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Turn away from your dark and sometimes morbid self-introspection, and look up to the cross! Forget self, and dwell on God's infinite love, in coming so near to us in Christ. Dwell on His precious promises, and do not allow yourself to doubt their eternal truth, as given for your support, help, and encouragement. Such doubting, when your prevailing and true aim is for Christian discipleship, is sin; for it implies a distrust of His word, whose very name is Truth.

Take the Saviour's loving words of hope and assurance, and apply them to your own secret longings and wants. Trust his assurance of pardon, pledged and sealed to you in his cross of shame and agony. "I know my sheep, and am known of mine; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my Father's hand. He that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out."

Too long have you dwelt upon self alone; and finding darkness and evil there, the shadows of self have clouded your vision, and dimmed your faith. Look up, as well as within! Look to Jesus! See his love, and, kneeling at his feet, trust your spirit in his holy keeping. He will never be found faithless to his promises, by one sincere, earnest, seeking spirit.

But you say again, "My feelings are so dead, so cold and indifferent! There is no glow of warm emotion and love, as I think of God's goodness; all within is so lifeless, that I despair of ever living by the constraining power of Love. My heart seems all dry, barren, and unfruitful."

Here, again, lies your field of conflict, the trial of your faith. Have you sought by meditation and prayer to rouse these slumbering powers, to quicken these dormant feelings, -and yet sought in vain?

Not in hopeless doubt or in dreary loneliness are you to rest; but resting in God, not away from him, quietly and patiently to wait that baptism of the Spirit you so earnestly crave. "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?"

Too apt are we to feel that all depends upon ourselves,— that we can bid the tide of emotion flow at our bidding through the secret chambers of the soul, that by our attainments, in some way, we can merit the reward of faith, and the assurance of pardon and acceptance. It is true, it depends upon ourselves, and only upon ourselves, to open the secret recesses of the soul, to pray Him to enter who ever stands at the door and knocks, and who promises, with the Father, ever to abide in and with us. But having thus opened the heart, thus turned the most longing desires and aspirations of the soul where alone they can find their true response, having yielded our being to the Father's guidance, then let us wait, patiently wait, his will.

The fulness of spiritual influences, so earnestly desired, he withholds, only to impart finally the higher blessing of an unquestioning trust. He would teach us our entire dependence upon him; - a lesson never learned by many calling themselves Christians, and perhaps only understood, in its deepest significance, where these hours of darkness, these vain attempts at prayer, these longings for a deeper love and faith, have led the soul to prostrate itself in entire self-renunciation and humility before the one great Quickener of the spirit.

Truly has it been said, "The soul can never truly see God, until everything earthly and selfish within it has been entirely swept away."

There must be, deep within your soul, would you gain those noble heights of spiritual attainment to which you so earnestly aspire, an entire self-renunciation, a willingness to give yourself wholly into God's keeping, and let him do as seemeth to him good, bestowing upon you joy or sorrow, light or darkness, comfort or destitution of spirit. Not until such a willing and entire surrender of self has been made can there enter that peace that passeth understanding, the fruit alone of an unquestioning submission.

And does not God teach us by this inward destitution,

this powerlessness on our own part to quicken the secret emotion and love, that we are wholly dependent upon him, — that the gifts of the Spirit lie in his holy keeping, to be dispensed freely indeed, but in their rich and deep fulness only where the soul asks, and waits, and trusts, with the confiding faith of the little child?

Go to Him with a true, Christ-like submission, ask that all pride may be cast out, all self-seeking done away; that his Spirit may purify your soul from all inward evil, and that you may be able to trust yourself wholly in his hand. Lie still there. Wait his will. Wait his will. He wounds only to heal, tries your faith only to bestow the infinite blessing of an unquestioning trust. "When the child places his hand within that of the earthly parent, there is an entire trust in his heart that casteth out fear; and he walks amid the darkness with no thought of gloom; and thus when man, with a like trust, places his hand in that of his Heavenly Parent, the true peace of God enters his heart." And just so far as he forgets self, and looks habitually out of himself to God and to Christ, will the Holy Spirit dwell within him, and the peace that passeth understanding fill his soul.

It is no vague, unmeaning state of which we speak. It is a possible possession to every heart, gained only through the narrow but rugged path of an entire self-renunciation. Do not fear to enter that path. Do not tarry in it because of its difficulties and trials. Christ has trodden it before you, and his hand is your guide and support, his words of promise your sustaining help, though no human friend be near to cheer and to sympathize with you. You may walk in darkness, but if your feet have entered the path, fear not! "At eventide it shall be light," though the morning, and even the noon-day hours, are shrouded in gloom. Though thou passest through the waters, He is with thee, and through the floods, they shall not overflow thee."

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Light shall spring out of darkness, and the joy of a triumphant faith, and the brightness of a celestial peace and

trust, shall gild with holy radiance the pathway to your home; and when, the veil for ever removed, the darkness for ever passed, you lean upon the Saviour's breast, and in him see the Father's reconciled countenance, will not your journey to that home, lonely as it may have been as regards human sympathy, dark, sad, trying in its inward experiences, yet seem radiant with God's love and truest compassion?

Turn not away from the mercy-seat, though clouds darken your vision? Forsake not the altar of communion, though your heart seem dead to feeling, and no warm glow of emotion suffuses your soul. Forget not to follow Christ in daily duty, though thorns and briers encompass your path. The prize of your high calling is before you. The race must be won, the crown of victory gained! Defeat, loss, suffering, shame, must ensue, if the combat be given up! Safety, peace, eternal life, are promised only as the reward of a victorious faith! Angel voices whisper to you in deep and pleading tones from the spirit-land, "Come up hither!" hither!" the Saviour's words in every hour of weariness and darkness will come to your waiting soul: "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. He that overcometh shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name from the book of life, but will confess his name before my Father and his angels."

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And

H. M.

THE TEMPTATIONS OF THE SICK-ROOM.

THE sick-room is not only the scene of trials to be endured, and of consolations to be enjoyed, but also, strange as it may sound, of conflicts to be maintained. Every path of our pilgrimage is beset with temptations, and even the invalid, enfeebled in body and mind, has his own peculiar ones to encounter. Nor must he plead his weakness as an excuse for inaction, for God never appoints us any work which he does not give us power to accomplish, and in that very weakness will his strength be made manifest. These temptations concern our relations both to God and to those around us.

First in importance, we may place the danger of repining at the discipline God has laid upon us. This may be very much increased by our previous character. In the somewhat modified words of another, "it is not easy to be a submissive sufferer, unless one has been an obedient child"; and if the little disappointments and vexations of every day have been met with a complaining spirit, and its trifling sacrifices to duty and the comfort of others unwillingly made, we are but poorly prepared for the greater sacrifice of health, with all its means of enjoyment, and the more severe inflic tion of physical suffering. If God has not been "in all our thoughts," if we have never bowed to his authority in the course of our daily lives, we shall be most likely to dispute it when his chastening hand is laid upon us, and that course is arrested. We are interrupted, perhaps, in the full tide of youthful pleasure, amid the pressure of household and maternal cares, or the successful pursuit of wealth; and if they have been the absorbing interest of the heart, how galling to our spirits the yoke of the sick-room! Let us learn, then, in health to be prepared for that season which must inevitably come, and which comes quite as often to the young, in the flush of their early hopes, and to vigorous manhood

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