FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT. about doing good. All that love him wish to be like him, and to do good. Perhaps you will say, "I hope to do good when I grow up; but what can I do now, when I am but a little child?" If I tell you, will you try? If not, I would advise you to pass over this article for the present, and to keep it quite safe until you can make up your mind; for the Bible says, To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." You will try? Then I will tell you how a child may do good. Do you not know some poor man living near you who cannot read? He sits all day by the fireside; for he is infirm, and not able to work. Poor man, the hours pass away heavily; for his wife has enough to do to mind the house, and his children are at work, so that he has no one to be with him, or talk to him, or to comfort him. When you are at home, after school, say, "Please, dear mother, may I go and see the poor man at or the sick child at, or the woman that keeps her bed at Then, if you have leave, go and take your Bible, and ask if you may read to them. Be careful to read very slowly and distinctly. O how glad it would make many a heavy heart, if once or twice in the week you would try to do good in this way! But I will tell you another way in which you may do good. Most likely you know some children in your street who do not go to Sabbath-school; say to them, "We are so happy at our Sabbath-school, I wish you would come with me. Our minister comes to see us, and our teacher is very kind. Shall I in and ask at your house whether you may come to school with me, and then I can call for you in the morning, as I go by?" go Perhaps in this way you might bring some children to school, who, if left to themselves, would grow up ignorant, and idle, and wicked. Trying to do good to others is the right way to make one's self happy; for it is very sad to idle away the hours which will never return again. Your teacher will tell you how you may do good at school; but, after all, home is the place where most good may be done. To obey a parent, is to do good; to be kind to a brother or a sister, is to do good; even to play kindly, and at the proper time, is to do good. So you see it is quite in the power of a very little child to do good. In short, if the matter be ever so small, "to do the right thing in the right way" is to do good. I have said a few words about the right thing, now a few words concerning the right way. By the right way I do not mean the "best method," though this is important, but that a "new heart and a right spirit" are most needful of all; for the "Lord looketh on the heart." Pray then earnestly that the Holy Spirit of God may dwell in you, for without him you can do nothing that is good. Give yourselves up to God as his, purchased by the blood of Jesus, and strive every day to live for him. THE STUDENTS FORGOTTEN IN PRAYER. AMIDST the many anxious desires and vigorous efforts in behalf of our cherished schools of the prophets, is there not one sad omission? Are not the students forgotten in prayer? Christians meet to pray and praise in the more private social prayer-meeting. The student is often there, and joins in the sweet and holy exercise: the solemn hymns of praise, the dovout and earnest prayers, the precious words of Holy Writ-all bespeak the promised 227 Spirit's presence. The student retires wondering why he was forgotten in almost every prayer. The weekly Church prayer-meeting assembles. The pastor is there; the student is also there: the solemn exercises progress, devout petitions arise to God from many hearts, imploring Heaven's richest blessings on the shepherd and on the flock-on the true Israel everywhere, and on a world lying in sin. But the students are forgotten in every petition. The holy Sabbath appears, and the sanctuary is thronged with worshippers: the man of God stretches forth his hands: and whilst the people bow in prayer, he, as their mouth unto God, acknowledges the Keeper of Israel, and implores the forgiveness of sins, the consolations of the gospel, and all the benefits of Christ's purchase upon that particular Church -upon the Church universal-for Jew and Gentilefor Christian and Pagan: but amidst the crowds who ask and obtain an interest in his prayers, the student is forgotten. Why pray for the acting ministry-or the prosperity of the Church, and yet forgot the student of theology? Surely he is neither so holy, so happy, nor so wise, that "his full soul can hold no more;" nor yet is he so profligate and worthless that divine grace cannot benefit him. Why should his heart be chilled by the thought that he is such an outcast creature, cloistered in his study, that he is even forgotten in prayer? Why should the Church thus injure or destroy herself, by never sending up a petition to the Lord for the furnishing or strengthening of those who will in time be her pastors and her watchmen? FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT. TAKE advantage by every thing that befalls tnee in this spiritual warfare. Eye thy reserves. The Captain of thy salvation is both thy vanguard and thy rear-ward, and will be thy reward. Thou gainest thy husband, as David did his wife, by conquering these Philistines: and while