PLAYING WITH FIRE.

Perhaps we may discover that some very respectable people are often very destructive incendiaries. If I invite a group of young men in my house to surround a card table, I may simply design to furnish them an hour's amusement. But perhaps a lust for gambling may be latent in some young man's breast, and I may quicken it into life by my offer of a temptation. There is a fire in that pack of cards! And I deliberately place that fire amid the inflammable passions of that youthful heart. On me rests the consequences of the act, as well as upon him I lead into temptation. The motive does not alter the result by one iota.

"For evil is wrought by want of thought,

As well as by want of heart."

A TOTAL ECLIPSE.

At four o'clock we stood in the door-yard of my friend, with smoked glass in hand; and as one of us was watching the blazing sun, he exclaimed, "There she comes!" When a boy I had read of this very eclipse, and of the moment when it should begin. It did begin at the precise second predicted forty years ago! Such is the punctuality of the truth-keeping God. And will he not be equally faithful in keeping his spiritual promises? "Wherefore dost thou doubt?" The shadow came over the sun gradually-even as I have seen the shadow of a growing sin leap over a bright Christian character. The landscape around us began to look yellowish and ghastly. The grass seemed to be getting sick. Over the trees played a weird, lurid light, and every leaf hung perfectly motionless. "Oh! see how queer those flowers look! And those currant bushes! It looks as if nature was getting the jaundice!" An odd thought; and yet I do not know of any other idea that would more truly describe nature's ghastly hue. "TOTAL!" we all exclaimed together. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, came down an awful shadow as of a black wing, filling the whole heavens. It was ineffably frightful. Coleridge's lines flashed into my mind in a moment:

"The sun's rim dips: the stars rush out;
With one stride comes the dark."

To the north the horizon was dyed with a rich orange hue. But above us and around us the air seemed to be filled with fine black particles. It was so dark that I could not recognise a countenance a hundred yards off; and yet it was not the darkness of an ordinary evening. It was the darkness of death! Above a group of trees before us a flock of birds flew wildly to and fro, as if panicstricken. A couple of cows went lowing past the gate-the only sound in the awful stillness. Just over the fence, a half-dozen chickens had composed themselves to roost in a cherry tree. A dozen stars were twinkling in various parts of the heavens. The air was still as midnight. At two minutes

after five, as we stood gazing on the black orb, with its magnificent corona, a flash of golden light burst forth from the northern limb. It was the most thrilling instant I ever knew, and the most splendid spectacle I ever witnessed. As if God said, "Let there be light!" a sheaf of dazzling rays burst forth in a twinkling! The whole sky lightened instantaneously. Methought that "the sons of God" must have seen something like this when on Creation's morn the first flood of radiance broke on black chaos at the almighty Voice. He spake and it was done! "THOU makest darkness, and it is night!" "THOU coverest thyself with light as with a garment!"-Heart Life.

CONTENTMENT.

Look at your mercies with both eyes; and at your troubles and trials with only half an eye. Study contentment. In these days of inordinate greed and self-indulgence, keep down the accursed spirit of grasping. What they don't have makes thousands wretched. Keep at some work of usefulness.

Work for Christ brings heart-health. Keep your heart's window always open towards heaven. Let the blessed light of Jesus' countenance shine in. It will turn tears into rainbows.-Heart Culture.

QUIETNESS BEFORE GOD.

Quietness under God's discipline is simply the willingness to let God have his own way. It is ready to go where he sends us, to bear what he lays upon us, to sit still just where he places us. Why should we try to get away from his blessed discipline? When you would fill a vessel with water from a hydrant or a rain spout, you do not remove the vessel while the stream is pouring in. It is filled by sitting still. And if God's storms are filling your heart with heaven-descended graces, why should you seek to move away from beneath its blessed outpour? If God is refining your heart, why seek to be taken out of the furnace. We have seldom met with a finer illustration of this grace than was presented by an aged lady, who after a busy life of doing good, was at length laid upon her bed, pain-worn and helpless. A good minister went to see her, and asked if, after her active habits, she did not find her confinement hard to bear. "No sir," said she; "not at all. When 1 was well, I used to hear the Lord say, day by day, Betty, do this, and do that,' and I used to do it as well as I could. But now I hear him say, 'Betty, lie still and cough.' Which of these two acts of obedience was the more difficult to perform, we leave our readers to testify from their own experience.-The Empty Crib.

