THE CHURCH. "Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone."-Eph.ii.20. JANUARY, 1854. GOING HOME. BY THE REY. OCTAVIUS WINSLOW, D.D. "Ye are not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord your God giveth you."-Deut. xii. 9. And is it so, that at the close of this lone and weary pilgrimage there is a rest above? And that after this earthly, fleeting existence, there is an inheritance reserved? May I unhesitatingly believe this assurance, and hopefully clasp it to my heart? Then with what a firm tread and with what a buoyant spirit may I press my foot upon the mysterious threshold of the year now opening upon me-even as the morning's sun peers above the horizon, and as the early flower expands to the warm influence of its genial beams. Whether, like that sun, this new-born year shall in its course be wreathed with storm-clouds, or whether, like that opening floweret, its earthly loves, and joys, and hopes, shall pale, and droop, and die, I cannot tell, nor wish to know. Enough that God is my Father, my Sun, and Shield; that he will give grace and glory, and will withhold from me no good and needed thing. Enough that Christ is my Portion, my Advocate, my Friend, and that, whatever else may pass away, his sympathy will not cease, his sufficiency will not fail, nor his love die. Enough that the everlasting covenant is mine, and that that covenant, made with me, is ordered in all things and sure. Enough that heaven is my rest, that towards it I am journeying, and that I am one year nearer its blessed and endless enjoyment. Thus may each christian pilgrim commune with his own heart, while standing beneath the shadowy portal of another cycle of time. Ere yet we meet its new and sacred claims, its duties, its responsibilities, and its trials, it may be our wisdom to remember that we are "not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance, which the Lord our God giveth us." Our path, pointing homewards, lies across a long and dreary desert. We have as yet many a milestone to pass, many a stage to travel, many a foe to confront, many a battle to win. We cannot exult as those who put off the armour and wave the palm. And yet we are going home. Going home! what a soothing reflection! what an ecstatic prospect! The heart throbs quicker; the eye beams brighter; the spirit grows elastic: the whole soul uplifts its soaring pinion, eager for its flight, at the very thought of heaven. "I go to prepare a place for you," was one of the last and sweetest assurances that breathed from the lips of the departing Saviour; and though uttered eighteen hundred years ago, those words VOL. VIII. B come stealing upon the memory like the echoes of byegone music, thrilling the heart with holy and indescribable transport. Yes! he has passed within the veil as our Forerunner; he has prepared heaven for us, and, by his gentle, wise, and loving discipline, he is preparing us for heaven. Amidst the perpetually changing scenes of earth, it is refreshing to think of heaven as our certain home. "In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began." This is no quicksand basis for faith, no mirage of hope. Heaven is a promised "rest"-exquisitely expressive image!-and that promise is the word of Him who cannot lie. Nothing can surpass, nothing can compare with this. Human confidences the strong and beautiful-have bent and broken beneath us. Hopes-bright and winning-we too fondly fed, have, like evening clouds of summer, faded away, draping the landscape they had painted with a thousand variegated hues, in the sombre pall of night. But heaven is true; God has promised it, Christ has secured it, the Holy Ghost is its earnest, and the joys we now feel are its pledges and "first-fruits." Christian, consider this new epoch of time; unfold a new page of your yet unwritten history with the full, unwavering con. viction that God is faithful; that in all the negotiations, transactions, and events of the unknown future, in all the diversified and fluctuating phases of experience through which you may pass, it will be your mercy to do with Him of whom it is said, "It is impossible that God can lie." Oh, take this precious truth into your heart, and it will shed a warm sunlight over all the landscape of your yet shadowy existence. "He abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself." Receive the promise, and confide in the veracity of the Promiser, and he will make good to its utmost the word upon which he has caused you to hope. Standing yet within the solemn vestibule of this new and portentous year, could our fluttering hearts find repose in a more appropriate or sweeter truth than the divine faithfulness of Him "with whom there is no variableness, neither the shadow of a turning"? The home to which we aspire, and for which we pant, is not only a promised, it is also a perfect and permanent home. The mixed character of those seasons we now call repose, and the shifting places and changing dwellings we here call home, should perpetually remind us that we are not, as yet, come to the perfect rest and the permanent home of heaven. Most true, indeed, God is the believer's present home, and Jesus his present rest. Beneath the shadow of the cross, by the side of the mercyseat, within the pavilion of a Father's love, there is true mental repose, a real heart's ease, a peace that passeth all understanding, found even here, where all things else are fleeting as a cloud and unsubstantial as a dream. