April 10

others, and perhaps also to ourselves! How unlike may the present be to the future! In the days of Queen Mary, when so many were put to death for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation—that Moloch at whose shrine so many victims have been immolated, a poor man was convicted and sentenced to be burnt alive. In his way to the place of execution, he was very pensive and depressed. But when he came in sight of the stake, overpowered for the time with fear, he involuntarily exclaimed, “Oh! I cannot burn! I cannot burn!” Some of the priests, supposing he wished to recant, immediately approached and addressed him. This however was not his design; but he wanted more of that confidence and consolation which would enable him to endure becomingly the fiery trial. He was left some minutes to himself, during which in great earnestness and agony of spirit, he prayed that God would manifest himself more clearly to his mind—When God so shone in upon his soul, that raising and clapping his hands, he cried with a loud voice—“Now I can burn!—Now I can burn!”

APRIL 10.—“Because I live, ye shall live also.”—John 14:19.

We are seldom sufficiently struck with individual importance. We are all in a state of connexion with, and dependance upon each other, like the members of the human frame, in which one part cannot say to another, I have no need of thee; and where even those members which seem to be more feeble are necessary to the welfare of the whole body. But there are persons who seem to be the very life of the cause or the community to which they belong. Place them in a state of danger, and you awaken a thousand sympathies and anxieties. Remove that monarch, and the extensive empire founded by his valour and skill is crushed at once, or crumbled by degrees to nothing. Remove that minister, and the congregation he has by his talents attracted and formed, is divided, diminished, and dispersed. Remove the head of that family, and two tender relations are immediately produced, the widow and the fatherless, and both reduced to perplexity and distress; it may be to want and oppression. Yet in all these instances the dependence is not absolute, and the consequences admit of much exception and limitation. Empires have flourished when monarchs have fallen. Congregations have continued when ministers have finished their course. Families have been provided for when the husband and the father have been taken away—But here is a Being upon whom hangs all the glory of his Father’s house. He is indispensably and infinitely necessary to a multitude which no man can number. Is he alive or dead? If he be dead we are for ever undone. If he be alive we are safe, we are happy, we are made for eternity! And what is his own language? “Because I live, ye shall live also.”

By his life here, though spoken of as present, because of its nearness and certainty, he means his life after his resurrection; and to this the Apostle refers when he says, “If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” Of this life we think comparatively too little, not considering—that it was expe-