THE DEATH OF GEORGIE.

He looked up to his mother, and his nurse Nanie, and whispered "Does Jesus love me? What will Jesus say to me when he sees me ?" We flattered ourselves with the vain hope that he might survive until the next day, and accordingly I left him, to fulfil a most important pulpit engagement. The little fellow kissed his hand to me, and his feeble " Good-bye!" were about the last words that ever fell from his lips. The agonising convulsions presently came on; and soon after sunset, our glorious boy lay cold and silent on his pillow. Our Sabbath evening was his bright and endless Sabbath morn.-Ibid.

UN

Unbelief.

[NBELIEF is of various kinds. It is also bad, worse, or worst, according to the motive from which it springs.

The worst kind of unbelief is that which grows out of a bad life. There are men who, having in youth broken through all restraint, followed their evil passions, become mixed up and enamoured with worldly pursuits, blunted all their finer feelings, and in general rendered themselves hard, callous, brutish, and reckless, find it most convenient to become sceptics. Nothing is more natural. If I have defied the laws of God all my life, and as a consequence, have laid myself open to just punishment, how soothing it will be if I can persuade myself that there will be no punishment. If I have allowed my body to become the abode of all that is bad, and shut out from my nature all that would make me fit for heaven-how consoling if I can persuade myself that there is no heaven!

What a fool a wicked ool is! With what calmness does he shut his eyes to the inevitable! The wild ostrich of the desert, when hunted, is said to hide her head in a bush or in the sand, and shutting out from her view her pursuer she imagines that because she can't see him he can't see her. She could do no better thing to ensure her destruction! When punishment is dogging the steps of the sinner, hanging over him, ready to drop upon and crush him, will

it make any difference whether he shut his eyes to it or no? O misguided man, hast thou brought thyself to a state of comfortable unbelief? Do warning admonitions fall upon thee like hail upon a steel roof? Then, while it is not mine to say thou hast sinned away thy day of grace, yet reason and revelalation alike declare that there is not a more dangerous and awful condition than thine. Thou hast been for years shutting out of thy mind God and his lawpersistently hast thou kept the door closed and barred; how hard will it be for them now to enter. Here are several rooms where machinery is fitted up: but the uppermost room in which the finest and most delicate works are placed is closed, the bands connecting the works with the engine are broken, the dust and damp have accumulated, rust and decay have for years been clogging up the wheels, shafts, and spindles. Go up into that room, try to start the machinery. Can you? No! It is out of gear, it is rusted up, it is useless. What a trouble it would be to make that machinery go. How little of good is left in it. Oh, how hard for an old sinner to turn to God; he says, "Let me alone in my sleep-let me alone in my rust; don't, don't stir me. I can't bear it. This ease is so comfortable." The fool says in his heart there is no God; because he has become corrupt and abominable in his doings, and because for so long a time "God has not been in all his thoughts." Were it not that "nothing is too hard for the Lord," we might be disposed to say of such a one, "Let him alone, don't waste time upon him-it is quite useless, he is lost!" Yet the Lord is long-suffering, and full of compassion, and it may be, if the sinner, even this sinner cry, the Lord will have mercy upon him. Let him cry mightily unto God to help him, for assuredly he cannot help himself.

The second class of unbelievers is not much better than the first, though perhaps they are more likely to recover from the disease, seeing they generally have youth on their side. I refer to those who become doubters from vanity and pride of intellect.

We reckon ourselves a wise and enlightened generation, and our enlightenment takes the special form of going down and meddling with (or "muddling" with) foundation truths. Literary and debating societies abound, and young men of magnificent intellects having sharpened their wits on the grindstones of the Philistines (without, however, having asked counsel of the Lord), try their keen-edged logic on all that past generations have venerated. These young Iconoclasts having cut (not their wisdom teeth but) the cords of faith, (beg pardon, credulity), rejoice in, nay, wallow in perfect freedom of thought. "Those old fogies, our forefathers," say they, "what duffers they were-how charmingly simple in their ignorance. Groaning and droning over their prayers and their psalms, and never daring to open any book but that old-fashioned Bible. Well, well, we've got past that, one book is as good as another, and the man who makes himself acquainted with all literary productions, gets a glorious expansion of intellect which emancipates him from the thraldom and bigotry of a narrow-minded religion. With what docile gullibility have past generations swallowed the notion of a God, and all the absurdities and old wives' fables that follow, when a little common sense would have prevented such moonshine being credited. Who ever saw this so-called God, who ever knew anybody that did see him—and what need is there of a God? Does not science prove that all things have been evolved, by a system of laws operating in the ages, and by the affinities of particles and natural selections, producing the various forms of life we see. Away, then, with these absurd and- -"

