Theology.

"HE CAME TO HIS OWN, AND HIS OWN RECEIVED HIM NOT."

It is not

CAN we let the passage go without a penitent conviction? See how pathos and rebuke are mingled in it! The sentence of a heavier condemnation never was written. Severity never spoke in a tenderer compassion. It is not weak complaint. It is not bitter sarcasm. sentimentalism bewailing its own impotence. It is not tyranny exulting over its victim, and saying, "You would not give me your heart, and so I rejoice to see your heart crushed." It is another spirit, and has another sound. "He came to his own, and his own received him not." It is the sadness of parental affection repulsed. It is the sorrow of a heart that bleeds, not for itself, but for children lost, and knowing the misery before them as the children themselves cannot know it. It is one audible note of the unutterable pity of God for ungrateful souls.

And who are they? Men of the past only? Peasants and Pharisees of Palestine only? Students in the schools of the Scribes, and the Scribes that taught Hebrew learning only? Answer for yourselves. In a day that is coming, we must all answer for ourselves. Who are God's ungrateful children? "Last of all He sent His Son," saying, "They have slighted my common mercies; they have ridiculed or criticised my mortal messengers: I gave them food from heaven and fruitful seasons, and they feasted and drank and were merry and profane, and forgot me: I gave them friends, and they tempted them, misled them, dragged them down to their own level of denial, vanity, selfishness, and shame: they stoned my prophets, but they will reverence my Son."" "He came to His own; they received Him not."

This is the language of narrative. The verbs are in the past tense. But in what we have to do with the Eternal One, to whom there is no yesterday and no to-morrow, nothing old and nothing new, the past brings no excuses for the present. Time does not alter truth. There is no partiality for ages, nations, or persons. As John writes, there was an advent and a rejection-a bodily advent, a bodily crucifixion— the image and outer form of the Word that was from the beginning, the ever-living Emmanuel, the Christ that comes to-day. If he is rejected to-day, it is by the pride and fashion and self-indulgence, of to-day. It is our compromising consciences, it is our well-dressed sensuality, it is our commercial cunning, it is our literary conceit, it is our making merchandise of men and of men's virtue, our covering up cruelty, and calling it patriotism; dishonesty, and calling it regular trade; hollowness and mutual flattery, and calling it good society; prayerless selfidolatry, and calling it a rational religion;-it is these things that prepare and build His cross, and crucify Him afresh.

How should you receive Christ? Seek the full answer to this in the New Testament, in Christian instruction, in prayer, in doing every hour all of God's will you know, in counting belief, not doubt, the glory and power and joy of a man. Seek it, where thousands of stronger and humbler hearts have found it, at the foot of His cross who loved you, and gave Himself for you.

Family Miscellany.

A NIGHT MARCH TO THE

HOLY CITY.

the train of recollection she awakens.
Walks about Jerusalem.

the stars began to fade from the
heavens, and the dawn to break over
NOTWITHSTANDING our fatigue and the eastern mountains, I sought to
the inviting nature of our quarters, pierce the gloom which wrapped the
we found it almost impossible to silent region around, but nothing
sleep. We were but three hours could be distinguished. It was not
distance from Jerusalem. Rising at till the first red glow of morning
midnight, we pursued our way by glanced upon the eastward hill-tops
the light of the innumerable stars, that I caught a sight of the city.
glorious in the blue depth of an Asian But there was nothing grand or
sky. Not a sound was heard but the striking in the vision; a line of dull
tramp of our horses' hoofs upon the walls, a group of massive towers, a
rocky pathway. The outlines of the few dark olives, rising from a dead
hilly region we were travelling, were and sterile plain; yet enough that
dim and indistinct; far grander than this was Jerusalem, the holy city;
they would have appeared by the her mournful aspect well suits with
light of the day. We came to a
tremendous descent, long and slip-
pery, over slabs of rock and deep
gullies, worn by the winter rains.
THE CROWNED SKELETON.
With many a slide and narrow
escape from falling headlong, we AIX-LA-CHAPELLE in Germany de-
reached the bottom of the valley in rives its name from the tomb of
safety, where we found caravans of Charlemagne. He gave instructions
camels and asses, with their guides that when he died, he should be
asleep by the way-side, waiting for buried in a royal position; not
the morning light to enter the city prostrate as slumbering dust, but
gates. We pursued our way; an seated in the attitude of a ruling
hour yet remained; that hour was monarch. He had the mausoleum
one of strange and indescribable ex- erected over the sepulchre of our
citement. I had seen, by moonlight. Saviour at Jerusalem. In a tomb
the time-hallowed glories of the old within this chapel he was placed
world, and the wonders of nature in upon a throne. The Gospels, which
the new-I had stood alone, at that I suppose he had often read whilst
hour, within the awful circle of the he was living, he would appear de-
Coliseum; had watched the lunar termined to study thoroughly after
rainbow spanning the eternal mists he was dead. He directed they
rising from the base of the Niagara; should be laid upon his knees before
but this night's march across the him; by his side was his sword;
desolate hills of Judea awoke a upon his head was an imperial crown,
more sublime, more thrilling in- and a royal mantle covered his life-
terest. I was approaching the walls less shoulders.