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." But it is to heaven we look for the soul's perfect and changeless happiness. With what imagery shall I portray it? How shall I describe it ? Think of all the ills of your present condition; not one exists in heaven! Bereaved one! death enters not, slays not, sunders not there. Sick one! disease pales not, enfeebles not, wastes not there. Afflicted one! sorrow chafes not, saddens not, shades not there. Oppressed one! cruelty injures not, wounds not, crushes not there. Forsaken one! inconstancy disappoints not, chills not, mocks not there. Penitent one! sin exists not, burdens not, imbitters not there. Weeping one! tears spring not, scald not, dim not there. "The former things are passed away." There rests not upon that smooth brow, there lingers not upon those serene features, a furrow, or line, or shade of former sadness, languor, or suffering; not a trace of wishes unfulfilled, of fond hopes blighted. The desert is passed, the ocean is crossed, the home is reached, and the soul finds itself in and the plenitude of bliss. heaven, where all is the perfection of purity Ages move on in endless succession, and still all is bright, new, and eternal. Oh, who would not live to win and enjoy a heaven so fair, so holy, and so changeless as this? He who has Christ in his heart enshrines there the inextinguishable, deathless hope of glory. It is a richly instructive and deeply sanctifying thought the futurity of the heavenly rest. When told that we are not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord our God giveth us, we are gently reminded that we have each one a niche in life to occupy, a sphere to fill, a mission to perform. The idea of personal responsibility, of individual influence, and of untiring action, instantly starts up before the mind. "Not yet in heaven-then for what am I here? Surely it is for an object in harmony with my intellectual and spiritual being, and worthy of Him who still detains me on earth. It must be that I have something to do or something to endure for Christ; an active or a passive part to fill. Lord, what wilt thou have me to do or suffer for thee ?" Oh, there is a fathomless depth of divine wisdom in the arrangement that keeps us so long out of heaven. The world needs us, and we need the world. It needs us to illumine and sanctify it; we need it as the field of our conflict, and as the school of our graces. We want the world, not as a hermit's cell, but as a vast theatre, where, before angels and men, our Christianity is developed in the achievements of prayer, in the triumphs of faith, in the labours of love, and in the endurance of suffering. Not yet at home-then we would remember that it is "through much tribulation we are to enter the kingdom." As a new period of time slowly rises from the depths of the unknown and mysterious future-its form half-shadowy, half-brightness, seeming to say,— "Cold is my greeting; but, when we part, Thou shalt find I have crept around thy heart: shrink we from its stern and solemn duties, its bosomed sorrows, its deep and impenetrable decrees? Why shrink we? Infinite resources unveil their treasures upon its threshold. Christ's atoning merits confront our vast demerit. Christ's boundless grace confronts our deep necessities. Christ's promised presence confronts our sad and gloomy loneliness. Jesus, thus filled with grace so overflowing, with love so tender, with sympathy so exquisite, with power so illimitable, with resources so boundless, with a nature so changeless, stands before us and says to each trembling heart, "Fear not!" We commence a new march under his convoy. We prepare for a new conflict with his armour. We renew our pilgrim age with fresh supplies of "angel's food," affording nourishment for the present, and pledges for the future. For that future, be not needlessly, unbelievingly anxious. It is all in God's hands. He would that you should live each day upon him as a little child-simple in your faith, unshaken in your confidence, clinging in your love. Let each morning's petition be ever linking it with the precious name of Jesus, that "name which is above every name"-"My Father, give me this day my daily bread." Then, oh yes, then, shall the promise be fulfilled-and its fulfil ment shall be the immediate answer to your prayer-"As thy days, so shall thy strength be." Leamington. THE YOUNG MAN OF THOUGHT. BY THE REV. A. M. STALKER. "I thought on my ways."-Psalm cxix. 50. This is a bright passage in the history of the Psalmist. It is so in the history of every pious young man; but who can tell what shall become of the youth who cannot, as to his own case, truthfully repeat the declaration? The ocean of human life has its rocks and its quicksands, its tempests and its pirates; and a mariner tossed in his little bark on mountain waves, while he himself is in a state of intoxication, does not present a more affecting spectacle, than a thoughtless youth, being borne further and further on the mighty main of solemn existence. May none of my young readers have, at last, to narrate the horrors of such a voyage! We may consider,— THE YOUNG MAN MUSING ON HIS NATURE AS A THINKING BEING. Then, if ever, he is conspicuous. His attitude is characteristic of his exercise, his whole aspect is suffused with meaning. The process going on within manifests itself on the brow, alternately placid and anxiously knit,-in the steady, almost moveless eye,-in the compressed lip,-in the soul transferred to the countenance. We feel as if in the presence of a being seldom met with, yet his human form throws over us, as we gaze, the spell of sympathy. His looks, his tones, his muttered phrases, make us fear to disturb him. The Divine oracle has addressed him, "Know thyself." He is rendering obedience, and it is the intelligence he is acquiring which imparts to him this air of eloquent, speechless earnestness. He finds the world without him