratitude, each new blessing as furnishing another incentive to love and praise the Giver of all good. Such is now and ever has been the fruit of prosperity among the glorious hosts of heaven; and such throughout all eternity shall be its effects among the redeemed-whose rejoicing it will ever be to give all the praise unto him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever. But seeing that fallen man likes not to 'retain God in his knowledge,' temporal prosperity ministers to the very pride and selfishness, in the indulgence of which his separation from God began. The spontaneous utterance of the unregenerate mind in regard to all outward prosperity is, by the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent.' Therefore is this word written, 'I spake unto thee in thy prosperity, but thou saidst, I will not hear." Men are not naturally alive to the evils of their spiritual condition, and do not naturally desire or care for spiritual blessings. What they shall eat and what they shall drink, and wherewithal they shall be clothed,' these are the things which the nations of the earth seek after; and so long as the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the eye and the pride of life are gratified; so long as they can say, 'Soul, take thine ease, thou hast much goods laid up for many years;' so long are they prone to answer any man who may reason with them of righteousness and judgment to come in the | which caused the young man to turn away sorlanguage of Felix: When I have a convenient rowfully from Christ, was doubtless a hindrance season, I will call for thee.' It is not meant to his embracing the Saviour's cause, but that indeed, to affirm-far otherwise-that no man has riches did not render Christ less able nor less willever been converted unto God in a state of out- ing to save him. The poverty, on the other ward prosperity, or that the rod of affliction is the hand, of the fishermen of Galilee, who were his only instrument which the Spirit can employ to first disciples, left them free from many worldly break down his indifference or enmity to Christ. entanglements and seductions, which otherwise It is merely in reference to the native tendency might have interfered with that readiness they of such a condition these observations are made, discovered to obey the command to forsake all and all experience too well vindicates their truth. and follow Jesus; but that poverty did not make When was it Manasseh repented him that he had them heirs of his heavenly kingdom. Alas! a man made Judah to err, and to do worse than the may be poor as Lazarus, and yet proud as Lucifer. heathen? It was when he had been removed Destitute of almost every earthly comfort, and yet from his throne, taken away among the thorns, unconscious of any spiritual want: wretched in bound with fetters, and carried away unto Baby- his temporal estate, and more wretched still in the lon. When was it David was made to see how condition of his soul, and in his eternal prospects. grievously he had offended God? It was in the time of his deep distress, it was then the confession was made: 'Surely it was good for me to have been afflicted, for before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy law,' Psal. cxix. And so deeply sensible was Hezekiah of the salutary nature of that trial to which he had been subjected in the form of a painful and dangerous bodily disease, that he expressed his determination to bear the remembrance of it constantly upon his mind. I shall go softly,' said he, all my years in the bitterness of my soul.' The recollection of his sufferings, while on the one hand it would be a constant stimulus to gratitude for the deliverance by which God had graciously removed them, so on the other hand it would be a continual warning not to return again to folly. It would teach him to maintain a chastened and sober spirit; weeping as though he wept not, rejoicing as though he rejoiced not, because the end of all things was at hand. FIFTH DAY.-EVENING. 'Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, Matt. v. 3. If this be a disposition essential to every one who is to inherit the kingdom of God, it is surely a matter of unspeakable moment to understand its true nature, that so we may be in a condition to determine whether it have a place in ourselves. I. It is not to be 'poor in spirit,' merely to be poor in point of temporal possessions. The blessings of Christ's kingdom are not confined to particular class or condition of men. any Men may be differently straitened in themselves, but none are, or can be, straitened in Christ. The riches II. Again, 'poorness of spirit' does not consist in that meanness, or moral cowardice, that shrinks before every difficulty or danger, and falls in with whatever practices or principles may be prevailing around. To have 'no mind of our own' on religion and its duties, or to be ashamed to avow it, is as remote from the disposition to which the text refers, as is the dastard and craven spirit of the coward from the quiet and modest but dauntless courage of the hero. To be spiritual with the pious, and worldly with the carnal; to be fair and candid with the upright and honourable, and a backbiter with the malevolent; to be generous with the benevolent, and niggardly with the selfish; to be all things to all men, in this perverted sense of the expression, is basely to accommodate reli gion to the varying sins and follies of the world; instead of seeking to bring the world in all its ways to the pure and unvarying standard of religion. III. But having said something of what 'poorness of spirit' is not, it is now time to observe, that it is a disposition which is ever prompting the Christian to contrast what he is, with what he ought to be; which induces him not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but rather to esteem others better than himself. It is a disposition which undoubtedly will repress every tendency to vaunt of his own gifts and graces; but which will not diminish his zeal to maintain the honour of his Lord, whether it be through good report or through evil report. For exactly in proportion as it calls him to abase himself, under the realizing conviction of his being so vile and worthless, will it animate him to exalt that Redeemer who is so high and so holy. The influence which this disposition exerts on the Christian's own mind and character is both great and valuable. Originating, as it does, in a deep-felt sense SIXTH DAY.