November 2

means. One is ready to envy a man who is disposed to do good, and finds himself in the possession of riches, power, authority—a palace!" Yet while some may be peculiarly useful, none are compelled to be useless. There is some beneficence within the reach of every individual, if he be willing to do it. It is with usefulness as it is with water; it is to be found everywhere, if people will dig enough. Let us seek the praise conferred upon Mary, "She hath done what she could."

But observe the remark of the sacred writer; "Nevertheless the people did sacrifice still in the high places, yet unto the Lord their God only." It is said indeed that they worshipped Jehovah only in them; but it was disobedience to the Divine appointment, it was will-worship, it was superstitious. And this no doubt he reproved and endeavoured to repress, but much of the evil he could not hinder. And here we perceive that his religion did not operate so extensively and powerfully as his former depravity had done. It is much easier to seduce than to reclaim, to corrupt than to convert.

And we see this in a very affecting instance. It was the case of his successor and son Amon. "He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, as did Manasseh his father: for Amon sacrificed unto all the carved images which Manasseh his father had made, and served them; and humbled not himself before the Lord, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself; but Amon trespassed more and more." To leave his kingdom and the reformation he had begun to a son he had depraved by his example, but could not reform by his piety; and when he saw or heard of his profligacy and impiety, to sigh and exclaim, "Ah! I taught him all this"—was enough to "bring down his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave!"

Be thankful if you were moral before you were pious; and above all, be grateful if you have been blessed with the grace of early godliness. From how many snares, evils, and pangs, have you been preserved! How pestilential have some been! "One sinner destroyeth much good." What injuries a life of twenty, of thirty years of wickedness, can produce! What miseries must some feel, when, though the riches of Divine mercy have pardoned and renewed them, they think of persons whom they drew aside, and encouraged and emboldened by their example and counsels. These above all things they should endeavour to restore. "But some of them are hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, and despise reproof. Others are removed to a distance, and we know not where to find them. Others are dead—what can we do here?" Nothing. But seek to be useful to others. And agonize with God, that as you have been a curse, so he would make you a blessing.

NOVEMBER 2.—"When I awake with thy likeness."—Psalms 17:15.

DAVID therefore expected to live after death, and he tells us not only that he should awake, but awake with God's likeness.

Does he refer to the state of the soul at death? or of the body at the resurrection? or to both? We love not to press a passage of Scripture beyond its proper bounds; neither would we stop short of them. Man is a complex being; and when the dust returns to the

earth whence it was, the spirit returns to God who gave it. The Apostle tells us that when the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness; and that the Spirit of Him that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken our mortal bodies. And Watts includes each of these effects in his fine versification.

At death the soul of the believer awakes with his likeness; and the resemblance which commenced in regeneration, and advanced in sanctification, is finished in glory: all the remains of sin being then done away, and nothing left but the image of God himself upon all the powers of the mind. What is the body now but a dormitory for the soul to sleep in, rather than a mansion for it to live in? What is our present state but a kind of night-scene? Much of our life now, in the view of angels, must be judged as vain and unmeaning as dreams, and will appear to ourselves hereafter like the vagaries of sleep. Nothing reviewed from eternity will be deemed solid and valuable but what has been connected with the service and enjoyment of God. To what slender dimensions then will the sum of human life be reduced! How few will appear our exercises of sense and reason. And how short our waking intervals! Natural men are entirely asleep as to the purposes of the Divine life—Thus indeed Christians cannot sleep as do others. Yet they, even they comparatively slumber. They regard not many things which would strike them if they were wide awake, as they ought to be. They are often drowsy and insensible; can hardly watch and keep their spiritual senses in exercise; and read, and hear, and pray, and meditate, hardly knowing or feeling what they do. It is therefore even to these the Apostle sounds the quickening call, "It is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is your salvation nearer than when you believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand." What a difference between their present and future experience! When they close their eyes in death they will awake and shake off every slumber; and all will be reality, perception, attention, energy, life. Now in the morning they wake and find themselves in the wilderness; then they will wake and find themselves in Canaan. Now they wake and find themselves among the wicked, who vex and defile them; then they will wake and find themselves with the spirits of just men made perfect, and the innumerable company of angels. Now they wake and find a law, that when they would do good evil is present with them; then they will wake and be presented faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.

But man, in his original state, was an embodied creature, and he must be embodied in his final condition. The intermediate and separate state, therefore, is necessarily an imperfect one: for the body, an essential part of human nature, is lying under the incapacities and dishonours of mortality. But this purchase of the Saviour's will be reclaimed: this temple of the Holy Ghost will be re-edified: this companion of the soul will share with it in the work and glories of heaven. And the sacred writers therefore, in referring to the future happiness of believers, commonly lead our views to this consummation. And death is expressed by sleep, peculiarly in reference to the body, and to intimate not only cessation from labour and the enjoyment of repose, but susceptibility of revival. At the resurrection, the body wakes. "Awake, and sing, ye that