May 2

did not answer Pilate; nor indulge Herod; nor suffer those to remain in the room who laughed him to scorn when he raised the ruler's daughter. But he favours and satisfies Judas: "Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."

Hence, while we oppose a doubtful, curious, and speculative turn of mind, we should not repulse humble and useful inquiries. There are difficulties of an experimental and a practical nature with regard to duties and privileges which it is possible and desirable to remove. And there is no one to whom we can carry them so proper as he to whom this inquirer addressed himself—and not in vain.

MAY 2.—"Ye were a curse."—Zechariah 8:13.

WHEN Elihu asked Job, with regard to the Supreme Being, "If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him?" he adds, "Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art." The injury one man is capable of doing to another is incalculable; and it will never be known in this world what a curse the sinner has been. The corrupt always become, as Isaiah calls them, "children that are corrupters." They are concerned to bring others into the same course and condition with themselves; and as, owing to the depravity of our nature, we are much more accessible to evil than to good, they are rarely successless in their endeavours. In addition to their invitations and enticings, and, if they have power, their frowns and menaces; how impressive is the force of example! and how does the presence of vice familiarize it to the mind, and weaken the restraints of fear and shame! "One sinner destroyeth much good."

It seems hard that the wife and children of Achan should have been stoned and burnt with himself. And nothing could have been more affecting than the sight and cries of these victims of his guilt, especially if he had any feeling, to the man himself. And the Deist here rages against the Bible. But the Bible only records the fact; and the Deist is perpetually meeting with similar things in his own book of nature. He sees what his Omnipotent Goodness does not interfere to prevent,—one suffering from the vileness of another. He sees the wife and children reduced to want, beggary, infamy, disease, death; by an idle, drunken, stealing, licentious husband and father.—This should be one of the greatest preventions of sin, that it always injures, not only ourselves, but others: and it would be so, if we had any ingenuous, noble, relative feeling. But what filial affection has that youth who can break a mother's heart, and bring down the gray hairs of a father with sorrow to the grave? Whatever be his politics, what real patriotism has he who endeavours to arm Providence against his country, and promotes "that sin which is a reproach to any people?" "I cannot exercise a better charity towards others," says Adam of Wintringham, "than by avoiding all sin myself."

As the wicked are "a curse" by injuriousness, so they are also by execration. How many suddenly curse their habitation! How are they cursed often by those who are ruined by their pride, luxury, and