by natural right to all-that His kingdom has neither laws nor ordinances, but that every dependent subject is in fact independent, and that such as are no subjects may become such in their own way, or without becoming such, draw for themselves from the resources of the government after the imagination of their own hearts!

Behold several parallel cases. You are rich. A man comes to you who is poor, and in want, and begs of you one hundred dollars. You offer him your check on a bank, signed by yourself, for that amount. He refuses to accept it in that way. He now goes and draws up an order for the money, signed by himself! Or having declined your permission and grant, he endeavors by some certificate, legal in form, secretly to abstract it from your resources.

Take another case. A serious Canaanite, living on the borders of the Jewish nation, in frequent intercourse with the Jews, learns something of God's grace to Israel, and is at length moved by a desire after it, feeling his need of just such salvation. He is told that it is freely offered and given to all who will join themselves to the Lord and his people in the covenant of circumcision. He turns away from such offer. He attempts to offer himself to the God of Israel in some secret way; or he goes into some grove, builds an altar, offers on it a vulture and a jackal, and in connection with it dedicates himself to the God of Israel! He imagines that will do believes it is a reasonable service-cannot see why it should not be just as good as the other-does it all sincerely and with the best intentions-feels comfortable; and in his own stubborn pride and presumption, supposes that he has now brought the Lord to his own terms!

Now take the case in hand. A person in a Christian land has lived in a kind of careless worldliness. He has some vague ideas of Christianity, which have been incidentally caught up from his neighbors, from papers and books, and from an occasional sermon or funeral address, and also from now and then looking into the Bible. He knows, perhaps, many things about Christianity, but nothing truly and connectedly. Though he may have heard incidentally of every doctrine, duty, and privilege of religion, he knows less of it as a glorious system of salvation than the man who has seen paint, pencil, brush, and canvass, knows of the sublime paintings of the divine Raphael or Michael Angelo. Yea, he may be intelligent in many things, but he has never earnestly sought to know the divine system of grace and salvation. What then, does he know?

But now, he has been somewhat impressed. He feels the need of salvation. As he has been accustomed to help himself, and depend on his own wisdom, and pursue his own way in other matters, he feels disposed to do so in this; and straightway he goes about to establish a righteousness of his own, in his own way, and by means of his own devising. Getting along poorly, he is often discouraged. At length he is told that God offers to him all he desires and needs in His covenant of mercy and grace. He is told, that by Baptism he may be admitted into the kingdom of grace, where he shall receive the remission of sin, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and all that is promised, and all that is needed-that through His Holy Supper, Christ will nourish him in the life of grace; and that by faith he may thus appropriate to himself all that he needs-that all this is in fact promised, signed, and sealed to him of God in this covenant sacramental act, of which he has only to accept.

Glorious offer! But it does not please him-does not at all accord with his views those views which he got in his own way, without any trouble to himself, and which he now values above all that God's word, God's Church, or God's ministers can teach him. Vague ideas, which he has caught on the wing, confused echoes, from the surrounding air, are to him a greater and surer word of God than any that ever prophets, apostles, fathers, confessors, martyrs, and eminent saints lived to illustrate and died to confirm !

He turns away. He thinks within himself: "I have my own Bible and can read for myself;" and he is careful to read and ponder all, except its uncompromising demands of submission to God's own covenant ordinances. He thinks within himself, "I can pray for myself;" and he does pray for every thing, except for grace and humility to submit to, and accept of, God's own order of salvation.

When such views are held, and such a course of conduct is pursued, where is God's honor? and where His instituted order of grace?

What is worse, where is the test of man's submission to God. What is submission? To do what seems to me right and necessary, or to do what God commands? Is the test of obedience my own judgment, my own feelings and pleasure, or is it submission to a divine order and ordinance? To set these aside, instead of being submission, is positive, daring rebellion. If God wishes me to become His by the way of the covenant, and requires me to accept its sign as the warrant of, and the way to, His grace, and I, neglecting this, seek His favor in some other way, though I may be willing, after having found His favor in my own way, to submit to the covenant act as a matter of form, am I not a rebel?

