:

thus serving God? Will every petition we present be answered, every desire granted? What is the law of the Divine procedure, with reference to our prayers; and by what rule are our expectations to be regulated? We must reserve our reply for a future paper; and close the present by a few remarks on the remaining branch of devotion :Self-dedication.-It appears largely to have entered into the worship of the ancient saints, and to have been employed with much spiritual advantage by Christians in every age. When the Psalmist said, “O Lord, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds;" he was doubtless in an enviable state of mind. To be permitted thus to remind God of our relation to him, what a mercy! To be able, with humble confidence, to utter such a sentiment, how delightful! What deep and hallowed associations are called up in the mind, by the use of such language! How is the value of religion felt at such moments, and the privileges of God's children estimated! There are times when the Christian is sorely tempted, and when he seems to have sacrificed the pleasures and the honours of the world for nought; there are times when the Sabbath school teacher is ready to faint, and abandon his apparently fruitless toil: there are times when the minister of Jesus Christ casts a lingering and longing eye, if not on the flesh-pots of Egypt, yet on the profitable occupations he gave up for the care of souls, and the many comforts enjoyed by others, which he also could relish, but cannot procure; there are times, when the missionary of the cross endures an agony of conflict, of which we have little conception. Think of Martyn, of Williams, of Moffat, at some periods of their career. They had known the comforts of a British home; but they now, perhaps, are without a morsel of bread; their labours vast, their dangers imminent; whilst they are surrounded by general poverty and barbarism, by mental and moral degradation. Can we wonder that faith should sometimes fail, or the heart misgive? Could we endure the trial? Yet now follow one of these devoted men to his closet, his wife, more sensitive and delicate still, kneeling by his side; they are in deep distress, almost in a state of despair. But suddenly the language of the Psalmist occurs to his mind; and while the big tear rolls down his cheeks, he gives it solemn and emphatic utterance :"O Lord, truly I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid!" It is enough! Her heart catches the inspiration, and the breast of each swells with gratitude at the thought. Their resolution is taken. No! we are not our own, we are the Lord's; we will live and die at the post which he has called us to fill, and in the place to which he has directed our steps.

Sometimes, in their addresses to God, his people may refer, with advantage, to former transactions between them; reminding him of his favour towards them, and of their own purposes and enjoyments in

him. Jacob's wrestlings at Peniel, doubtless, consisted in part in reminding God of the fellowship he had afforded to his servant twenty years prior at Bethel, and of the vows he had vowed before him there. David says, "In thee have I put my trust;" "Thou hast delivered my soul from death; wilt thou not also deliver my feet from falling?" And again, “Thou hast proved my heart; thou hast visited me in the night; thou hast tried me and shalt find nothing." And to refer thus to past transactions is calculated to deepen our sense of present obligation, to revive our first love, and to give to our more staid and advanced piety the freshness and the vivacity of youth.

But in noticing this branch of worship, we have chiefly in view those acts of solemn and deliberate self-consecration which many eminent servants of God have been accustomed frequently or periodically to renew. Just exception may, perhaps, be taken against the formal and severe manner in which this has sometimes been done. Several models which have come down to us of the vows they have made to God, and of the covenants of dedication into which they have entered, seem to have too much of the spirit of the Pharisee or ascetic, and too little of the free, and voluntary, and gracious spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not, however, to the thing they did, nor to the sentiment they uttered, we object; so much as to the temper in which it was sometimes said or done. It is highly becoming to devote ourselves to God; it is becoming, from time to time, to renew our vows with solemnity; but too much care cannot be taken, that we are animated, not by slavish fear, but reverential love. It is in the spirit of adoption that we should dedicate ourselves to him whose service is perfect freedom. We must not trammel the soul with formalities, or lay snares for our own conscience; we are called unto liberty; and a lively sense of God's mercy, through the blood of Christ, is a far more effectual security for personal holiness, and acceptable obedience, than any mere written covenant, or formally uttered vows.

Keeping in view, however, the evangelical spirit of the worship of the New Covenant, the practice of uttering before God the purposes of our hearts, and renewing our engagements to him is both suitable and advantageous. "My faith has often failed, and my purposes to glorify thee have frequently been broken. The past week, the past year, witnesses my weakness and my guilt; nevertheless, accept me in the Beloved, and give me peace. I consecrate myself afresh to thy service, in the Gospel of thy Son; henceforth, by thy grace, will I be wholly thine. Into thine hands I commit my spirit; thou hast ordained me, O Lord God of truth. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory. Depart from me ye evildoers; for I will keep the commandments of my God. I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart."

We have no book in the New Testament corresponding to the Psalms;

we cannot doubt, however, that Paul and John adopted a similar practice; and the only difference we can conceive between the language they employed and this, is that theirs would have abounded in references to the name of Jesus, and indicated still more strongly the enjoyment of that liberty that results from the presence of the Spirit. The sacred writers, then, must be our models in this, as in every part of devotion; and if, in the work of self-dedication, we adhere to such examples, we shall find it exceedingly profitable. Reader, has it been practised by you in days that are past, and served to recall you from your wanderings, to revive the expiring embers of your devotion, and quicken your weary steps? Doubtless it has. You remember with sacred pleasure those seasons, when under the first influences of truth, you were wont to seek a retreat in your chamber, or in the silent wood, on the evening perhaps of Saturday, to offer yourself anew to God, in the name of Jesus Christ, saying:

"Lord, I am thine, entirely thine,

Purchased and saved by blood Divine."

