messenger arrived, who had traversed an eight hours' walk, bringing a dollar which some one was owing to Fresenius. This dollar rejoiced mother and son more than if they had received a large capital, they considering it a great memorial coin of the divine help received.

'Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.'-REV. ii. 10.

THE daughter of a distinguished officer of the Emperor of Morocco had a pious Christian female slave. Her deep piety made such an impression on her heart that she requested her to instruct her in the Christian religion. She soon found joy and peace in believing in Christ, which she openly confessed, though aware of what a cruel death awaited every apostate from Islamism. Her father and relatives laboured in vain to undermine her faith. Neither good words nor bad, nor the representations of the terrible sufferings she would have to endure, could diminish her love to Christ, with whom all these trials tended to unite her still closer. The emperor, hearing of these facts, sent for her and asked her whether she was a Christian? She answered in the affirmative,

adding that by the help of God she intended to remain a Christian all her life-time. Struck by this decided answer, the Sultan tried to frighten her by threatening her with death. 'I do not dread death,' she replied, and will most cheerfully suffer it for my Lord Jesus' sake. The whole world could not devise a torture so dreadful as to be able to separate me from Him?' Thereupon she was delivered over to the judge, who pronounced her worthy of death. The Sultan now made her great promises if she would recant, offering her as a husband the highest man in the realm next to himself. But in vain; she replied with firm assurance, 'The whole world is much too poor to make me sell Christ, my only comfort and joy. I greatly prefer a happy death to an unhappy marriage. I am but too well aware that the Mohammedan faith is all false, and with my whole heart am I willing to lose my life out of love to Him who died for me?' Sentence of death was then pronounced upon her, and immediately carried out. Calmly she submitted her head to the axe of the executioner.

-The Moravian.

T

BIBLE THOUGHTS.

BY THE EDITOR. ROM. ii. 11.

HIS cannot mean that God makes no difference between man and man. He does make a difference, and not one, but many. Our world is a world of differences; nor would it be the fair, orderly, and goodly world it is were it not for these. Heights, depths, colours, mountain, valley, rock, sea, forest, stream, sun, moon, and stars, one star differing from another star in glory,'—these are some of the material or physical differences that make our world what it is. Then in man there is race, nation, colour, gifts of body and mind, riches and poverty, fame and obscurity, ranks, degrees, circumstances, sorrows, joys, health, sickness, these in themselves constitute a vast variety, and then they subdivide themselves into minor varieties, which increase, ad infinitum, the differences between man. God has given to every man something of His own, in respect of mind, body, parentage, possessions, gifts, feelings, country, age, health, constitution, which belongs to no other. Thus in many respects He does make a difference between man and man.

Nor can this mean that IIe treats men at random, without reason or plan, irrespective of character, or doings, or believings, as if His dealings were all chance dealings, blind and | arbitrary. No. His treatment of His creatures is sovereign, for He is God, but they are not unreasonable; nay, they are most just, wise, and reasonable, infinitely so.

But let us consider what the Apostle means by saying that God is no respecter of persons. It means two things:

1. That God has no respect to the outward appearance or circumstances of a man in dealing with him. God takes him for what he is, not for what he seems. The word translated 'person' means mask, or face-covering; that which disguises a man, and makes him look different from what he is. God regardeth not the person or appearance of a man. To God the man is just what he is, exactly, and neither more or less. False pretences or disguises are vain. The crown of the king is nothing to Him; the gems of the wealthy add nothing to the man's acceptance; the power of the statesman does not overawe the Judge of all; the Briton is not favoured because he is such, nor the Chinese disfavoured because he is such. In regard to all these externalisms or shows or masks, there is no respect of persons with God.

2. That in regard to justice and grace, God does not follow man's estimates at all, either outward or inward. God has His own standard, His own estimate, His own way of procedure in treating the sinner, whether for condemnation or acceptance. The usual elements which decide man's judgment have no place in God's.

(1.) God's estimate or rule in regard to justice is, that the doers of the law, the whole law, the unmodified law, shall live by it. So that if any man, whoever he be, Jew or Gentile, Briton or African, can come to God and show that he has kept the whole law, he shall be accepted, without any abatement made in consideration of outward circumstances, whether national or personal.