-MORNING. all likewise perish,' Luke xiii. 5. WHO these Galileans were to whose death the text refers, and what were the circumstances that led to the tragical event related concerning them, are points as to which scripture supplies no exact information. It would seem they had been suspected of some treasonable design against the Roman power; and that to punish their supposed crime, and to strike terror into the minds of others, Pilate, the governor, had sent his soldiers into the court of the temple, at the very instant when the unhappy Galileans were slaying the victims they had brought up to offer at the feast, cutting them down without trial and without warning, presenting the appalling spectacle to the bystanders, of the worshippers' own blood mingling in one ruddy stream with the blood of the slain beasts they were presenting in sacrifice. of the alarming contrast between God's glorious holiness, and his own guilt and moral perversity; I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall between the large demands of his duty, and the scanty measure of his performance; it impels him by the very self-dissatisfaction it creates, to forget the things which are behind, and to reach forward to those things which are before, and to press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God, in Christ Jesus our Lord. His course is like that of the traveller climbing some giant mountain, where every step he makes serves only to show him more clearly the extent and difficulty of the task he has begun. Looking down, it seems after all his efforts as if he were scarce elevated above the plain; but looking up, the towering summit on which his eye is fixed, seems as if it had lifted itself higher into the heavens. His condition is similar to his who has been brought from the full blaze of the noon-day sun into a dimly lighted chamber, where his unaccustomed eye at first can discern nothing clearly: for dark, indeed, is the inner chamber of the heart, and ill qualified is the carnal eye to penetrate the gloom which shrouds, in its secret recesses, the sinful passions, the impure desires, the grovelling thoughts that make it their unholy habitation. But if that eye has once been touched with the eye-salve of the Spirit, and turned to look within; the longer and the more stedfast its gaze, the more fully will the soul's depraved and polluted condition be seen. Sins at first totally overlooked, will come one after another into light; and the poor in spirit becomes poorer still, in proportion as he becomes better acquainted with God on the one hand, and with himself on the other. To slacken, therefore, in the onward course to which this disposition impels him, is impossible, so long as the disposition itself remains. It urges him with increasing force to supply the emptiness every day is rendering more obvious in himself, by drinking more deeply of the fulness that is in Christ. Teaching him all his own weakness, it excites him to cherish a more humble and habitual dependence on the arm of his Almighty King. Revealing to him his own nakedness, it stirs him up to covet the more earnestly the white raiment of the finished righteousness of Christ. In a word, it is a disposition, which the more holy he becomes, moves him the more humbly to exclaim with the apostle, 'O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Blessed, then, are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. It is theirs in its present grace; it is theirs in the hope, and the earnest it future and everlasting glory. But while such a sight may have been fitted to awe the people into submission to the Roman yoke, it was also fitted to make a strong impres sion on those superstitious feelings, which in all countries, and in all ages, are found to have so deep a seat in the popular mind. When the ship of Tarshish, in which Jonah was vainly attempting to flee from the presence of the Lord, was overtaken by the tempest, these feelings led the sailors at once to adopt the conclusion, that some one on board had incurred the divine displeasure, and that it was on this account they were placed in such imminent peril. In like manner, when the viper was seen fastening on Paul's hand, in the island of Melita, the same feelings prompted the natives to say, 'No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.' And when the Jews, in the case to which the text alludes, told our Saviour of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices,' it is plain from his reply, that they had been disposed to regard the event in the same point of view; as if it were a proof, that their death was to be regarded in the light of a special judgment upon their sins. When individuals are seen to be visited by some very marked and severe affliction or adversity, the instinctive suggestion of natural conscience is, that there must be a reason for the trial, and that the reason must be sought in the character and life of the immediate sufferers. And if there were no hereafter,—if the whole course of God's moral administration were completed in the present world, there would be good ground for adopting the suggestion of conscience, |