without fear, till one morning he finds himself exactly opposite to the desired haven toward which he has been steering. How has he found his way over the trackless deep? He has trusted in his compass, his nautical almanac, his glass and the heavenly bodies; and, obeying their guidance, without sighting land, he has steered so accurately that he has not to change a point to enter into port. It is a wonderful thing-that sailing or steaming without sight. Spiritually it is a blessed thing to leave altogether the shores of sight and feeling, and to say "Good-bye" to inward feelings, cheering providences, signs, tokens, and so forth. It is glorious to be far out on the ocean of divine love, believing in God, and steering for Heaven straight away by the direction of the Word of God.-SPURGEON.

Faith in Trial.

At the battle of Crecy, where Edward, the Black Prince, then a youth of eighteen years of age, led the van, the king, his father, drew up a strong party on a rising ground, and there beheld the conflict in readiness to send relief when it should be wanted. The young prince being sharply charged and in some danger, sent to his father for succor; and as the king delayed to send it, another messenger was sent to crave immediate assistance.

66

Το him the king replied: Go, tell my son that I am not so inexperienced a commander as not to know when succor is wanted, nor so careless a father as not to send it.” He intended the honor of the day should be his son's, and therefore let him with courage stand to it, assured

that help should be had when it might conduce most to his renown. God draws forth His servants to fight in the spiritual warfare, where they are engaged, not only against the strongholds of carnal reason and the exalted imaginations of their own hearts, but also in the pitched field against Satan and his wicked instruments. But they, poor hearts, when the charge is sharp, are ready to despond and cry with Peter: "Save, Lord; we perish.' God is too watchful to overlook their exigencies, and too much a Father to neglect their succor. If help, however, be delayed, it is that the victory may be more glorious by the difficulty of overcoming.—SPURgeon.

Peter's Faith.

When you see Peter climbing down out of that boat, as one has said, with the storm-light on his face and the spray in his hair, you get just one glimpse of what Peter, by the grace of God, was always meant to be, and what you and I, by the grace of God, were always meant to be-a people filled with such a vision of the eternal Christ of God that all things seen and temporal fall away from us and utterly lose their power to hamper or discourage us; a people in whom faith is sublimed to its highest reach and its loftiest and most noble exercise. Walking on the water was impossible; but Peter did it so far. "When Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus." He did it; that is the puzzle of the commentators. It was not a commentator he was going to, or he would have said: "Stay where you are, you fanatic! Stay where you are." he was going to Jesus; and Jesus said: "Come! Come!

No,

Come!" He is always glad to see faith come and lay hold of Him.

When Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid, and began to sink, and cried: Lord, save me !'" What marred this beautiful story was that the commentators' spirit got into the poor fellow. After beginning so well he began to get cautious. After beginning at such a sublime height of faith, he feared and came down to the poor, pitiful level of a Kantian philosopher, subject to the categories of space and time. He began in the spirit, and he ended in the flesh. He became carnal, and walked as a man— or, rather, he sank as a man. --MCNEIll.

Faith the Way of Salvation.

I bless God again that the way of salvation is by faith, because it is a way open to the most unlearned. What fine theology we get nowadays! Deep thinking they call it. The men go down so deep into their subjects, and so stir the mud at the bottom, that you can not see them and they can not see themselves. I apprehend that teachers of a certain school do not themselves know what they are talking about. Now, if salvation were only to be learned by reading through huge folios, what would become of the multitudes of poor souls in Bow, Bethnal Green and Seven Dials? If the Gospel had consisted of a mass of learning, how could the unlearned be saved? But now we can go to each one of them and say: "Jesus died."

"There is life in a look at the Crucified One;

There is life at this moment for thee."

Napoleon's Faith.

-SPURGEON.

"I know men, and I tell you that Jesus is not a man. The religion of Christ is a mystery which subsists by its own force, and proceeds from a mind which is not a human mind. We find in it a marked individuality, which originated a train of words and actions unknown before. Jesus is not a philosopher, for His proofs are miracles, and from the first His disciples adored Him. Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne and myself founded empires; but on what foundation did we rest the creatures of our genius? Upon force. But Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him. I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth to become food for worms. Such is the fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, adored, and is still existing over the whole earth!" Then, turning to Gen. Bertrand, the emperor added: "If you do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God, I did wrong in appointing you a general."

Constant Faith.

Avoid, as dangerous, the impression that an unsettled faith or cherished dalliance with one's religious convictions is a sign of intellectual courage or strength. lief is quite as often cowardly as it is brave. It hesitates

Unbe

often because its "dare not" waits upon its "would." Nothing can possibly be more injurious to the intellect than a prolonged hesitation to face questions of this sort, and to settle them in a manly spirit. Nothing can be more unmanly than to play hide-and-seek with arguments for and against the most important verities, or more servile than to wait for new revelations from some idolized leader of opinion. Nothing can be worse for the heart of the scholar than the withdrawal from the heavens of the living God and the banishment from the earth of the Christ who blessed and redeemed it; for when God and Christ depart from the faith of the thinker, his tenderness for man, his hope for man, his faith in man and his patience with man are likely to follow sooner or later Even his sensibility to culture will become less and less refined or less and less satisfying. Nothing can be worse for the conscience than that the magnetic presence of God should cease to enforce its oftcn feeble and vacillating commands. Nothing can be more harmful to the life of a man of intellectual consistency than that faith should wholly die out of it and cease to be the spring of its activities, its joys and hopes. And as for the community, one shudders with not unreasonable horror at the very thought of what will come if the atheistic theories with which the thinker of these days beguiles his readers or amuses himself are once put in practice by the men of labor and of action. The least we can say is that what seems as harmless as the summer lightning when manipulated in the brilliant experiments of the teacher may rend and consume the social structure which the faith of generations has reared.-PRESIDENT PORTER.