(2.) God's estimate or rule in regard to grace is, that any man, whoever he be, who will consent to be indebted to the Son of God and His work for acceptance, shall be accepted. This is the way in which grace shows itself to be no respecter of persons. He that has a personal claim shall have that claim fairly considered and weighed; he that has none, but is willing to take instead the claim of another, even of Christ, shall be received according to that divine claim, whatever he may be, or may have been in respect of sin or demerit, or nation, or intellect, or circumstances. The Apostle's object is to declare these three things:

1. God's purpose of dealing with the sons of теп. He is not going to let them alone, nor to allow them to have their own way.

2. God's plan of dealing with them. He does so as God, sovereign and righteous, yet gracious. Ile will be fair and reasonable in all His deal

He will not respect men's persons, whether high or low.

3. His willingness to receive any. He has provided a method of reception, and He invites them. He is willing, infinitely willing, to receive any one of Adam's sons and daughters, whoever or whatever he may be.

OOKING into the text, that we may more completely discover its meaning, we find that it sets before

us:

1. The severity of the trials through which Christians may be called to pass. It is a trial by fire. To slight sorrow, to count it a common thing, to affect a lofty independence of it, to speak of it as if you thought it nothing, is no victory of heroism, no sign of high religious life. It rather suggests the suspicion that you know no real sorrow, or that you feel no real resignation, or that the sorrows you speak of are not your own, but only those of other men. Another man's burden may be light to you, but it is not light to him who bears it. If in time it should seem light to him through the action of certain countervailing thoughts, and small when weighed in the balance with eternal things, it is neither light nor small in itself; and those who are upon the whole most wondrously sustained, have moments of crushing distress, when they are conscious of only just enough help from heaven to keep them from utterly, and for ever, giving way beneath the weight of the cross they carry. I fear that we sometimes sing of 'sweet affliction' without weighing what we mean. The metaphors employed by divine penmen to picture trial, show that, in the estimation of Him who knows our frame, no true trial is easy to endure. One of the most frequent of these metaphors is now before us. Sentimentalists may call trial by some gentle name. God calls it fire. Fire is pain; fire is power; fire is that in which nothing without a miracle can live. Before its raging strength we cower in terrified weakness; and when stung but by a spark of fire, we start in agony. It is the symbol of all that our nature most shrinks from, yet it is the symbol of what our nature must pass through. Be sure of this,-every affliction that really serves the purposes of trial feels to the soul like fire. Perhaps a mere trifle may have set it alight; perhaps, whatever may be inwardly working, nothing is outwardly seen. The cause of

From Affliction; or, the Refiner watching the Crucible.' By the Rev. C. STANFORD. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

| trouble may be only some common-place question about money, but it is wearing out your soul like a fire; or it may be only the chronic ill-temper of some member of your family, but it has set smouldering round your heart a still, slow fire; or it may be only a random word from a child, but that random word has struck you through with fire; or it may be only a line traced with a pen, as, for instance, when a person hands you in silence a telegraphic message; you glance at it, and in a moment your soul is filled with fire, keen, sharp, alive, devouring; or it may be only a whispered secret affecting your friend that touches your ear, and suddenly a fire flames up. Sometimes words of slander set the soul in a blaze; sometimes the darts of the wicked one, and sometimes all the calamities of life seem to rush and strike in one burning storm, tearing up your heart and melting it, as fierce fires break up the silver, and melt it into a scintillating stream.

He alone appoints it. The will of no other being can make you suffer trial at a time when He has ordained that you shall not suffer it. Vain was it for the king of Babylon to command a furnace to be heated to sevenfold fury, and then to see the three confessors flung bound and helpless in the midst of it, for it was not the will of their Lord that they should suffer thus, or suffer then. The flames played harmlessly over them. They trod the floor of white fire as if their feet but dipped in dewy grass. As if the burning air had been tempered into golden sunlight, they rejoiced in it; and no place where honeysuckles wave and cool breezes blow, could be so refreshing to us as was the furnace itself to them, for God was there,-there by His Spirit, there by His wonder-working power, there to say to the death-forces that stormed around them, 'Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.' Just the same as ever, He reigns the only Lord of His people's trials, and no adverse power can send them without His permissive will.

He alone effects it. Affliction may be the fire, but Christ is the Refiner. Whatever in

25.-34.

strument may cause the nerves to agonise and the heart to grieve, the Lord himself holds it. The tool may be malignity, but the worker is love. We may be in the hand of our enemy, but the enemy himself is in the hand of God. That which aims to destroy, is used as the unconscious medium of serving the purpose of that which designs to bless.

