proclaims its greatness, and His knowledge of its innate and ever-widening power. This is the joy we should expect to find in the originator of such a new life.

III. CHRIST'S TEARS OVER LOST SOULS.

If the view of such a broad and simple redemption gave the Saviour joy, it is equally clear that the rejection of that redemption, on the part of any, gave Him intense pain. At the last Passover feast He attended, He came suddenly in sight of Jerusalem ; "and when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace; but now they are hid from thine eyes.” The fate of the impenitent, not the sorrows of His people, or the tragic scenes in His own impending death, move Him thus deeply. The barrenness of the land, not the intensity of the labour He is engaged in, rends His heart. Not even the circumstances of the coming destruction of Jerusalem move Him, but the knowledge that the people will not come unto Him for this life He is so willing to impart. "Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and

no man regarded." Hence these tears. Behold the Divine character! God with fatherly regard can scourge a nation into feeling, but He cannot unfeelingly lose a single soul. He can drive away the sultry atmosphere a nation's pride and luxury has made for it, by storms of war and tempest `strokes of doom, until its penitence drop as the gentle rain, and its meekness spring as the tender green of the sapling oak: but He cannot bear to see men neglect that Man who is "a hidingplace from the wind, and a covert from the tempest." "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked: but that the wicked turn from his way, and live."

Thus, by devotedness to this one work of providing men with life, life in abundance, life everlasting; by His joy at its acceptance and universal adaptation; by His keen sorrow at its neglect and rejection, our Lord Jesus Christ proves the truth of His words, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." To accept this gift is to please God, to shout for joy with His sons over a new and better creation, to break away the bands of sin and the grave-clothes of the flesh,

“Partake Thy wondrous nature, Lord,
And be ourselves divine."

To reject it is to do violence to every principle of life in our nature, to fall in love with death, and pledge ourselves to destruction and decay. He who says, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly," says also, "All they that hate me love death."

GOD'S PRINCIPLE OF SELECTION.

"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."-ROMANS v. 6.

THERE 'HERE are not a few philosophers ready to assert with evident joyous confidence that all creations, whether atoms or more perfect beings, are gifted with power to change in a ceaseless race of individual improvement. Every atom of salt is thus supposed to act and re-act upon other atoms, to win a place for itself in the salt pyramid or temple. Every living grain of corn struggles and rises amid surrounding forces into the blade, the full corn in the ear, and at last the ripe corn, some thirty, some forty, and some a hundredfold. The various members of the species of animals, by laws of natural selection, are struggling and rising through tears and blood to occupy the first place in the species;

yea, the select of one species passes on by triumph to enter the ranks of the next highest, and flesh of beasts becomes, in nature's competitive examinations, at last flesh of man. Here most philosophers stop to say, This is the law of matter: we do not pretend to interpret the laws of higher regions; but here, in this, we unhesitatingly and emphatically assert that the race is to the swift, the battle is to the strong.

Leaving this school of inquiry, and entering another-the social and political-we scarcely need to ask what are the prevalent opinions of men there about select life. That there is to be more and more rapid change as society advances, and that in these changes the strong will succeed, the weaker go to the wall-push and struggle the constant assertion of individual rights-close and yet closer competition, and the world praising him who does well for himself: that even woman, leaving her long restful confidence in the care and chivalry of man, had better take care of herself-and doubt not that in society, as in nature, the race is to the swift, and the battle is to the strong.

Suppose all this were correct science, and