us when we are faint hearted, and would turn away from our life. May we be able to bear burdens as good soldiers. Oh! help us more and more to sink self in the glory and honor of God in ourselves. May we become heroic for Christ's sake, bearing about that precious Name. May we not count it hard if we are cast out for Christ's sake. And if we are cast out for bearing testimony to thy name, may we remember what thou didst to him of old who was cast out of the Synagogue because he bore witness to thy kind ness and faithfulness. Go unto men and speak peaceably and comfortably unto them, and encourage them to believe that, standing with Christ outside of the Synagogue, more are they that are for them than are they that are against them.

And we beseech of thee that thou wilt strengthen thy witnesses everywhere those that silently bear witness amidst the cares and desponding duties of the household. Over-wearied with much watching; tried and troubled with vehement temptations; drawn every whither, still may they be able to triumph and become sons shrined in the household.

Help all those that are combating the world, and seeking to carve out their duties there. May they be able to wrestle with the mighty temptations that are brought to bear upon them, and overcome them all. And not only may they overcome temptations, but may they carry forward the work of holiness. And may justice shine in their hands. And may truth, like a star, fall upon the path that men should walk in. And so we beseech of thee that our young men may be strong and valiant for Christ everywhere. We beseech of thee that thou wilt bless all those who are sick; all those who are withheld from the house of worship. May that Spirit which makes this place light and joyful be borne unto them. Give them a portion in due season. And may those walk, leaning on thine arm, whose feet go down to the valley of the shadow of death. And all the way through may thy rod and thy staff comfort them. Bear them beyond the flood, beyond the touch of death, and into the glories of immortality.

Be near to all those, to-day, who would render thanks in thine house for great mercies shown them. Accept the thanks of those who have come once again to the house of God for the first time in a long while. Remember children and companions, dearer than life, spared by thee. May they not forget their secret thoughts and the vows of their hearts when they plead with God for mercies. And now that thy mercies have come and crowned them with victory, may they not forget their covenants.

And accept the desires of those who are as strangers in a strange land in our midst to-day. If there are any that are homesick, O Lord Jesus! comfort them. If there are those whose hearts ache, and turn back, and find their beloved ones scattered every whither, yet by faith may they be able to meet them all again in the house of prayer, in their Father's house.

Be with all those, we beseech thee, who labor in our Sabbath-schools and Bible-classes, and who go forth among the neglected and the poor, to carry the Gospel of humanity and of salvation through Jesus Christ to them. And we pray that they may never weary in well-doing, in season and out of season. They shall reap if they faint not.

More and

And we pray that thy work may go on in thy Churches. more may thy truth be a living truth. More and more may it have power on the lives and hearts and dispositions of the people. May it be diffused in the experiences of thy Churches. Let thy kingdom come, everywhere. May woes, and the occasion of them, cease. And may despotisms pass away. May superstition be utterly overthrown. May the sweet truth of God's love in Christ Jesus carry emancipation everywhere. May humanity, and peace, and order, and thy kingdom, descend and dwell upon the earth, and Christ come and reign a thousand years.

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen.

SIN'S RECOMPENSE.

"And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body is consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction and my heart despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me."-Prov. v., 11-13.

If all men believed at the beginning of their courses of life what they find at the end, there would be far less power in temptation, and many would turn aside from those paths which, bring them to ruin; but it is one of the peculiarities of youth, that while it has unbounded faith in certain directions, it seldom has faith in regard to mischiefs which befall disobedience. In common with a large part of the adult community, the young are not sure that there is a moral government.

Men say,

"How doth God know? and doth the Most High sco and consider ? Where is your God?"

There are many reasons which conspire to make men either overconfident in the beginnings of life, or even audacious.

There are, in the first place, the inexperience and thoughtlessness which belong to the young. They are ignorant. They have had no instruction at home, or only such as they might as well have missed. Thousands there are who have had no pains taken in the formation of their consciences. Conscience, even if it be strong by nature in them, has had no advantage of education. The intellect is as indispensable to a wise conscience as the conscience is to an intelligent understanding. And it is not surprising that children, adventuring with all the flush of life into unknown ways, do not give heed to advice or caution: especially considering how often caution and advice are given by men who are not altogether the most acceptable moralists-dried,, with ered up, pragmatical, fussy men-men that have outlived their appetites, and seem to wish to restrain the young from the enjoyment of the sap and blossom of life-long-faced men-men whose ideas are ascetic. The young frequently reject good advice because it comes. from an unwelcome source. And sometimes moral caution is urged.

in ways which are repulsive.

SUNDAY EVENING, October 17, 1869. Collection) Nos. 843, 732, 500.

Of course, if it is true, if the word

LESSON: ISA. LXXIII. 3-26. HYMNS (Plymouth

is in consonance with human experience and the laws of God, it is better to accept it under the most offensive administration, than to go without it. And yet, there is a strong opposition in the young heart. There is a disposition to rebound. At a certain period of life sin becomes sweet, they think. Men do things sometimes because they are told not to do them. And the young, breaking away at that point of time in which they do not know whether they are under government or whether they are governing themselves at that point when they wish to assert their liberty, and put it to proof-often do things which in later periods they scarcely would be tempted to do.

Besides all this, there is a hopefulness, a most defiant and audacious spirit in the young. They do not believe it is necessary that, certain courses being followed, they should reap mischief from them. They say, "I suppose others have gone on in such and such courses, and have come to harm; but then, they were stupid. It may be true, that thousands have perished in this way; but then, they had not skill; they did not understand themselves."