6

He is present all through the operation of the trial. As much as the act of refining silver implies the presence of the refiner, the affliction of a Christian implies the presence of Christ. The process could not be carried on without Him. When I enter the chamber of such a patient, besides the mortal companion, my faith sees One like unto the Son of man.' Shadowy conceptions of Him who is invisible condense around the recollected facts of our Saviour's human life; and I feel that sure as in the days of His flesh He was present with Peter, James, or John, He is now with my brother. I dwell upon the thought, until the thought awes, yet delights me, and I can speak to Christ almost as if I saw Him. He is almost visible, almost audible; and the doctrine of the Incarnation helps me, as it was intended to help me, to think, feel, and pray my way into the presence of God. God is in Christ, and Christ is in this room. There He is. There, by the side of His afflicted disciple, He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver. There He is, 'a very present help in time of trouble.' Very present; closer than close, nearer than near; making him who is sorely tried a wonder to himself and a wonder to me. When he comes into the light of the living again, he will look back upon this day's experience with surprise, and say, 'I never could have lived through it if Christ had not been with me.' There He is, to comfort with assurances of Divine sympathy. No visible friend, however loving, who sits by that poor man, holding his hot hand, or fanning his fevered brow, can even faintly understand the gentle tenderness of the unseen Saviour's heart, for it is infinite. The querulousness, the doubt, the infirmity of that poor child of mortality 'might wear out his mother,' but it will not tire Jesus. Jesus has already suffered life for him, suffered death for him, suffered for him beyond our power of conception, and He will not leave him now. There He is, ready to take him into His confidence, to tell him secrets, and to make hidden meanings sparkle out from lines in his Bible that before seemed blank and unappealing. Like a refiner by the crucible, overseeing that the fire be not too fierce or too slack, the trial not too long or too short; marking every change, ruling every particular, that nothing shall be left to chance, nothing to forgetfulness; ready to stop the

works in a moment, when the right moment comes; only waiting to see the scum float away, the flickering wave of vapour go out, and his own face mirrored in the clear, translucent, liquid silver: so into the troubled heart does Jesus look, and by it wait with the patience of infinite love, until His own reflected image in it shows that the process is complete, and that the trouble for a time may cease.*

3. The utility of the trial.

It is a sign of preciousness. You never try that which is unquestionably worthless. Do you cast a stone into the crucible? Do you winnow chaff? Do you prune a bramble? Do you plough a rock? Do you put a cinder to the friction of a lapidary's wheel? It would only be a waste of thought to show that the trial of a soul is a sign of something within that soul that is 'precious in the sight of the Lord.' Satan is never tried; sin is never tried. The Refiner never expends His skill and love in trying what is evil, and only evil, and that continually.' While He is subjecting dross to the high heat of adversity, it is only because, mixed with it, Ile detects a divine particle which cost the sacrifice of Calvary, which transcends the worth of worlds, and which is destined to shine for ever. When, therefore, a resistless hand draws my life through a medium that seems almost like death to me; when trouble wrings from my heart the sharp cry of consternation; when I am tempted to doubt my safety, and even to doubt my Saviour; when I ask the question, 'If I am His, why am I thus?'-I know that the reply of the soul to itself will be, I am thus because I am His. Patience, patience! He tries me because He loves me, and is leading me "through fire and through water" only that I may be most surely led at last into a "wealthy place."'

It is a test of genuineness. Trial is the grand revealer of character, the certain analyst of

*When the alloy is melted upon a cupel, and the air blown upon it, the surface of the melted metals has a deep orange-red colour, with a kind of flickering wave constantly passing over the surface. As the process goes on the heat is increased, and in a little the colour of the fused metal becomes lighter. At this stage the refiner watches the operation, either standing or sitting, with the greatest earnestness, and the metal has the appearance of a highly-polished until all the orange colour and shading disappears, mirror, reflecting every object around it. Even the refiner, as he looks upon the mass of metal, may see himself as in a looking-glass, and thus he can form a very correct judgment respecting the purity of the metal. If he is satisfied, the fire is withdrawn and the metal removed from the furnace; but if not considered pure, more lead is added, and the process repeated.'-'Napier on the Metaphors of the Bible,'

p. 24.