in constant communication with the world within him. The senses are the avenues by which the former supplies the latter. Such importations he feels grow, and enlarge, and multiply, the longer they are retained, and the more cordially they are welcomed, for he is the subject of reflection as well as of sensation. "The inspiration of the Almighty hath given him understanding," and this "spirit within him" not merely raises him superior to "the horse and the mule," but plants him in a position only "a little lower than" that of "the angels." Such spirit, he concludes, was made to think, and though conscious that the sphere in his own bosom has been as certainly blighted by sin as the external world on which he looks every day, he cannot help conjecturing what splendours must have studded it prior to the fall. What beautiful, what pure, what glorious things must have been the first thoughts that interlaced the intellect of the sinless Adam! He considers them too Eden-like in their character for him to appreciate or even imagine. Nevertheless, though "the glory has departed," that on which it radiated remains, and the young man musing on his own nature says to himself, "I feel thinking is expected of me, and I cannot cease to think." It is so. Mind may be said to be in "perpetual motion." Its oscillations, its efforts, may vary in number, magnitude, and power, at different times, but it is questionable if at any period the thinking faculty is totally suspended. Be this as it may, no one, feeling he bas mind, will contend for the possibility of its being, during consciousness, unengaged. It must have an object on which to settle. That object may be unworthy of it, but the youth, analyzing his constitution as a thinking being, feels that were an intellectual void in his case to be realised, and consciousness yet remain, he must experience torture the most exquisite,-torture, compared with which bodily suffering, such as hunger or thirst, would be an absolute trifle. The power of thinking, therefore, stamps his existence with unutterable solemnity, and thrills him with the conviction that it had been better for him never to have possessed it, than to live only to abuse it, and to die with his spirit crimsoned in its own blood. Consider again, THE YOUNG MAN ADDRESSING HIMSELF TO THE EXERCISE OF THOUGHT. "I have an intelligent nature," he says, "and it must be regulated.' How does he proceed? He cherishes a deep sense of dependence on the Author of mind. "If He has spoken to the mind which He has formed, what has He said ?" This is the first enquiry. "Where shall I find His revelation? is the second; and having examined the volume that claims to be divine, he bows before the evidence that proves the Bible to be the revelation he is in quest of. It contains assurances of mercy to pardon, and of the Spirit's aid to direct and to purify. Help is needed, and here it is found. Thus encouraged, he strives to gain control over his thoughts. He soon discovers he has undertaken a task. His attention when fixed for a time on a particular theme becomes restive, and his thoughts diffuse themselves over a width of sphere that renders him fearful whether he shall ever be able to bring them into subjection. Nevertheless, again he makes the attempt; and instead of accounting for the difficulty he feels (as a youth once did) on the supposition of the greatness of his mind, he solves it by a reference to the feebleness of the government he exerts over it. But effort is repeated after effort. Every following endeavour becomes the easier; and at last he feels that habit has crowned him conqueror over the waywardness of his intellectual powers. The conquest is valuable; and daily he appears in the court of self-inspection that he may judge as to the manner in which, during the hours of the day, he has, as a thinking being, discharged his duties. "Do my actions betoken me rather a being of passion than of thought?" Again, he employs likely means to facilitate his acquisition of mental control. Such means are numerous; but it requires considerable self-denial to avail him, self of them in an age when what is called nourishment for the mind is served up with all that is luscious and sweet. He knows, however, that alway to diet his intellect on custards will be to weaken its powers and to vitiate its taste. He addresses himself to mental bracing. By the perusal of a closely thought and well-reasoned work, or by a determination to acquaint himself with the dead languages, or by an effort to familiarise himself with the ordinary and the higher departments of mathematics, or by an application to the study of purely mental science, he finds his faculties energised. The acquisition of knowledge is not so much his object as the infusion of vigour into his intellectual system. He is aware that knowledge is power; but he is equally sure that he will gain but little, and that little will not half bless him as it might, unless his mind is thoroughly disciplined, and unless that discipline issue, under aid divinely vouchsafed, in the increased muscularity of that within him which thinks. Once more, he desires to have always at hand a supply of materials for profitable thought. History's wondrous page, nature's marvellous treasures, the government divine of men and things, may all furnish fertile themes for vigorous thinking, inasmuch as the men,— "Whom nature's works can charm, with God himself But his thoughts are not expended exclusively on these mighty ranges of human contemplation. There is another still one equally important with any of them-one superior to each of them-one more momentous than them all,-"I thought on my ways." This leads us to speak of THE |