"By

without blemish and without spot-by that we are saved. "He bare our sins ir. His own body on the tree.” His stripes we are healed." Bless God for this substitutionary salvation!-MCNEILL.

My Savior.

There is one great idea, one very rich and beautiful idea, which lies at the very bottom of the whole Christian thought, and that is: Rescuing a soul and bringing it to Christ is simply bringing it back into a life in which it naturally belongs and out of which it has wandered. It is not an unnatural thing for a man to become a Christian. Oh, if we would only understand that it is a most natural thing that vision of the kingdom of God! As natural as the coming back of the poor prodigal out of the wretchedness in which he had been living to his father's house, where he belonged; as natural as the coming back of this poor, bleating sheep, borne by the shepherd, to the fold out of which it had wandered. The Savior's teaching is that man belongs to God, and that the coming to God is the coming back to God, from Whom we have departed. The coming of Jesus and His rescue of our nature always seem to me to be like this. There are people who, having been born in a land of richness and of culture, full of all good and holiness, have been taken away in their childhood, or have wandered by some act of their own, and have gone off and lived in exile on a savage island, where there is nothing that is beautiful or pure. They have been growing up in the midst of vileness and sin.

By and by, on that island where they are living, they e a ship coming to them. It draws nearer and nearer cross the waters. They begin to wonder what it is, and by and by a boat drops over its side and some one lands —a new form and yet an old form among them—and lives in their midst. When he comes it is all strange to them, but by and by he reminds them of things they had forgotten. There come into their hearts memories of that which had seemed entirely to have passed away. He came from the home in which they were born, and where their true place is, and he has come to remind them of their heritage. And by and by, as he lives there for them and suffers there with them, there springs up in their hearts a memory of the old land from which he came. They recognize him as one with whom they have to do, and after a while they are touched at the remembrance, and they say: "O deliver us from this bondage!" And then he takes them by their hands and leads them back again; once more crosses the sea, and, landing on the shore from which he came, they find places waiting for them there.

who are Christians, don't Don't you know how, as

O my friends, those of you you know what it all means? little by little your sins were cast away and you began to live another life-as little by little new holiness of which you never dreamed as possible for you opened before you and you entered into them-how a strange naturalness was in all? It was all new; yet it was not new. There was something that reminded you of some association there had been before. And your Savior-how was it

with Him? When you first heard of Him, when He first stood out before you, as if you saw Him verily with your eyes, and you heard His word, and as you bowed in prayer, and hid your eyes from everything besides, when Jesus Christ stood before you, you seemed to see something strange, that you had never met in your life before; but little by little, as He touched the deeper powers of your nature, you had a new conviction-my Savior! my Savior!-PHILLIPS BROOKS.

Salvation Plain.

The bunch of hyssop had its meaning. What was that bunch of hyssop? It certainly played no small part in the deliverance of an Israelite and of his family that evening. "Take," said God—ah, I like that—“take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood." I can imagine, for example, an Israelitish father, whose mind and heart are really moved by the occasion; when the blood of that Lamb was shed and caught in the basin, saying to himself and it would have been no bad sign of his intellect or his heart: "Now, I have come to the crisis of this crisis. What if I should go wrong here? What a pity it is that Moses had no word from the Lord's mouth as to how this red mark is actually to be hung out!" He need have been in no such puzzle-no such dilemma. Moses had a word right out of God's mouth for that very crisis of the crisis: "Take you a bunch of hyssop, and strike the lintel and the two side-posts." God actually condescending to tell a man how to sprinkle the blood! Have you thought of it? He left no loop

hole by which a man might be lost if he wanted to be saved and to save his wife and children. Salvation is the same yet. I tell you, my friends, that if in the great day any soul from this audience is found on the wrong side of things as regards Christ, Who sits on the judgment seat, you will be standing there in absolute silence; or if you speak, you will be calling wildly on the rocks and the mountains to hide you. And you will be crushed by the awful silence.

If lost, you will be inexcusable. So shall I. The man here today in this church the farthest from grace and the farthest from evangelical faith is bound to say, with me, that after such a scheme or plan of salvation if any Israelite was lost he was to blame. -McNeill.

Salvation Free.

I heard a story-I think it came from the North Country: A minister called upon a poor woman, intending to help her, for he knew she was very poor. With his halfcrown in his hand, he knocked at the door; but she did not answer. He concluded she was not at home, and went his way. A little while after this he met her at the church, and told her that he had remembered her need. "I called at your house and knocked several times. suppose you were not at home, for I had no answer." "At what hour did you call, sir?" "It was about noon." "Oh, dear! I heard you, sir, and am so sorry I did not answer; but I thought it was the man calling for the rent." Many a poor woman knows what this meant. Now, it is my desire to be heard, and therefore I want to

I

say that I am not calling for the rent. Indeed, it is not the object of this book to ask anything of you, but to tell you that salvation is all of grace--which means free, gratis, for nothing.--SPURGEON.

THE SEA.

Water Nature's Carrier.

Water is Nature's carrier. With its currents it conveys heat away from the torrid zone and ice from the frigid; or, bottling the caloric away in the vesicles of its vapor, it first makes it impalpable and then conveys it, by unknown paths, to the most distant parts of the earth. The materials of which the coral builds the isle and the sea-conch its shell are gathered by this restless leveler from mountains, rocks and valleys in all latitudes. Some it washes down from the Mountains of the Moon, or out of the gold fields of Australia, or from the mines of Potosi; others from the battle-fields of Europe or from the marble quarries of ancient Greece and Rome. These materials, thus collected and carried over falls or down rapids, are transported from river to sea and delivered by the obedient waters to each insect and to every plant in the ocean at the right time and temperature, in proper form and in due quantity.

Treating the rocks less gently, it grinds them into dust or pounds them into sand, or rolls and rubs them until they are fashioned into pebbles, rubble or bowlders. The sand and shingle on the sea-shore are monuments of the