M of them? THE DARK MOUNTAINS. HERE are these? Are they a myth, a mere figure of speech, or is the graphic phrase descriptive of reality? Have they ever been explored, and can any good be said Some discoveries have been made which establish their real situation, and their peculiar character, in terms sufficiently explicit for pilgrims and sojourners in the earth. Let me tell my fellow travellers, in their passage to the other world, to beware of these formidable mountains of unbelief, irreligion, peril, and despair. There is an old map, which we cannot too often consult, which well defines the situation of these singular ranges, and very clearly describes them. According to this authority, they lie in the enemy's land, far out in the wilderness, distant from the holy city, remote from the vineyard of the Lord, as well as from the better country-far away from the Sun of Righteousness, so that from base to summit they are all, and always, enveloped in a pall of darkness never illumined by the light of grace or of glory. The wanderer from God can tell us something about these dreary regions, where in other days he roamed, when living as he listed. If now reclaimed, he regards with shame his former unprofitable life. With many a shudder he recalls the perils and perplexities that continually met him, as he stumbled over those rough and slippery heights, venturing further and further into the thick gloom of those fearful mountains,-cut off from virtue and from God, far from the light of the truth and holiness, and verging on the regions of utter and perpetual darkness. He can never adequately thank the Good Shepherd for His timely arrest and gracious rescue. But where one such prodigal is recovered, how many grow more wild and hardened, and ultimately meet the doom of sons of perdition! So it was with Cain and Esau, with Saul, Ahab, and Judas, and multitutles since their day. And How strong the delusion that leads mortals thus astray! These mountains, as dimly seen from a distance, and by the untrustworthy eye of sense, are invested with illusory charms. Their obscure summits are wonderfully alluring to hearts alienated from the life of God. for a season the fascination has all the power of reality. On a nearer approach, the testimony of personal experience begins to dispel the enchantment. Fre he is aware, the heedless one becomes entangled in a labyrinth, which he cannot safely traverse, and from which he is not likely to emerge. Darkness is upon him, and grows ever more intense. The dense chilling shadows wrap their lengthening folds around him. The voices of his late gay companions no longer please him. They are all alike erring, helpless, and lost, groping their uncertain way down to the regions of the dead-to the blackness of darkness for ever. This wonderfully impressive picture of the career and end of the godless, an inspired pen has drawn. You will find it in the writing of an ancient seer; in which the author describes the condition and peril of those who seek to live without God in the world. In his description, he sketches the dark mountains so vividly, that the words are like the touches of a painter, and we seem to see the little candle of the wicked burning very low, and getting dimmer still, until it finally goes out in obscure darkness, and the wretched wanderers plunge on amidst the gross darkness of the shadow of death-bewildered, imperilled, and ready to perish, yet tripping desperately on, stumbling along the dangerous passes of these dark mountains; imagery so suggestive of all that is alarming, calamitous, and retributive, in the case of those who, departing from God, are themselves finally abandoned of Him. Behold the despisers, how they wonder and perish! Contemplating this solemn delineation by the prophet of the Lord, we think at once of the benighted heathen, dwelling in earth's dark places, sitting debased and hopeless amidst the heavy shadows of error, superstition, and cruel crime, and all their lifetime subject to bondage through fear of death. It seems, too, a faithful description of the godless worldling, in the terrible night of his sorrows, uncheered by the light of faith, or the promise of mercy, when his props give way, and his heart is crushed beneath that sorrow of the world which worketh death. It is likewise an apt picture of the dying unbeliever, bidding a last reluctant adieu to the light of this world, and descending with trembling steps, uncomforted and hopeless, into the darkness of the grave; which to him is darkness that may be felt, because unrelieved by the light of a blessed immortality. And O! how accurate a mirror it is of the perpetual unrest of the eternally lost. Dark, indeed, are the mountains over which they stumble, in the fruitless quest of a blessing. In that lone land of deep despair, all hope is blotted out. 'Silence and solitude and gloom In those forgetful realms appear.' Ah! if we wish our dark days to be cheered by an auspicious and undying brightness, and the grave disarmed of its terrors, to be graciously illuminated, and the unseen world appear to us a shining shore, we must keep near the Sun of Righteousness, and walk in the light of God,—a light which will never pale, but will outshine every eclipse, waxing stronger and still brighter as we near that perfect day, when the shadows will all be gone, and we shall awake in the likeness of Immanuel, amidst the kindling glories of the resurrection.—Rev. J. E. Nassau. I MUST DO RIGHT. MUST do right,' said Annie Blake The children will be disappointed,' pleaded Carrie. They have been talking all the week about it. Uncle so seldom hires a carriage and takes them with him. And then we wished you to see the "Central Park ;” | and if you do not go to-day you will have no other opportunity.' Annie looked distressed. Please excuse me,' she said. 