tion. God looks upon his dear Son as the satisfaction for them all, and he wishes you to be fully satisfied in the Saviour also. Surely then, you see that you require to offer nothing of your own to satisfy God; but that now you have simply to take Jesus as the satisfaction for your iniquities, and by so doing enjoy the smile of a well-pleased God.

TRYING TO LOVE GOD.

THAT God should be loved with the utmost of our powers of loving him; that he is infinitely worthy of our highest and most affectionate regard; that the monster-sin with which we stand chargeable, is our not loving him; and that the chief thing in religion is love to God, should ever be borne in mind. We would not, therefore, dear reader, for one moment lead you to suppose that your mind can be too deeply affected with this thought. It is quite impossible that you can have too strong ideas of the amount of love you owe to God, and as impossible that you can have too low ideas of the love which you have hitherto borne toward him. By the highest conceivable considerations you are bound to love God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength. But, alas! you have hitherto completely disregarded him, if you have not positively hated him. But now you see that you have done wrong-far, far wrong. Now you see that your great obligation is to love him. Yet your difficulty is how you are to do it. You have been trying, still you have not succeeded. You feel that though you ought, yet you cannot love him.

Now, does it not appear to you, that though you have been attempting a right thing, yet you have gone wrong about it? How, then, you will ask, are you to be brought to love God? In no other way, dear reader, than one. In no other way than by perceiving his love to you. It is a true saying, that 'love begets love,' and this is the secret

of all love to God. We love him,' says 1 John iv. 19, 'because he first loved us.' What, then, dear friend, you have to do in order to love God, is to see clearly his love to you. When you see this, you will find it quite as difficult not to love God as you have hitherto found it difficult to love him. Where, then, are you to see God's love to you? We might point you to many, many manifestations of it. We might point you to it as it is seen in the numerous capabilities for happiness with which he has furnished you-in the agreeable and delightful adaptation of nature to your wants and desires-in the sweet relations of life, and the numberless opportunities for their enjoyment which his providence has afforded you-in his giving you a law, clearly marking out the way of happiness, holiness, and life-and in his patience and great goodness toward you in the midst of your long-continued and unbroken ingratitude and sin. Still all this could give you but a faint idea of the depth of the love with which he loves you. Only in the gospel have you anything like a full exhibition of God's infinite love toward you. It is only in the gift of his well-beloved Son that you can form any adequate idea of the love of your God. In this,' says 1 John iv. 9, 10, In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.' Just look, dear reader, into this exhibition of the spontaneous, disinterested love of God. See here the amazingness and the fathomlessness of its depths. Consider what these words of the apostle's convey. Think how full they are of the deepest meaning. Is it not an overwhelming thought, God sending his beloved Son-sending him away from the realms of eternal glory and felicity-sending him down to a world of sin and misery-sending him to become a child of poverty, a man of sorrows, and an acquaintance of grief-sending him to undergo a life of the deepest privation and suffering-sending him to agonize, to bleed, and to die-sending him to undergo all this for guilty, ungrateful, ruined man --sending him to bear our world's sins, in order that we

might share his righteousness, his love, his joys, and his glories. See all this love bearing full and directly on you. See all this done for you, just as if you were the only creature in the universe that God had to love-just as if you were the only sinner for whom his Son had to die; see this love, we say, and tell us if you do not love God in

return.

Long unaccustomed to the emotion, and not perhaps expecting that it was to be created in your heart in this way, you may be staggered at the thought, and may not at once be able to say that you feel you do love God. But do not for this be alarmed-do not suppose that what has been effectual in others, has proven fruitless in you-a little time and thought will do it all. The seed is in some soils longer of taking root than in others; yet when it does so it is certain to spring up; and not less certain is it that when the seed of the love of God, as it shines in the gift of Jesus Christ, is sown in the human heart, and is not cast out nor choked, but is retained and nourishednot less certain is it that it shall spring up in a full and joyous return of adoring gratitude.