thou art fighting for him, he is weaving thy crown. (2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.) Eye thy fellow-soldiers, those worthies of the heavenly David, that are both militant and triumphant. (Heb. xii. 1.) Example is very forcible. Yea, take advantage by thy very foils, to be more humble, charitable, dependent, watchful, and courageous. Let not the enemy gain the field, after conquest, by a back-blow of pride. This Antiochus gains often more by flattery than by force. (Dan. xi. 21, 22.) It is honourable for Christ to say, "Well done," &c., but dangerous for Satan to say. "Well done!" and safe for thee to say, "Poorly done," when thou hast done thy best. Despise thyself when others admire thee; and be assured, that self-admiration is the most dangerous devil in the world. Especially improve advantages prudently: when thou hast thy enemy on the ground, fall with all thy weight upon him, give him no quarter, lest thou meet with the doom of Ahab (1 Kings xx. 42), and of the Israelites. (Numb. xxxiii. 55, 56.) Here, as one notes well, learn wisdom of the serpent's brood, who never thought they had Christ sure enough, though they had him in the grave. (Matt. xxvii. 64.) Remember, it is thy highest wisdom, first to discern, next to improve, the spiritual contrarieties that act in thy own bosom. He is the wisest man that knows himself, and he the strongest man that conquers himself. This alone is the true Israelite, who by yourselves, and amend your ways. The times would conquering himself, doth in a pious sense overcome not be so bad if we were not so bad. Pray not so both heaven, earth, and hell." (Gen. xxxii. 28.)—much for better times as for better hearts. Were Drake. TWICE DEAD. "They are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you; feeding themselves without fear; clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots."-JUDE. When is a Church twice dead and plucked up by the roots? They are once dead when there is no spiritual life in the members-when their services are merely formal-when one attends social or public meetings because another does, or because their pastor or their brethren will notice their absence-where no personal effort is made for the salvation of the impenitent, and no interest is felt in their own sanctification. Where their zeal, so far as they have any, is for their own Church, as their own, rather than as Christ's Church; when their interest in a sermon is that it may please men, not that it may please and glorify God. Such a Church is dead, and its fruit, if ever it bore any, is withering. When, in addition to this, its members are not only dead so far as spirituality is considered, but when they dislike to hear their own condition portrayed, or urged on their attention. When they are restive under appeals to wakeful devotion and self-denying labour. When such truth as Jesus preached in relation to cherished sin-" If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off; because it is better to enter into life maimed than to be cast into hell fire." When in order to please them, the sins of life must not be noticed at all, or noticed in such a form that there is a graceful slide to a lower note, this kind of antipathy of heart to plain gospel truth denotes that they are twice dead. If a Church in such a state does not repent and do its first works, there is danger that the candlestick will be removed out of its place, or that the Spirit will entirely withdraw and leave the Church with the mere selfish and worldly form, instead of the power and purity of the gospel. "Brethren, it is high time to wake out of sleep." Western Herald. BAD TIMES WE LIVE IN. BLAME thyself that the times are so bad. There is a general complaint about the badness of the times; but every one shifts the blame off himself, and instead of accusing himself, accuses others. Ahab said to Elijah," Art thou he that troubleth Israel?" Adam said to the Lord God, "The woman that thou gavest me, did give to me, and I did eat." The woman said, "The serpent beguiled me." Thus do we put it off from ourselves to others, and rather will lay evil to God than see ourselves as helping to bring it. No man says with Jonah, "For my sake is this come upon you; " no man saith, What have I done? do not my iniquities help to hide God's face, and to bring judgments on the earth? O then condemn there more of the presence and the blessing of God, thus sought and obtained, the times would soon grow better. EPITAPH ON THE TOMB OF TWO INFANTS. BOLD infidelity, turn pale and die! If death's by sin-they sinned, because they're here; Revere the sacred page, the knot's untied; WHO IS SUFFICIENT FOR THESE THINGS? How many knots must the minister be able speedily to untie! How many cases must he be able to give speedy solution to! And he must be supposed to have laid up with great industry, because he must "bring forth out of his treasure things both new and old." "O the difficulty! It is a sad thing to consider, that many souls do perish, not only "by the force of their disease," but also by the error of their physician," by of physic for the body, it is also true of the physic of the mistakes of their ministers: and, as Galen speaks the soul: "In physic nothing is little." A small error there, may occasion fearful mischiefs; so a small mistake in souls' concernments may occasion a soul's!! everlasting ruin.