'I will remain at home and read while you are gone.' 'If you do not go, none of us can,' so uncle says. I do not care for myself, but I know that it will be a great disappointment to the children to remain at home." I am very sorry,' said Annie. 'I wish your uncle had asked me before he ordered the carriage. I would gladly do anything that I thought was right to oblige you. I hate to scem ill-natured upon my first visit to you.' done what I felt to be right. This is my only comfort.' When she saw the family again, every one was as kind and pleasant as usual. In the evening she asked if any one was going to church. Mr Gifford said that he would accompany her. He had not been to church for several years. Carrie looked surprised, but did not make any remarks. The sermon was solemn and impressive. Mr Gifford was silent and thoughtful. Annie attributed his silence to displeasure with her. As if in answer to these thoughts, he remarked, 'I am deeply indebted to you, Miss Blake. Your example to-day has been a sermon which I shall never forget. Would that I had had, all through my life, the same courage that you have manifested. Fear of offending others, and the dread of ridicule, have often kept me from doing what I knew to be right. To-night I have resolved to begin anew. My attendance upon church is the first step in the right direction." 'O sir, I am glad,' said Annie; 'I hope you will go on, not trusting to yourself alone, but Oh, then, you will relent; I knew you remember the promise "My strength shall be would. I said I knew you were too good-na-sufficient for thee."' tured to make any of us uncomfortable.' Is there not a lesson to be drawn from this simple incident? We need not fear ridicule, or dread giving pain, when we are conscientiously performing our duty. If we would win the love and esteem of our friends, and the approbation of our heavenly Father, let the language of our lips and the motto of our hearts ever be, I must do right.'-American Messenger. My Darlings' Shoes. OD bless the little feet that can never go astray, O little feet that wearied not, I wait for them no more, And while I thus am standing, I almost seem to see I reach my arms out fondly, but they clasp the empty air! O the bitterness of parting cannot be done away Till I meet my darlings walking where their feet can never stray : -Anon. Miscellaneous. But The Place and Power of Solitude.-' How lonesome must your position have been,' said one. it was not so. The true Christian is never without comforting companionship. As bad a sign, perhaps, is it to dread solitude, as for the soul to substitute untimely seclusions for the activities of social Christianity. Where grace is vigorous, the Christian will do neither. That great genius of the English language, Dr Johnson, is stated to have defined the most miserable men to be those who could not read on a rainy day. We feel more disposed to say, the men whose dependence for comfort lies wholly in their fellow-creatures. But this is indeed very far from the happy position occupied by the Christian. Solitude to him is rather a kaleidoscope than a vacuity, in which innumerable forms and combinations of thought come winging to the soul, rich and fruitful in sweetness and blessing. Solitude to the soul of the Christian is a harvest field, from whence he comes forth laden with a cornucopia of glorious spoils. Fled to from the path of duty, it is a deadly upas shade, but when God treads the way, then man finds solitude a boon and a blessing.-VANDERKISTE'S Lost, but Not for Ever. at once. Reading the Scriptures. Suppose you have only a few moments every day. One of the holiest men I ever knew, never read more than five or ten verses Every verse had so broad and many-sided a signification, that a few words gave him as much mental food as he could bear at one time. Throughout the day they came upon him in all their various applications and shades of meaning, as circumstances placed him now in one position and now in another. Old Sermons. As dull as an old sermon,' has become a proverb. And yet a really excellent sermon is worth preaching twice. Indeed we had rather hear such a sermon thrice than a poor sermon once. T. L. C., treating on this subject says:—‘A poor juiceless sermon ought never to be preached the first time; but a nutritious, savoury discourse may be made all the better on a second delivery. Dr Addison Alexander preached his glorious sermon on the Faithful Saying,' until he wore out the manuscripts; and Dr Griffin repeated his elaborate discourse on the Worth of the Soul ninety times! He never wearied of it-nor did his audience either. His congregations changed constantly, and memories are leaky; a first-rate practical sermon ought to be repeated (with extempore improvements) about once in five years. Fewer sermons and richer should be a settled pastor's aim. Whitefield attained great finish and power by giving the same discourses over again through all his missionary tours.' Criticising Preaching.-I never suffer myself to criticise it, but always act upon the uniform principle of endeavouring to obtain from what I hear all the edification it affords. This is a principle that I would warmly commend to my young friends in the present day-for nothing can be more mischievous than for learners to turn teachers, and young hearers critics. I am persuaded it is one of the means of drying up the waters of life in the soul; and sure I am that an exact method of weighing words and balancing doctrines which we hear is a miserable exchange for tenderness of the spirit and the dew of heaven.-G. J. Gurney. Huguenot Persecutions.