that taketh away the sin of the world!" See Him stretched yonder, wreathed with a crown of rankling thorns, wounded with OUR transgressions! and buried in OUR iniquities! "See from His head, His hands, His feet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown ?" O, yes! look upon Him Now, as He intercedes before His Father's throne, and then you shall be able to look with unblanched cheek upon Him, when-amidst the embers of the burning universe, amidst the "fervent heat" of the last great fires, amidst the hooded scowlings of the sack clothed sun, amidst the broken slumbers of the dead, and the yawning murmurs of the opening graves; when the sea gives up its buried myriads, and the tomb surrenders back its immortal trust-the cry goes forth, shaking creation to its centre, "Lo He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him; they also who pierced Him, and all people shall wail because of Him. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!" "Jesu, lover of my soul, Let me to Thy bosom fly, O, receive my soul at last!" It is a responsible thing for man, much more youth, to handle the verities of the Word of Life. It may well make us pause and tremble, lest we should darken counsel by words without knowledge, but it will be, at least, one consolation to feel, that, however far astray our ignorance and folly may have led us while revolving and trying to proclaim the truth of God, we CANNOT have erred in the advice with which we took leave of one another, when that advice consists simply of this injunction, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!" THE FAITHFUL SAYING. YT is astonishing how thoughtlessly, or with how little appre ciation of the full range of their significance, men will often give utterance to the most stupendous and startlingly sublime truths. As a general rule, the longer we contemplate a beautiful object, the deeper becomes our insight into its various attributes and features, and the higher, consequently, becomes our admiration of its attractions, and appreciation of its charms. Study generally stimulates interest, and, in proportion as the mysteries and difficulties which embarrass the inexperienced tyro diminish and disappear, in that proportion do his sympathies begin to identify with his theme, and fresh sources of interest develop themselves as hindrance after hindrance subsides, and leaves the onward prospect uninterruptedly displayed. The conquest of difficulties gives a zest and edge to the appetite for inquiry, and induces a desire to vanquish fresh and more formidable obstacles. So, too, the discovery of one striking feature of excellence begets a desire to institute a minuter scrutiny, which shall reveal new and yet profounder beauties. This is the case in the contemplation of any work of art. Look upon some picture painted by a cunning hand, in which nature seems to vie with art for the ascendancy, and the dumb canvas almost echoes the voice of the Creator. At the first general survey, spectator is struck by the surpassing excellence of the work, but it is not until he has gazed upon the picture for a long time, that one consummate master-stroke after another begins to arrest his eye and arouse his wonder; it is not until he has revisited the object, again and again, that he even begins to imbibe the cloquence of its perfection, and even when he has quitted it for " which he ever he feels that there are "tender strokes of art has overlooked, well calculated to "wake the soul;" and that he the has left unnoticed a thousand delicate and consummate touches, each in itself an inspiration. But there are men, and those the majority too, by a long way, who, while professing an interest in great and wondrous creations, have no eye for the detection of a single beauty, and no heart for its comprehension even when discovered. Men who can ramble amongst the vocal canvas of Raphael and Murillo, and swagger past the touching poetry of Landseer, or of Quintin Matsys, the inspired blacksmith of Antwerp, and glare, with a vacant yawn, at each sublime creation, wondering why people do not stand still to admire them, instead of staring at such things as those. Men who can saunter before some towering monument where the transaction of a by-gone age is re-enacted; and where the Roman father, or the Grecian victor spring up from their historic graves beneath the enchantments of Roubiliac, or the mystic sorceries of Chantrey's chisel who can have the eye arrested by all that is wondrous in painting and in sculpture, and the ear enchained by all that is inspiring in the strains of Mozart, Beethoven, or Handel, and yet have no more sympathy with the eloquent influences about them than if they were looking at a common raree-show, amidst the jargon of a South Sea Island war-dance. So, too, is it of frequent occurrence to meet with those to whose dull, insensate souls the trumpet-voice of nature, in her proudest dress and most commanding majesty, speaks no thrilling sound of harmony, and wakes no responsive chord of sympathy. The world is full of men who could whistle amidst the sublimest glories of an Alpine glen, or talk of cotton and delaines while the moonbeams danced upon Geneva's lake, and the silvery whisper of the dripping oar