You recollect with deep interest those seasons of the public worship of the sanctuary, when, at the table of the Lord, or on the first Sabbath morning of a new year you have united with the people of God in singing the last verse of Dr. Watts's excellent paraphrase of the 116th Psalm :

"Here in thy courts I leave my vows,

And thy rich grace record:

Witness, ye saints, who hear me now,
If I forsake the Lord."

And who can tell the power, which these exercises have had over you; who can tell, how far they have contributed to keep your soul from going back to perdition, and to sustain your feet? And have you lately neglected the practice? Has not that neglect injured your soul? Has it not weakened your sense of obligation to God; has it not been attended with indifference to the enjoyment of the Gospel? Is there that freshness, that bloom of health, in your piety, is there that conscientiousness in your heart, and that life and vivacity in your steps, that there once was? Renew then the exercise; return to the habit; draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. By his mercies, and under the influence of the constraining love of Christ, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

T. W.

SONNET ON THE REV. R MOFFAT,

THE AFRICAN MISSIONARY.

The lion-slayer! to no fear a slave !

Hell's many-headed monster of the lake,

Folly's fleet stag that haunts th' unguarded brake
Thou hast avail'd to curb, or kill-and brave

With infinite bravery would'st dare to save

From foes obscene and fierce THE WORLD, and make
Thy pride of conquest shapes of mercy take,
And cleanse Augean souls with Truth's pure wave.
Lust thou hast quell'd-and bound wild-blooded men
With the chaste girdle of home's charities;
The bandit tam'd, with herds fill'd every glen;

Bade Afric see a new Hesperides ;

Torn the trimorphic Cerberus from his den,

Sin, Satan, Self-THE CHRISTIAN HERCULES!

"THAT THEY ALL MAY BE ONE."

Suggested by the proposal of the Rev. J. A. James, in this Magazine, for an Evangelical Union among Christians of all denominations.

O Christians, listen and rejoice!
Let sounds of conflict cease,
A moment pause to hear the voice
That speaks, to "publish peace."

Ye scatter'd tribes to Zion flow,
In holy concord come;
And wake the harmony below

That fills your heavenly home.

Why should ye dwell as strangers now,
Divided and unknown?

Your gathered myriads soon shall bow
Around your Father's throne.

Why are your anthems faint and low?
One choral hymn might rise
To bid the world your rapture know,
And fill the listening skies.

Adore the Lamb! A ransom'd throng
Will catch the strain you raise,
The feeblest voice can swell the song
That breathes a Saviour's praise!

Haste! and a wondering world shall "know"
That all the saints are "one,"

And own their fellowship below

Is heaven on earth begun.

E.

D.

THE DEMONIAC.

All spirit-haunting passions that have flashed,
Like meteors, in the sin-mists of man's mind,
Had thronged into his soul, and there out-dashed
The embers keen of reason with the wind
Of their satanic wings; then sat them down-
A legion housing in that madness frown.

A strange, fierce glare shone out of his changed e'en,

As at the windows of a pillaged tower

The light of robbers banqueting is seen;

Now hushed he lay-now with a stayless power,

Fled howling out into the wilderness

To hide in caves that echoed his distress.

Sometimes they saw him at the fall of night,
With bleeding feet, foamed lips, and haggard gait,
Tottering toward some hamlet with the blight

Of his wild glance, and bound in fear and hate
His naked limbs, till he, with one shrill cry,
Rushed like a crag rent from some peak on high-
On and yet on, through night, through day, yet on,
Deeming his shadow demons on his trace,
With demons every mountain clothed upon,

And demons staring from each cloud's grim face,
Till, faint, he crawled beneath the rayless gloom
Of cypress boughs o'er-roofing some white tomb;
There crouched, while dews and all wild winds of night
Moaned for his madness with more desolate moan,
And shed more tears than he, e'en when the night
Of maddest woe o'erswept him, weird and lone;
Upon the cold stone he laid down his head,
And fell asleep-dreaming that he was dead.
There dwelling, one thing he could love, e'en thence-
A little star, that passed night after night
Across a bright interstice in the fence

Of his dark waving leaf-roof. Oft the light
Of his keen eyes, out-peering through the gloom,
Scared some lone mourner from a loved one's tomb.

Like to a ghastly vision night hath sent

Out of her jaws, that, meeting morning, dies

Like to a spring with blackest poison blent,

Which some bright sea absorbs and purifies,

Leaving his den the Son of God he found-

And in that flood of light his maniac dreams were drowned.

The Lord looked on him,--he who had just now

Sealed mountainous waters with a windless calm,

Bade forth the fiends, and on his tortured brow
Wrote peace, and the torn soul with God's own balm
Gently healed up-and he sat clothed, restored,
Like a stilled cloud with all its storms out-poured!

R. A. V.