-The irreligious character of the Revolution which these and their fellowworkmen and the Encyclopedists brought about, followed logically enough from the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and a century and a half of Satanic persecution directed against the Huguenots-persecutions in the time of Louis XV., not the work of fanatics, but proceeding from a vicious king and a sceptical Court. The injury permanently done to the nation by such insensate intolerance is incalculable. The most earnest and devotedly religious spirits of France were either driven into exile or extinguished. When the earnest spirit of Protestantism was driven out, the earnest spirit of Catholicism decayed likewise; a mocking hypocritical uniformity took its place; licence and corruption flourished unreproved; and when Deism and Atheism arose, they found no antagonists worthy of respect. were a melancholy thing to resign ourselves to the conclusion that so shameful a history as that of Louis XV., and the horrors of the French Revolution, were inflicted on a great people without any intelligible causes. One of the chief of these was the inhuman and odious persecution which the devoted adherents of an austere and sublime creed met with from the It day of the Revocation of the edict of Nantes.— Edinburgh Review. The Lost Penny.—One of the maids in Gotthold's family had lost a penny. In searching for it she used all diligence, swept the house, lighted a candle, and wept when her search proved fruitless. Said Gotthold to himself, I greatly wish that, for every sin which a man commits, he were to drop from his purse a penny, dollar, or ducat, according to the amount of his fortune. In that case I am convinced far fewer sins would be committed. Is it not dreadful blindness that will weep for the loss of a penny and laugh when, by presumptuous sin, we lose God and His grace? Our money appears from this to be dearer to us than our God. To many, however, God and gold are one and the same. O, thou secure and senseless world, what will become of thee at last? On his deathbed gold cannot, and God, in His righteous judgment, will not help the ungodly man. From what, then, can help come? My God, were I to gain the whole world and keep it in possession and enjoyment, but by daily transgression to forfeit Thy grace, what good would all my gains and fortune do me! Let me lose what I may, or, to speak more correctly, what Thou wilt, but O, take not from me Thy grace!-Gotthold's Emblems. Dr Arnold on Eternal Punishments.-A correspondent sends us the subjoined extract from a published sermon of the late Dr Arnold :-'I have left the great consideration untouched, as not concerning my immediate object, that as reason tells us that none but true Christians can hope to live for ever; so we have cause to believe from God's Word that all but true Christians will be miserable for ever. But I do not think that our natural reason would ever enable us to discover what Christ has revealed, that good left undone will be positively punished for all eternity, as well as evil done. The careless, and what we call harmless livers, cut off by reason from hope of eternal happiness, are condemned by revelation to an eternity of positive misery.' 1. T 5. Death is the day of our coronation, we are heirs appointed to the crown in this life; yea, we are kings elect, but cannot be crowned till death. And shall not that make us love the appearing of Christ? Is a king afraid of the day of his coronation? 6. There are differences in the degrees of the Some Christians are but IIE Lord would have His Church exposed to crosses, both for His own sake and for hers, and for His enemies' sake. For His own sake, that He might show His hatred of sin, even in His own people, and the glory also of His power and mercy in their deliverance, as well as His justice in their afflic-age of Christ in us. tions. For their sakes, that being in the war-weak, young ones-lambs-babes-new formed, and God knows it, and looks for no more from such, than what agrees to their age. He is a compassionate Father, that doth not require the same power of gifts in a weak Christian, which He looks for in a strong. fare humbled and tamed for their sins, they might not perish with the world, and may be herein like to Christ. For their enemies' sake, that they may know that they shall never be spared, if God spare not His own children. 2. What profit is it to win all this world, if our souls be shut out of heaven? and what loss can it be, if we lose this world, and find our right unto the world to come? This should make us feelingly know and profess ourselves to be strangers and pilgrims here, and to desire to be no other than such as long to be absent from hence, that we may be present with the Lord in glory. 3. We must nail our sins to the Cross of Christ, force them before the tree on which IIe suffered, it is such a sight as sin cannot abide. It will begin to die within a man upon the sight of Christ on the Cross, for the Cross of Christ accuseth sin, shames sin, and by a secret virtue, feeds upon the very heart of sin. We must use sin as Christ was used, when He was made sin for us; we must lift it up, and make it naked by confession of it to God; we must pierce the hands, and feet, the heart, of it by godly sorrow, and application of threatenings against it, and by spiritual revenge upon it. 4. In the ceremonial law, there was a year they called the year of Jubilee, and this was accounted an acceptable year, because every man that had lost or sold his lands, upon the blowing of a trumpet, returned and had possession of all again, and so was recovered out of the extremity in which he lived before. In this life we are like the poor men of Israel, that have lost our inheritance, and live in a manner and condition every way straitened. Now death is our Jubilee, and when the trumpet of death blows, we all that die return, and enjoy a better estate than ever we sold or lost. Shall then the Jubilee be called an