warbled its quiet poesy into the ear. And yet we often hear such men as these speak with a sage and knowing eagerness of the charms of art, and criticise productions which it is sacrilege for them to profane by mentioning; and assume a grotesque and elephantine enthusiasm when trying to call up some lovely scene, when they climbed a mountain to behold the rising sun, and fell asleep amongst the beauties of the place before they reached the top, and dreamed of lurrys, hoists, and warehouses, till their friends came back to wake them. This same spirit of indifferent toying with the grandest and most wondrous themes extends itself into the world of literature. The pinched and hungry squib-writer, and the shuffling threadbare penny-a-liner, will sprinkle his idiotic lucubrations with drops stolen from Helicon's most precious fountain; will tear and mangle the immortal offspring of a Shakspeare's soul, to bedeck the shrivelled abortions of his own puny fancy with the classic limbs of a heaven-born progeny. How do we all, even in the commonest conversation, and most frivolous raillery of mutual intercourse, find ourselves bandying about the mighty creations of the noblest minds; playing with, and laughing over the deep-drawn sweat-drops of the human intellect, disporting ourselves upon the panting throes of master-minds, and seizing, with a ruthless hand, and more than a Promethean presumption, the selectest rays of fancy's boldest lights, and brandish them across the common humdrum chat of life, never thinking of the mighty soul-travail that gave them birth, or the wondrous mind that floated them upon the wing! And if this intellectual and emotional obtuseness is so palpable among the generality of men, how much more strikingly conspicuous is the moral obliquity and dulness of not a few? All, without exception, are chargeable with this to a greater or a lesser degree. There is no man whose sensitiveness, in the contemplation of the great scheme of redemption, is anything like adequate to the demands, or commensurate with the depth and wonder of the theme. Even while we mention it, we are conscious of having broached a subject whose height and depth, and length and breadth pass all our knowledge, and sets at nought our profoundest reaches of mind to grasp, and our keenest and subtlest sensibilities to re-echo or to pierce. Tell me that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and you tell me a truth, the magnitude of which the line of no mortal understanding can compass, and open to my view a boundless sea of Infinite and Almighty love, which the plummet of no mortal sympathy can sound; you utter a sentence, simple in itself; a sentence which has been repeated hundreds of thousands of times before, each time with a different degree of appreciation, but in the noblest degree, far, far lower than the immortal dignity and sublimity of the fact. You utter a sentence which has broken from the lips of Apostles, almost from beneath the shadow of the cross itselfwhich has formed at once the death-warrant and the life-word of earnest and devoted martyrs-which has been lisped in simpering accents into listless ears and from a listless heart, from readingdesk, from pulpit, and from altar-which has been the key-note of ten thousand sing-song homilies, warbled with schoolboy monotony, by minister, and priest, and bishop. You utter a sentence which was thundered by Luther and the old reformers, by Zwingle, Knox, and Neff-which was caught afresh by Whitfield and by Wesley, and reverberated up and down the land in a bygone time; and which is bellowed by mountebanks in our own day to thousands, from peer to peasant, who go to hear it seasoned and dished up with jokes, and to find the sufferings o. the Saviour made the subject of clownish witticisms, and jestbook vulgarities. You utter a sentence, beneath the sound of which thousands upon thousands of lazy, high-fed rebels against God's law have yawned themselves to sleep, and though it wraps up within it the message of their soul's salvation, have gaped, and winked, and snored under its voice, as if it had been some balmy lullaby, instead of the most thrilling appeal that heaven's eloquence could make to the dormant hearts and dying souls of men. You utter a sentence which kindled the myriad flames which leaped from Jewish shrines in the Mosaic time; which floated in the fragrant incense from the high-priest's censer; which was written in the symbol which attended the dismissal of the sin-laden scape-goat to the wilderness; which lent a sacred melody to David's penitential hymns; which warbled sweetly through the lyre-strings of Isaiah, of Jeremiah, and the holy men of old, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost: a sentence whose first word smiled in the star which shone on Bethlehem's stable, and whose last was syllabled in the sweat-drops of Gethsemane, and the blood of Calvary; a sentence which the hoarse and ranting shibboleths of men have sought to drown in vain ; a sentence which is read in heaven, and wakes from angel-lips a louder anthem and a sweeter song; a sentence which is sighed in hell, and stirs in banished hearts a deeper groan and an intenser anguish; and a sentence which, if heard, and loved. and |