of that city (the scene of events Thus was his body placed, and
which must ever remain the most thus did his body remain, for about
touching in their influences upon one hundred and eighty years
the human heart) which I had long One of his successors resolved he
and earnestly hoped to see, and my would see how Charlemagne looked,
wish was about to be realized. As and what had become of the riches

1

Rules for the Journey of Life.

that adorned his tomb. Nearly al Never to ridicule sacred things, or

what others may esteem such; however absurd they may appear to be. Never to show levity when the people are professedly engaged in

Never to resent a supposed injury

thousand years after Christ, the tomb was opened by the Emperor Otho. The skeleton form of the body was found there, dissolved and dismembered; the various ornaments worship. I speak of were all there too; but the frame had sunk into fragments, till I know the views and motives of the bones had fallen disjointed and asunder; and there remained nothing but the ghastly SKULL wearing its crown still-and nothing to signify royalty but this vain pageant of death in its most hideous form!

the author of it; nor on any occasion to retaliate.

Never to judge a person's character by external appearance.

Always to take the part of an absent person who is censured in company, so far as truth and propriety will allow.

The various relics were taken up, and are now preserved at Vienna; and they have often since been emNever to think the worse of ployed in the coronation of the Em- another on account of bis differing perors of Germany, in order to sig-from me in political or religious nify their greatness, and their being opinions. successors to Charlemagne.

Not to dispute with a man more than seventy years of age, nor with an enthusiast.

Not to affect to be witty, or to jest, so as to wound the feelings of another.

To say as little as possible of myself and those who are near to me. To aim at cheerfulness without levity.

Not to obtrude my advice unasked. Never to court the favour of the rich by flattering either their vanity or their vices.

How striking a comment does the forty-ninth Psalm afford to this strange history! What became of the monarch's body? It was again entombed, though spoiled, till Frederick Barbarossa in 1165 interrupted the silence of the gloomy palace. He removed the royal remains into a splendid receptacle he had prepared, and placed the marble throne in the church, where it is now exhibited to strangers. But the body itself is nowhere to be found! its last resting place is empty-the limbs are dispersed in the form of relics. The skull and one arm-bone are preserved as sacred relics in the Cathedral. But though scattered Frequently to review my conduct be his limbs, Charlemagne shall yet and note my failings. hear the voice of the King of kings, On all occasions to have in prosand stand uncrowned in His pre-pect the end of life and a future state. sence who wears the crown of the

To speak with calmness and deliberation, on all occasions; especially in circumstances which tend to irritate.

TESTIMONY TO ADULT

BAPTISM.

THE "Apostolical Institutions" describe the qualifications and offices of Deaconesses. Amongst the latter are those relating to the baptizing of women; "the necessity for which," remarks a writer in Good Words, "has been obviated in later times by

the discontinuance of the practice of tolical institutions" are assigned to baptism by immersion, or the prae- the second or third century, their tice of baptism under a form which testimony as to the mode in which the early church would not have baptism was practised in those early recognised as valid." As the "Apos-ages is valuable...

Poetry.

PRAYER.

BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

I.

WHEN prayer delights thee least, then learn to say,
Soul, now is greatest need that thou should'st pray.

II.