When I despise His mercy, offered in his own way, I can in nothing be approved of Him. Having turned away from His mercy, His justice will slay me.

When God told Elijah to do one thing, he fled and did another. The word of the Lord followed him and asked, "What dost thou here, Elijah ?” He pleaded zeal for the Lord! "I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts." Zeal for the Lord in shrinking from duty! in disobedience and unfaithfulness!

So when I submit not to His order, no difference where his searching word may find me-at my Bible, at my prayers, or any where working out a righteousness of my own, in my own way, He will say, "What dost thou here?" "Who hath required this at your hands?"

Where is the test of the true worship of God, if the covenant test be set aside? If reconciliation to His favor is not to be secured in His way, by submission to His covenant test, but is to be left to man's endeavors and judgment, then what curb is there to the vain imaginations of men? On what principle then shall worship stand? Shall every man make his own test? Is not this the very ground from which all heathen religions have sprung, and on which all heathen worship rests?

What is heathenism but a departure from the covenant. Noah and his sons were all pious and clave to God. There were then no heathen in the world. But in time, some of their descendants took their own way, broke away from the divine order, and worshipped as they thought best! In a few graphic words the holy apostle Paul gives the origin and downward history of heathenism. "Because that when they knew God, they glorified

Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen."

The fact that, throughout the Old Testament times, the covenant preserved the true religion against being swallowed up by surrounding heathenism, is as clear as the records of history can make it. That in Christian ages the covenant was the only banner under which the cross prevailed over paganism, and extended the power and light of Christianity, is equally clear. The noble and innumerable company of martyrs, confessors and saints, who during 1800 years have stood in the ranks and done glorious service for Christ, for the Church, and for the world, all wore the badge of the covenant. This was the strength of their position-this made them feel in every trial that God stood behind them as their stayby this sign they conquered their enemies and overcame the world.

If now, in our age, the tendency, fearfully apparent and strong, towards practical heathenism is to be checked, it must be done by calling back the minds and hearts of men to the strongholds of the covenant. Parents must see why their grown children are not His. The sacrament that begins to redeem in infancy must be called to its legitimate honor. Individual fancies must give way to faith in the virtue of God's covenant acts. Men must be taught that to come to Christ requires not a mere feeling, but an act of surrender. Instead of seeking Christ in the world they must seek him in the Church, and instead of seeking to make covenants of their own, they must humbly accept that which is made, and is confirmed by the oath of God, and sealed by the blood of Christ.

May God speedily arise as in the days of old, and bring forth salvation out of Zion, that the voice of joy and rejoicing may be heard in the tabernacles of the righteous.

THE GREAT CHANGE.-Once it was the dark carbon that kindled our fires, and yet, through some unknown laws of God, the darkest has become the most brilliant. Is there any change like this? Yes, a far nobler. See that small worm feeding on the coarsest food. We shrink from its touch, but it becomes the butterfly which lives in a higher world, sips from the delicate flower, and charms us by its beauteous colors. But mark a change far greater-see the sensual and worldly becoming pure and refined-the child of Satan the child of God. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!" This is a change which all others typify, and before which the diamond fades-sins like scarlet, white as snow; red like crimson, pure as wool.

THE BURIAL OF JESUS.

BY THE EDITOR.

All four Evangelists make record of the burial of Jesus. (Matt. xxvii., 57-60. Mark xiv., 42-46. Luke xxiii., 50-56. John xix.,38—42.) This may show the importance attached to it by them.

For

There was a Providence presided over the burial of Christ. though it was ordinarily regarded as a sacred and pious duty to bury the dead, yet those who died on the cross were, according to Roman law, not allowed burial, but their bodies were directed to be exposed to the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field (Pearson, p. 330), or at least to remain exposed to the wasting influences of wind and weather. "A guard was usually set about them, lest any pitying hand should take the body from the accursed tree, and cover it with earth." (Idem, 331.) We find that true to this Roman regulation there was a centurion, and others with him, "watching Jesus." (Matt. xxvii., 54.)