-Poole. PRESUMPTION. A RELIGIOUS professor of Antinomian sentiments, boasting to Rowland Hill that he had not felt a doubt of his safety for many years, was answered by Mr. Hill-" Then, sir, give me leave to doubt for you." SECRET OF LIVING ALWAYS EASY. AN Italian bishop having struggled through great difficulties without complaining, and met with much, opposition in the discharge of his functions, without ever betraying the least impatience, an intimate friend of his, who highly admired those virtues, which he conceived it impossible to imitate, one day asked the prelate if he could tell him the secret of being always easy. "Yes," replied the old man; "I can teach you my secret, and will do so very readily. It consists in nothing more than in making great use of my eyes." His friend begged him to explain. "Most willingly," said the bishop. "In whatever state I am, I first of all look up to heaven, and remember that my principal business here is to get there: I then look down upon the earth, and call to mind the space I shall shortly occupy in it: I then look abroad into the world, and observe what multitudes there are who in all respects have more cause to be unhappy than myself. Thus I learn where true happiness is placed, where all our cares must end, and how very little reason I have to repine or complain." THE CHRISTIAN TREASURY. 229 THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH: A Discourse, BY THE LATE REV. DR. CHALMERS.* THERE is a limit to the revelations of the Bible about futurity, and it were a mental or spiritual trespass to go beyond it. The reserve which it maintains in its informations, we also ought to maintain in our inquiries-satisfied to know little on every subject where it has communicated little, and feeling our way into regions which are at present unseen no farther than the light of Scripture will carry us. But while we attempt not to be "wise above that which is written," we should attempt, and that most studiously, to be wise up to that which is written. The disclosures are very few and very partial, which are given to us of that bright and beautiful economy which is to survive the ruins of our present one. But still there are such disclosures; and on the principle of the things that are revealed belonging unto us, we have a right to walk up and down, for the purpose of observation, over the whole actual extent of them. What is made known of the details of immortality, is but small in the amount, nor are we furnished with the materials of anything like a graphical or picturesque exhibition of its abodes of blessedness. But still somewhat is made known, and which, too, may be addressed to a higher principle than curiosity, being, like every other Scripture, "profitable both for doctrine and for instruction in righteousness." In the text before us, there are two leading points of information, which we should like successively to remark upon. The first is, that in the new economy which is to be reared for the accommodation of the blessed, there will be materialism-not merely new heavens, but also a new earth. The second is, that as distinguished from the present, which is an abode of rebellion, it will be an abode of righteousness. I. We know historically that earth, that a solid material earth, may form the dwelling of sinless creatures, in full converse and friend * From Dr. Chalmers' published Works. 20. † ship with the Being who made them-that, instead of a place of exile for outcasts, it may have a broad avenue of communication with the spiritual world, for the descent of ethereal beings from on high-that, like the member of an extended family, it may share in the regard and attention of the other members, and along with them be gladdened by the presence of Him who is the Father of them all. To inquire how this can be, were to attempt a wisdom beyond Scripture: but to assert that this has been, and therefore may be, is to keep most strictly and modestly within the limits of the record. For we there read, that God framed an apparatus of materialism, which, on His own surveying, He pronounced to be all very good; and the leading features of which may still be recognised among the things and the substances that are around us; and that He created man with the bodily organs and senses which we now wear, and placed him under the very canopy that is over our heads, and spread around him a scenery, perhaps lovelier in its tints, and more smiling and serene in the whole aspect of it, but certainly made up, in the main, of the same objects that still compose the prospect of our visible contemplations; and there, working with his hands in a garden, and with trees on every side of him, and even with animals sporting at his feet, was this inhabitant of earth, in the midst of all those earthly and familiar accompaniments, in full possession of the best immunities of a citizen of heavensharing in the delight of angels, and while he gazed on the very beauties which we ourselves gaze upon, rejoicing in them most as the tokens of a present and presiding Deity. It were venturing on the region of conjecture to affirm, whether, if Adam had