Crooked and warped I am, and I would fain
Straighten myself by thy right line again.

III.

Oh come, warm sun, and ripen my late fruits;
Pierce, genial showers, down to my parched roots.

IV.

My well is bitter; cast therein the tree,

That sweet henceforth its brakish waves may be.

V.

Say what is prayer, when it is prayer indeed ?
The mighty utterance of a mighty need.

VI.

The man is praying, who doth press with might
Out of his darkness into God's own light.

VIL.

White heat the iron in the furnace won,

Withdrawn from thence, 'twas cold and hard anon.

VIII. 1

Flowers from their stalks divided, presently
Droop, fail, and wither in the gazer's eye.

IX.

The greenest leaf divided from its stem,
To speedy withering doth itself condemn.

X.

The largest river from its fountain head
Cut off, leaves soon a parched and dusty bed.

ΧΙ.

All things that live from God their sustenance wait,
And sun and moon are beggars at His gate.

XII.

All skirts extended of thy mantle hold,

When angel hands from heaven are scattering gold.

COLLEGE LIFE AND PASTORAL | It will not be unnatural if, as he looks

WORK.*

ahead, he thinks over his work, his materials, and his preparation.

I.-As to his work.

BY THE REV. C. CLEMANCE, B.A. THE worthy and honoured Principal of this College has asked me to address His sense of responsibility has lost the students. Since I consented to do somewhat of the indefiniteness it used so, I have thought that I made a mis- to have. It is more rigidly defined. take. It would seem considerably more There is a far narrower limit put to natural to me to listen to something of it than once; but as it has become the kind from one of larger and longer more restricted in its compass, it is experience in ministerial life. profounder in its intensity. He feels I claim no special fitness for such a task that his mission will be to teach and as this beyond that which may arise preach Jesus Christ. That he has from the retention of pretty much of one Saviour to teach, one Gospel to the "student" feeling, which I hope I proclaim, one book to study and exshall retain to my dying day. It is pound. Once it occasionally troubled about ten years this day since I entered him to know how he should find enough on college life. One may naturally be material for constant pulpit work. supposed to look back for the purpose Now, as he is beginning again, he of comparing and contrasting "then" is never anxious on that head. The and "now." It would be most dis- anxiety is all the other way: that he creditable, if, during those ten years, cannot live long enough to say all that one had not, as he went along, picked he wants to say, and to develop those up some stray thoughts which might germs which Bible study has deposited be of some use to somebody in similar in him. And this difference is thus circumstances. If, brethren, they are accounted for :-instead of thinking not of use to you, pardon the intrusion; that he is to find a succession of if they are, accept them, as offered with thoughts which shall last long enough, most sincere respect and esteem. he has come to see that he has rather I will, at the outset, ask you to fol- to bring out to another's view those low me in a track of thought, one feature thoughts which he has gained from of which will be, (whether advanta-without-even the thoughts of God. geous or otherwise, I will not say) that As long as he lives he is to interpret, it will deal with the ideal as if it were unfold, and enforce Divine thought, real, though the reality would be not and thus his materials for preaching only improbable, but impossible; so and teaching cannot be exhausted till thoroughly so, that the conception may he has exhausted his theme. He can seem to have about it a slight touch of reduce the various heads of his work the absurd, and yet I will risk that. If to one, and sum up his conception of it you do not complain of it neither shall I. in one sentence: "I AM TO BE THE EXI will suppose a man to begin stu- POUNDER OF GOD!" dent life with the same thoughts and In the pulpit he is to declare God, feelings he may fairly be supposed to his thoughts, his purposés, his plans. have after ten years' experience, those In the family he is to teach and to exten years being, more or less, equally hibit God, his love, his grace, and his divided between college life and pasto-power to save. To decrepit age and ral work. And since the value of a to buoyant youth he is to teach his college course to a man will be enhanced God. To the masses of the people, by clearness and correctness of view as in their sorrows and their need, he to what is beyond, it may serve some is to reveal the love of God. To the purpose to follow our imaginary student men of culture and learning, he is through the course of his thoughts. to speak of one before whom human Address to the Students at Chilwell College, learning "is less than nothing and vanity." This, this is his simple yet

September 8, 1863.