amusements, may all, if we choose, be connected with some thought of our Saviour. There is one act which we do every day, which is already solemnised by a form of prayer and thanksgiving,—a remembrance of Christ. With too many it has, indeed, passed into a mere form; yet it bears a singular resemblance to the rite in which we are specially bound to remember Him. What if, instead of sitting down to dinner carelessly, listening to a hasty grace, and almost before it is ended, turning to some other topic, as though half ashamed of what we had done, we were really to make an effort to think that Christ was present, and that we were thanking Him? Our meals would not be the less pleasant in consequence; our cheerfulness would not be the less real because we felt that He, whose love surpasses all love, was with us, watching us, and, if one may venture so to say, taking pleasure in our enjoyment.

Or what if we fixed upon some little act of selfdenial, some struggle against a daily temptation, and determined that it should be entered upon not merely from cold duty, but with a special desire to please Him, to show that we remembered Him? The difficulty would not be increased by such a thought-rather, if it could once be heartily entertained, it would make the most wearisome struggle, the most painful conflict, a glory and a triumph.

Christians we all are in name, but Christians we

shall never be in full reality until the remembrance of our Saviour is so associated with every action of our lives, as to be with us like the air we breathe, quickening and refreshing us, and becoming so much a part of ourselves, that when it is taken from us we feel that we shall sicken and die.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN.

ST. LUKE, xxii. 21, 22.

But, behold, the hand of him that betrayeth Me is with Me on the table. And truly the Son of Man goeth as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom He is betrayed.'

WHEN we compel ourselves to think seriously and deeply, we must own that there can scarcely be any warning more awful than that contained in our Lord's declaration, "The hand of him that betrayeth Me is with Me on the table." It comes home to us so directly, recalling the sins that force themselves into the immediate presence of God, especially sinful thoughts, and wishes, and negligences, at the Holy Communion. They may be repelled and struggled against, and we may hope that they will not be reckoned against us; and some we may trust are from without-direct temptations of Satan; but others there are assuredly from within,-consequences of former transgressions, if not offences of the moment—and which . must, therefore, be part of that enmity to God, that love of evil, which betrayed our Lord; which sat at His table, and received the bread, and drank of the cup, even as others, and then went out to

deliver Him up to His enemies. We are terribly blind to the guilt of sin, even in its lightest form. It may be that the full perception of its enormity,— the full sight of evil,-like the sight of infinite perfection, would be death. And so, in the same way, we are all blind to the consequences of sin. There is nothing which it is so difficult to teach a child, nothing which we are ourselves more slow in learning; very many of us, indeed, never do learn it. We find ourselves slaves to evil habits, entangled in difficult circumstances;-life, from some unknown cause, has become an inextricable problem, -but we seldom think of asking from whence the confusion has arisen. We talk of unfortunate circumstances, and perhaps, when forced to look at the truth, we allow that we have committed some error of judgment, but we never calmly sit down and face the difficulty, and put the question to our own hearts. Yet there alone the answer must almost invariably be found. God does not create evil; it exists, and He bids us battle with it; if instead of battling we yield to it, the confusion and suffering which follow are our own, not His.

And so it is with the sin which at the present moment may be our torment. Temptation was permitted that we might strive against it; if we have yielded, and find ourselves thenceforth weak, the guilt and the suffering are our own. Let any of us think what we might have been if from childhood we had followed every good impulse, and obeyed every wise command given us by those set

over us. We should not have been perfect,-perfection is not in our nature;—sin would have overtaken, and surprised, and conquered us, but it would have been the sin of infirmity, not of wilfulness. And it is the sin of wilfulness which bears its bitter fruit to the end of life. The sin of infirmity is for the most part, through God's mercy, passed over. Yet there again we may and do mistake. The sin of infirmity becomes wilful when it is indulged. The moment that we are aware of it, if we do not guard against it, we are responsible for it. This is especially to be remembered when we comfort ourselves by thinking that certain infirm. ities of disposition are natural to us, and therefore excusable. They were natural at the beginning; they would not be natural now if we had always striven against them. We have an irritable temper perhaps, we were born with it; but how often in childhood and youth did we set ourselves seriously to conquer it? How often have we made excuses to ourselves for it? We are haunted by evil or irreverent thoughts; they come to us now before we are aware of them, but when they first claimed admittance, in years gone by, who opened the door to them, and cherished and dwelt upon them? Habits of negligence have become so much a part of ourselves, that we give up as hopeless the effort to overcome them; but who first indulged them? Who turned a deaf ear to the wishes of parents, and the warning of friends, and went on wilfully