The young man is cautioned in respect to the use of intoxicating agents, and the hecatombs that have been slaughtered are brought before bis mind; but they are as nothing to him, and he says, "Yes, very likely it may be so; but I am not one that is apt to pe overthrown in such 3 way as that. A man is a fool who cannot command himself. I can go as far as I please, and come back when I please. And because others are silly and weak, is no reason why I should not enjoy my natural strength and my liberty."

There is a hopefulness which goes beyond all bounds frequently. For, although, in right ways, a man should be hopeful, there may be an excess of hopefulness, even in right ways. When it is venturesome; when it is a hopefulness that at last threads along the path of evil, or near it, then it is positively bad. Hopefulness under such circumstances becomes infatuation. And yet, there are thousands who think they can pursue courses that in others are wrong, and eventuate in mischief, and not reach the mischief. Or, oftener, men think it possible for them to pursue a certain course as long as it tastes good, and then turn round and rinse out the mouth with virtue, and be as well off as though they had not gone into such a career. Men think they can first give themselves to the world, and that after they have squeezed the world as they would an orange, they can turn round, at the proper age-at thirty, or thirty-five, or forty, or forty-five-and become Christians. They say, "When I have reaped all that there is in vice while I am young, I will turn round, and reap all that there is in virtue and piety; and so gain two worlds-all there is of this, and all there is of that."

Now, there is no single pleasure that a manly man ought to love the flavor of, which is not permissible to a Christian. There is not a thing that a Christian may not have which every young man ought not to be ashamed to take. Piety does not shut up the avenues of enjoyment. True virtue makes every enjoying faculty more sensitive to joy. I repudiate and repel with scorn the imputation that when a man is a child of God, and is at peace with all God's laws in material things, social things, and moral things, he is shut up. He is enfranchised, rather. He is enlarged. He is ennobled. There is more music in him, in every single chord and faculty, than there can be in any other. There is no man so free, there is no man who has a range so boundless, as the man who is at peace with God. And yet, there are multitudes of persons who suppose that there are peculiar pleasures which cannot be reaped except by a reprobate course. There never was any mistake greater than that.

Then there are the reactions from an infelicitous way of teaching which tend to produce presumption in the young-either a disbelief in the reality and punishing nature of sin, or else a belief that they can avoid it, even if it do threaten. I mean the exaggerated and indiscriminating way in which sin is often held forth. Much of the instruction which is given on this subject is not wise. Conventional sins, too frequently, are almost the only ones that are held up. Children are scarcely rebuked if they are fundamentally proud; if they are envious and selfish and jealous, but if a child breaks any little family rule, he is whipped, or is roundly scolded. In other words, sins that violate conventional rules are punished. There are such things as family sins, that do not go outside of the family. There are sins of omission. For instance, the boy is required to hang his hat on a peg, and if he fails to do it, it is a sin; or, the boy is forbidden to make a noise in the house, and he tramps down stairs or through the hall, and that is a sin.

There are also church sins. Standing in the house of God with the hat on, and so desecrating the building, is a church sin. There is a great variety of church sins, such as not reading the Bible, and the nonobservance of Sundays and other holy days.

Now, I do not undertake to say that family rules are not impor tant, or that school rules are not important, or that church rules are not important; but I say that every child ought to be instructed in the difference between those rules which are made by men for their own convenience, and those principles on which God's everlasting judg ment stands, around about which human character is built up, which enters into the very structure of society, and can not be violated without setting the peace of society at naught, and prejudicing the welfare of the individual. And yet, how many persons are from day to day

allowed to indulge in envy, and avarice, and ill-temper, and all manner of wicked feelings, that strike out the very root of love, which is the law of God, and the law of the universe, without being rebuked, and made to feel that they are delinquent in the matter of rectitude! And how often is it the case that persons, if they violate a saint's day, or do not read just so much, or are not in their places at prayers, or do not do this or that conventional thing, are charged with violation of duty, or with committing sin! And so, their idea of sins is, that they are peccadillos. They have a superstitious notion of what is sinful. As the young grow up without knowing what wrong is, or how to rectify the mischief, they too often break through all grounds of moderation, and say, "I do not believe in sinfulness; I do not believe in any danger such as we are warned of. This kind of teaching will do very well for the nursery, it will answer for children, and may scare them; but I am too much of a man to be frightened any longer at the idea of sin."

Conventional sins are held up before men as representing sinning, until there comes up a scepticism of the whole doctrine and the whole sad and melancholy experience of sinning.

I hold that while for our convenience it is necessary that we should have artificial rules, there are great principles of character and conduct which were created with the creation of the world itself, the viclation of which infixes penalties in every heart and in every life, and from which no man ever escapes. There are self-registering sins. There are sins which carry in their own nature an outcome of mischief that lowers the tone of life, and lowers the susceptibility of happiness, multiplying the causes of vexation, and care, and trial, and trouble, following the mind with misrule, and preparing it for the stumblings and the downfalls that come later in life, as the inevitable result of sins that are not forgiven. Such sins do not wait for men to find out and punish them. God has bound his universe together in such a way, and given to his laws such vitality and self-defending power, that any man who sins against his' conscience, against his own inward nature, or against the essential welfare of society, gets it back double and quadruple, in his own soul; and that, whether men find it out or not, or whether or not he recognizes the source of those troubles and sufferings which afterwards come upon him. The absolute universality of moral law, and the inevitableness of moral penalty, is one of the most wholesome, though one of the most neglected, of all doctrines.

Again, men are made presumptuous in sinning, because they see wicked men prospering. They regard that as the refutation of half the preaching, and of almost all the advice they hear. This is a fatal delusion which has destroyed thousands, and will snare and lead to destruction other thousands yet. Men do not believe that illicit courses