In spite of this law, Jesus was buried. Though the Roman law, as we have seen, forbade burial, yet it allowed the magistrate the privilege to permit it. Pilate, who believed Him innocent, and yet crucified Him because the Jews requested it, also allowed Him burial when it was requested of him. He was also probably influenced in giving this permission by the fact that the Jews wished the body removed from the cross before the Sabbath day, from considerations of ceremonial cleanness. (Luke xix. 31.) Whatever may have been the motive in allowing it, the providence of God fulfilled both type and prophecy in His burial. For that He should be buried was typically represented (Matt. xii., 40) and prophetically foretold. (Ps. xvi., 9, 10.)

The Heidelberg Catechism gives one specific lesson for His burial. He was buried "To show thereby that he was really dead." There is a strong proof that he was really dead in the fact that Pilate allowed Him to be buried. When Joseph of Arimathea, in the evening, asked for the body, Pilate was astonished that He should already be dead. Hence he quite satisfied himself on that point by "calling unto him the centurion," and asking him "whether He had been any while dead. And when he knew

(it) of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph." (Mark xv., 43-45.) That His enemies gave His body for burial, and that His friends actually buried it, may be regarded as a double proof "that He was really dead."

His burial also symbolizes the going down into death, and the coming up into life of all who are united with Christ. (Col. ii., 12. Rom. vi., 4.) It is thus a constant lesson, and a striking illustration of the true way of life, which leads through death to life.

His burial furnishes a sacred and touching lesson on the decencies and proprieties of Christian burial. (Acts v., 6; viii., 2; ix., 37.) "Before,

and at our Saviour's time, the Greeks did much, the Romans more, use the burning of the bodies of the dead, and preserved only their ashes in their urns; but when Christianity began to increase, the funeral flames did cease, and after a few emperors had received baptism, there was not a body burnt in all the Roman empire. For the Christians wholly abstained from consuming the dead bodies with fire, and followed the example of our Saviour's funeral." (Pearson, 338.)

The repose of Christ in the tomb has sanctified the graves of the saints. The grave is a different spot now from what it would have been, if the sacred body of Jesus had never lain there.

The graves of all His saints He blessed,
When in the grave He lay.

As His death on the cross made that instrument of horror and symbol of shame a standard of glory and the honored badge of Christianity, so His rest in the grave has forever made it for every Christian a sacred bed of repose.

It is a beautiful fact that He was buried in a garden-amid a scene of life and beauty. All the wrath and power of His enemies were not able to doom the sacred body of our Lord to the common soil of the Potter's field.

In short, there is a great combination of beauties, decencies, and proprieties clustering around our Saviour's burial, which are the more wonderful as the opposite was evidently intended, and in the circumstances of His death most likely, to occur. Think of the dignity of the person who begged His body for burial, Joseph of Arimathea, an honorable counsellor, a rich man, and, what is still better, a man just and good, who waited for the kingdom of God; of Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrim, who also once came to Him by night, to ask Him concerning the mysteries of redemption, and who now came with spices for His embalming, taking the sacred body under his care, and winding it in linen clothes with the spices; of the Marys who went about in sacred and carnest silence on the same beautiful errand; of the new sepulchre, in which no one had ever been laid, in the midst of the garden-in which at that springing season of the year, the young vigor of vegetable life was silently uttering the hopeful prophecy that His burial there should be unto resurrection and life. What a combination of affectionate interest, what a bosom of beautiful love, is that hallowing the sacred quietude which reigns around the grave of this glorious Prince of life and love! And all this comes into the charming picture of our faith, when, in the language of the creed, we devoutly confess that He was BURIED.

MELLOW AGE. "I love to look back upon the past. Memory lives there, and in treasuring up what we have acquired or observed, it expatiates upon the resources of Infinite Goodness. I love, too, to look forward to the future. Faith lives there, and in her brightest anticipations sees Him whose presence and love are the joy of earth and time, and also the everlasting joy of heaven and eternity. It is a delightful thought that God is there God, our own God. There are sombre hues in the past; but there is radiance even in the darkest cloud."-Dr. Spring's “Life and Times."