religious service, because we like the music ?— to follow after celebrated preachers, because it grat ifies curiosity?-to worship in particular churches, because the architecture approves itself to our taste? to read religious books, because they are talked about?-to discuss religious subjects, because they happen to be the fashionable topics of the day? Doubtless there is pleasure and interest in all these things—a natural and, to a certain extent, an innocent pleasure; so, also, there must have been a pleasure,―a very exciting and overpowering, and also innocent pleasure,-in witnessing our Lord's miracles, quite apart from any recognition of His Divinity. But the very possibility of a Divine interference with the laws of nature would, to a rightly constituted mind, have brought thoughts so awful, that any lesser feeling of interest would have been crushed by it; and if we,-Christians as we profess ourselves, the redeemed children of God, really recognised the value of all things connected with religion, every thought of mere pleasure would at once be absorbed by the everpresent consciousness of the importance of the interests connected with it.

Sacred things must be treated sacredly; if they are not they become profane. And the fact that religion can and does minister to the gratification of our tastes is a reason why, when we discover in ourselves the existence of such tastes, we should sternly and rigidly set a watch over our hearts, and keep a guard over our lives, lest the beauty which

ministers to our feelings of pleasure should at the same time deaden our hearts.

When we make religion a luxury, we have very great cause to doubt whether it is the religion of Christ. It may seem a harsh saying,-yet it does not in the least imply that there is no luxury in religion, that beauty, eloquence, harmony, are sinful. But it does not imply that the way of the Cross is not a way of self-pleasing, but a path of self-denial and self-discipline; and that although God, in His bounteous mercy, smooths it for us, and whilst we are following the straight course of duty, sends us many pleasures, yet, that we are to wait for His sending, and not to seek for them ourselves. Much less are we to repine because they are not granted us. Many persons there are with an intense appreciation of sacred beauty, whose lot is cast in a sphere quite removed from its enjoyment. This dispensation of God's Providence, perhaps, seems hard to them; they see blessings conferred lavishly upon some who do not even recognise them as such; whilst they, to whom even a portion would be an inestimable boon, are deprived of them. But these circumstances are ordered by laws infinitely more wise, more merciful, and tender than we can understand. The taste for spiritual luxuries does not at all prove that they would be good for us-often the reverse. The plant fostered in the greenhouse may sink under the exhaustion of its unnatural growth; whilst that which has been exposed to the open air has a strength to

withstand the fiercest storms. And so in our own case. When our strength has been attained without the aids of the external excitements of religion, then God may, perhaps, see fit to bestow them upon us as blessings.

For they are blessings-great and deeply to be prized; but only when they meet us in the course of duty. And if, as is sometimes the case, we are called upon to decide ourselves whether we may seek them, this rule of duty,-apart from the enjoyment, or even the benefit, we believe we may derive from them,--will be our safest guide. The indulgence of taste and feeling may lead us astray -the effort to follow duty never can. We need not shrink from so stern a law. Herod sought, from curiosity, to witness the miracles of Christ, and the Saviour of the world stood before him apparently powerless. The disciples followed their Master in humble devotion, and in their presence the blind were made to see, and the lame to walk, the sick were healed, and the dead raised to life. And Christ has miracles of love still for those who follow Him in duty. There may be no visible temples adorned with the work of men's hands in which to worship, yet the prayers offered in the secret heart will be answered by the visitation of God's Spirit. The tones of earthly harmony may be silent, but the Voice of the Comforter will speak soothingly and sweetly to the conscience: and when, as may often happen, God does at length vouchsafe to send us, even on earth, those external aids

the beauty and the melody which He vouchsafes to accept as offerings for His outward service-there will be no misgiving in our enjoyment. Thoughts of vanity and excitement will no more throng us, marring our sacrifice of devotion; the pleasure which God gives will be accepted at once from His Hand, and consecrated and deepened by His Blessing; the earthly element in our worship will be hallowed, and the luxury of religion will be felt to be, what God intended it, the foretaste of the blessedness of Heaven.

SOCIETIES AND ASSOCIATIONS.

ST. LUKE, Xxiii. 10-12.

"And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused Him. And Herod with his men of war set Him at nought, and mocked Him, and arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, and sent Him again to Pilate. And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves."

THE Scripture narratives are unlike all others in the way in which events are told,-put in juxtaposition, and the inference left to be gathered from the sense of the passage. That appears to be the mode of God's dealings with man generally, both in nature and revelation. The discoveries of science are simply the reading of those facts which God has placed before our eyes,-drawing from their position and circumstances their true intention and the laws by which they are governed. Men always think it necessary to point their own moral, to interpret their own actions; but God, having placed His works and His actions before us, and given us reason and conscience by which to judge them, leaves with us the responsibility of exercising those faculties, and will hereafter judge us according to the manner in which we have used this responsi