not fallen, the earth that we now tread upon would have been the everlasting abode of him and his posterity. But certain it is, that man, at the first, had for his place this world, and at the same time, for his privilege, an unclouded fellowship with God, and for his prospect, an immortality, which death was neither to intercept nor put an end to. He was terrestrial in respect of condition, and yet celestial in respect both of character and enjoyment. His eye looked outwardly on a landscape of earth, while his heart breathed upwardly in the love of heaven. And though he trode the solid platform of our world, and was compassed about with its horizon, still was he within the circle of God's favoured creation, and took his place among the freemen and the denizens of the great spiritual commonwealth. This may serve to rectify an imagination, of which we think that all must be conscious, as if the grossness of materialism was only for those who had degenerated into the grossness of sin; and that, when a spiritualizing process had purged away all our corruption, then, by the stepping-stones of a death and a resurrection, we should be borne away to some ethereal region, where sense, and body, and all in the shape either of audible sound, or of tangible substance, were unknown. And hence that strangeness of impression which is felt by you, should the supposition be offered, that in the place of eternal blessedness there will be ground to walk upon; or scenes of luxuriance to delight the corporeal senses; or the kindly intercourse of friends talking familiarly, and by articulate converse, together; or, in short, anything that has the least resemblance to a local territory, filled with various accommodations, and peopled over its whole extent by creatures formed like ourselves; having bodies such as we now wear, and faculties of perception, and thought, and mutual communication, such as we now exercise. The common imagination that we have of paradise on the other side of death, is, that of a lofty aërial region, where the inmates float in ether, or are mysteriously suspended upon nothing; where all the warm and sensible accompaniments which give such an expression of strength, and life, and colouring, to our present habitation, are attenuated into a sort of spiritual element, that is meagre, and imperceptible, and utterly uninviting to the eye of mortals here below; where every vestige of materialism is done away, and nothing left but certain unearthly scenes that have no power of allurement, and certain unearthly ecstasies, with which it is felt impossible to sympathize. The holders of this imagination forget all the while that really there is no essential connection between materialism and sin; that the world which we now inhabit had all the amplitude and solidity of its present materialism before sin entered into it; that God so far, on that account, from looking slightly upon it, after it had received the last touch of His creating hand, reviewed the earth, and the waters, and the firmament, and all the green herbage, with the living creatures, and the man whom He had raised in dominion over them, and He saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was all very good. They forget that on the birth of materialism, when it stood out in the freshness of those glories which the great Architect of nature had impressed upon it, that then " the morning stars sang together, i and all the sons of God shouted for joy." They forget the appeals that are made everywhere in the Bible to this material workmanship; and: how, from the face of these visible heavens, and the garniture of this earth that we tread upon, the greatness and the goodness of God are reflected on the view of His worshippers. No, my brethren, the object of the administration we sit under, is to extirpate sin, but it is not to sweep away materialism. By the convulsions of the last day, it may be shaken, and broker down from its present arrangements; and thrown into such fitful agitations, as that the whole of its existing framework shall fall to pieces; and with a heat so fervent as to melt its most solid elements, may it be utterly dissolved. And thus may the earth again become without form, and void, but without one particle of its substance going into annihilation. Out of the ruins of this second chaos may another heaven and another earth be made to arise; and a new materialism, with other aspects of magnificence and beauty, emerge from the wreck of this mighty transformation; and, the world be peopled as before, with the varieties of material loveliness, and space be again lighted up into a firmament of material splendour. Were our place of everlasting blessedness so purely spiritual as it is commonly imagined, then the soul of man, after, at death, having quitted his body, would quit it conclusively. That mass of materialism with which it is associated upon earth, and which many regard asa load and an incumbrance, would have leave to putrefy in the grave, without being revisited by supernatural power, or raised again out of the inanimate dust into which it had resolved. If the body be indeed a clog and a confinement to the spirit, instead of its commodious tenement, then would the spirit feel lightened by the departure