acceptable time, and shall not our Jubilee be acceptable to us. God.' 7. It should much ease us to remember that we are not under the law, but under grace; we are delivered from the rigour of the law. God now doth not expect perfection from us, nor account us as transgressors, because we are imperfect, but hath received us to the benefit of the new Covenant, in which perfection is only required in Christ, and uprightness in us. 8. We may be very weak in strength and power of gifts, and yet very fruitful. We may do much good while we are in the infancy of grace, which the comparison of the Vine, to which the godly are resembled, shows. The vine is not the strongest of trees, and yet is more fruitful in pleasant fruit than many other trees, not of the field only, but of the garden also. Now, the godly are likened to the vine, to show, that all their weaknesses notwithstanding, they may be abundant in pleasing fruit. 9. Consider that God will not only hear our prayers in general, but our voice, our very desires, yea, our tears. The very naming of Christ shall not be done without regard. When we are destitute of words to express ourselves, our groaning, our tears, yea, the very desires of our heart is an effectual prayer to God. He doth not look at what we do say, but what we should say. If we come like little children, and but name our Father's name, and cry, making moan, it shall be heard. upon him 10. For a godly man to die, is but to remove from a rotten old house, ready to fall on his head, to a sumptuous palace. Doth that landlord do his tenant wrong that will have him out of his base cottage, and bestow his own mansion-house? No other thing doth God to us, when, by death, He removes us out of this earthly tabernacle of our bodies, to From BYFIELD's Marrow of the Oracles of settle us in everlasting habitations—the building made without hands in heaven. B TIMES OF EVIL.* Y the last days, we must understand | form of godliness, but denying the power the times preceding the appearing of the Lord Jesus; and for this reason the characteristics of the last days are necessarily signs of the second advent. Nothing great, either evil or good, moves at once, or by any sudden impulse. What St Paul affirms in 2 Thess. ii., of the mystery of iniquity, is generally true,—that the workings of evil, like the workings of good, always precede their full development; and for that reason we might have expected to find, as we actually do find, that the characteristics of the last times, as here given, are not so absolutely confined to them but that they might be traced in their degree all along. While yet that which has, to a certain extent, been true before, will, in the last days, prove to be more manifestly true, and form a more striking feature of the times. For this reason the sign of the Lord's coming, which we are now to consider, is not so distinct a sign of it as that which we have already considered. The decay of the Protestant Churches, and surrender of their witness, and their consequent death, is, so far as it has gone, and will be, when it is completed, a more definite sign, than the moral and religious condition of the times, which admits of degrees. But in the fact stated, that in the last days perilous times shall come, we have a decisive proof that the coming of the Lord will not be after the commencement of world-wide holiness and happiness; that we must not look first for that time foretold, when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid-and then for His advent; but that we must look first for His advent, and then for the Millennial glory, since up to His appearing, and even after it, the battle will be raging; for it is in the last days that perilous times shall come. Let us read the description of these perilous times, Men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a * From the Rev. S. GARRATT's striking little book -'Signs of the Times.' London: Hunt & Co. 25.-40. thereof: from such turn away, For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.' We might examine these verses one by one, and word by word; but we are now in search of signs of the Lord's coming, and for that purpose we need look only at certain salient points, which mark the moral and religious features of the last times: selfishness in morals, outwardness in religion, priestcraft enslaving the conscience, false miracles. Selfishness is the first of these characteristic marks; and all that follows-covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers. false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God,'-all this is in fact included in that one phrase-Lovers of their own selves.' Man is so selfish naturally, that it might seem at first sight as though this could not form a characteristic of one time more than of another. It might be said with great plausibility, that there never was a time when it might not be asserted truly that men were lovers of their own selves. But we must, in the first place, remember that the prophecy assumes that in the last days there will be a form of godliness. It is of persons professing godliness—at all events bearing the Christian name-that our text speaks. Of such it might have seemed as though it could hardly be a characteristic mark that they were lovers of their own selves. Unhappily, we know too well that such is the corruption of human nature, that in the full blaze of Gospel light men always have been found to love their own selves, and that nothing is and always has been more uncommon than the reverse. All seek their own: not the things which are Jesus Christ's.' But we must remember further, that there is in the present state of things that which does make this a special characteristic of the day in which we live. I do not know that men are really more selfish, but they more unblushingly |