Do not then think, dear reader, that you can love God by endeavouring to force yourself to do it. We cannot force ourselves to love. We must see something lovely in an object before we can love it. We must see the loveliness of God's character, as it is revealed in his love to us through the gift of Jesus, before we love him. It is by beholding this love of his that we love him back again. And when we do give his love possession of our heart, we cannot help loving him in return. Keep then, dear reader, your mind fixed on God's infinite love to you through his dear Son, and it shall not be long ere you can say, "Lord, thou knowest that I love thee.'

TRYING TO REPENT; OR, SORROWING FOR SIN.

ALMOST every page of the New Testament declares the necessity of repentance in order to salvation. John the Baptist preached repentance; the Saviour declared to the Jews, that except they repented they would all perish; he enjoined his disciples to preach repentance among all nations; and the first injunction which the apostles delivered to their convicted hearers was, repent. It is no wonder, therefore, that the anxious sinner feels repentance to be a matter of deep solicitude. This we suppose, dear reader, is your case. First, then, let us ask you if you understand what it is you are seeking. If you do not, this alone must be a source of great difficulty. For surely it is a difficult, if not a fruitless and foolish thing, to seek you know not what. If you know not what you are in search of, may you not often have passed away from the object of your solicitude, and if you were to find it, how would you know it to be the thing you want? Your first step, therefore, is to understand what repentance is. Knowing this, you shall the more fully comprehend your need of it, and the better know where and how to get it.

Perhaps you have taken it for granted that repentance is sorrow for sin, and that if ever you become repentant, it must be by sorrowing sufficiently for your sins. Now, while we do not wish to make you think lightly of sin, or that it should not occasion you the most pungent regret; and while we do not for a moment give you to suppose that repentance and sorrow for sin are not most intimately connected, yet it is our desire that you understand the true relation which these two things bear to each other, and the one way in which you may experience both.

Observe, then, that our word repentance is derived from the French word repentir, to think again, or to reconsider. Now, as the result of reconsideration is change of mind, and as we do not require to reconsider anything on which we are not wrong, repentance necessarily implies a change of mind from the wrong to the right. But again, when

ever such a change of mind takes place, there is necessarily a change of feeling following; for if the individual has been brought to a right state of mind, he cannot help being sorry for his past wrong; and the greater the wrong, and the more complete his change of mind in regard to it, just so much the more pungent and heart-felt is his sorrow. Yet the matter does not end here; for the individual having discovered that he has been in the wrong, and being sorry for the wrong he has done, he is now more anxious to do right, and has greater pleasure in doing it than ever he had in the wrong which he formerly committed. This is the simple history of all genuine repentance. There is, first, consideration, then change of mind, then change of feeling, and then change of conduct.

It is, therefore, evidently a mistake to seek repentance either by a change of feeling or a change of conduct. Yet many attempt it in both ways. They fail to see that their mode is a direct inversion of the natural order. As every one knows, all action proceeds from motive, and all motive from thought. Accordingly, if action be sinful, there must have been sinful motive, and sinful thought. So that the way to rectify the whole, is to put that right which sets the whole in operation. What is wanted, then, in order to repentance, is right thoughts. Here now two questions arise-what right thoughts are necessary in order to produce the repentance required? and how are these thoughts to be got? To the first-mentioned it may be answered generally, whatever thoughts may be necessary to eradicate the wrong and sinful thoughts which fill the mind. Now, every unconverted man entertains, more or less, wrong ideas of God, of himself, and of the relation subsisting between him and God, of God's law, and of the transgression of it. Yet the whole may be summed up in his state of mind toward God, since to be right in this implies right on all subordinate subjects. Accordingly the apostle tells us, that the repentance which he proclaimed, was ' repentance toward God.' To the second question—where are these right thoughts to be got?-we answer, From God; for he is alike the Author of all life, goodness, grace, light, and truth; and truth, as all are aware, is the anti