it had made, and expatiate in all the buoyancy of its emancipated powers, over a scene of enlargement. And this is, doubtless, THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH. the prevailing imagination. But why then, after having made its escape from such a thraldom, should it ever recur to the prison-house of its old materialism, if a prison-house it really be? Why should the disengaged spirit again be fastened to the drag of that grosser and heavier substance, which many think has only the effect of weighing down its activity, and infusing into the pure element of mind an ingredient which serves to cloud and to enfeeble it? In other words, what is the use of a day of resurrection, if the union which then takes place is to deaden or to reduce all those energies which are commonly ascribed to the living principle in a state of separation? But, as a proof of some metaphysical delusion upon this subject, the product, perhaps, of a wrong though fashionable philosophy, it would appear that to embody the spirit is not the stepping-stone to its degradation, but to its preferment. The last day will be a day of triumph to the righteous, because the day of the re-entrance of the spirit to its much-loved abode, where its faculties, so far from being shut up into captivity, will find their free and kindred development in such material organs as are suited to them. The fact of the resurrection proves that, with man at least, the state of a disembodied spirit is a state of unnatural violence; and that the resurrection of his body is an essential step to the highest perfection of which he is susceptible. And it is indeed an homage to that materialism which many are for expunging from the future state of the universe altogether—that ere the immaterial soul of man has reached the ultimate glory and blessedness which are designed for it, it must return and knock at that very grave where lie the mouldered remains of the body which it wore; and there inquisition must be made for the flesh, and the sinews, and the bones, which the power of corruption has, perhaps for centuries before, assimilated to the earth that is around them; and there, the minute atoms must be re-assembled into a structure that bears upon it the form, and the lineaments, and the general aspect of a man. And the soul passes into this material framework, which is hereafter to be its lodging-place for ever; and that, not as its prison, but as its pleasant and befitting habitation; not to be trammelled, as some would have it, in a hold of materialism, but to be therein equipped for the purposes of eternity; to walk embodied among the bowers of our second paradise-to stand embodied in the presence of our God. 231 There will, it is true, be a change of personal constitution between a good man before his death, and a good man after his resurrection; not, however, that he will be set free from his body, but that he will be set free from the corrupt principle which is in his body; not that the materialism by which he is now surrounded will be done away, but that the taint of evil by which this materialism is now pervaded will be done away. Could this be effected without dying, then death would be no longer an essential stepping-stone to paradise. But it would appear of the moral virus which has been transmitted downwards from Adam, and is now spread abroad over the whole human family; it would appear, that to get rid of this the old fabric must be taken down, and reared anew; and that, not of other materials, but of its own materials, only delivered of all impurity, as if by a refining process in the sepulchre. It is thus that what is "sown in weakness, is raised in power;" and for this purpose it is not necessary to get quit of materialism, but to get quit of sin, and so to purge materialism of its malady. It is thus that the dead shall come forth incorruptible; and those, we are told, who are alive at this great catastrophe, shall suddenly and mysteriously be changed. While we are compassed about with these vile bodies, as the apostle emphatically terms them, evil is present, and it is well if, through the working of the Spirit of grace, evil does not prevail. To keep' this besetting enemy in check, is the task and the trial of our Christianity on earth; and it is the detaching of this poisonous ingredient which constitutes that for which the believer is represented as groaning earnestly, even the redemption of the body that he now wears, and which will then be transformed into the likeness of Christ's glorified body. And this will be his heaven, that he will serve God without a struggle, and in a full gale of spiritual delight; because with the full concurrence of all the feelings and all the faculties of his regenerated nature. Before death, sin is only repressed; after the resurrection, sin will be exterminated. Here he has to maintain the combat, with a tendency to evil still lodging in his heart, and working a perverse movement among his inclinations; but after his warfare in this world is accomplished, he will no longer be so thwarted; and he will set him down in another world, with the repose and the triumph of victory for his everlasting reward. The great constitutional plague of his nature will no longer trouble |