Hold, friend! not so fast, wait a bit, let me speak. You love logic I see. Well, come with me. Let us travel in imagination across the ocean; here we are in America. Now we will dive into the vast forests, and go where man has never trod before. On we plod for days and weeks. This will do; let us stop at the foot of this giant tree. How solitary is all around. We are surely the first human beings that have ever visited here. But you, being the sharper of he two, reply, "Are we, though-what's this?" and, stooping down, pick up couple of rails fastened together by a rusty nail. "You are mistaken, we

are not the first visitors to this spot; look at this." "Well," I reply, "what of that?" "Why, that could not get there of itself; somebody must have put it there." "How do you know; did you see that somebody?" No." "Do you know anybody who saw him?" "No, but my own sense tells me that two pieces of wood nailed crosswise could not get there of themselves." "Why not, might it not have happened somehow?" "How happened?" "Why, by the law of affinity, by natural selection-wood to wood you know." "Now you're trying to gull me. Could two pieces of wood fasten themselves together by a nail; besides, how could the nail make itself? Stupid! I think you must be cracked, or else the wood is akin to your head! Don't you see there's design, contrivance, mechanism; and how could that happen without a designer and worker to execute it? It's against all common sense to suppose it possible for those two rails either to put themselves together so, or to get there without some one having brought them; therefore I conclude, and I think these rails demonstrate to an absolute certainty, that somebody has been here before us." Right, friend; you've hit the nail on the head this time. Now, look at this tree. Observe its massive trunk, admirably adapted for holding its great boughs; see how its gnarled roots strike all ways into the ground, that it may be firmly held against the blast. Yet that is but one thing; the roots perform another function; through their many thousand mouths they take from the soil innumerable atoms, which even now are marching in wonderful regularity up the great trunk, and each one will find its way to the exact spot designed for it for the building up of the tree. That which is for making bark will not go to leaf-that which is for branch will not by mistake go to blossom, but every single particle will traverse its intended course, and rest in the exact spot which it is best adapted to fill. Is there no design here, no contrivance, no skill?” "Yes," you reply, "but this is only development. This is a gradual process of uniting particle to particle, according to a law of natural selection, as I said, but the other operation was different; in that there were existing substances interfered with and fastened together by a third in an unnatural way."

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Granted; but, wherein is the difference? Here was a man who took materials already in existence, and put them together, fastening them by a piece of iron, which also pre-existed, and the result you take to be proof of skill and design. Supposing the man had made the nail and the wood out of nothing, would not that be evidence of still greater skill and more wonderful design; or, supposing he had power to set in operation certain existing forces by which he developed the wood and iron gradually from nothing, would not that be yet more marvellous? and yet, further, imagine that he had created the forces by which he developed the wood and iron, would not that be the most wonderful of all? Do you know of any man who can perform such wonders? Are they not above man's power altogether? Has not some one, some wonderful One then been at work? Will you tell me that all this has happened somehow-by a power which made itself-according to laws, which laws made themselves. You could not swallow my suggestion about the two rails, and yet you are rather proud of your own nonsense about this great tree-nay, the whole forest, and the world itself. Verily, the gullibility of Atheism is great. Talk about the credulity of Christians! We do believe in a few marvels, and our swallow may be somewhat large, but never was the most capacious Christian gullet guilty of the gullibility of the Atheist. Here is a bolus for you:-"Everything we see and everything we don't see, this great world and all the other worlds there may be, made themselves, out of particles, by a system of laws, and the particles and laws made themselves-out of nothing!" Behold the reductio ad absurdum of Atheistic logic!

Liverpool.

A. DEACON.

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