Magdalene and the other Mary could not have rolled away the stone from the door of the sepulchre; but hastening to the place, they found it removel. And sinners will find every obstacle which bars their way to God and heaven removed, when they present themselves to God a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable in his sight. And they who will make this offering now, shall rejoice evermore in a crucified, risen, and glorified Saviour, as their Lord and their God.

THE KIND OF MINISTRY WANTED.

THE ministry should not only be endowed with the genial spirit of the age, but should be able to meet the new questions that are coming up in every generation, and to apply to them, in view of an intelligent community, the great principles of religion. In the time when Antony began to make the monastic system popular in Egypt, and Benedict in Italy, what was needed was a ministry so imbibed with sound theology that that question-the great question of the age-could be met and settled by the true principles of the gospel. In the time when an undue respect began to be shown to relics, to consecrated temples, and to burial places, and the church was degenerating into a base superstition, what was demanded was such a ministry as could have met that question, and apply to it the principles of sound philosophy and theology. So in every age, there are new questions that are to be met by the ministry; and unless they show themselves cempetent to apply to them the principles of their religion, they fall behind their generation, and show themselves incompetent to their work. Never were more such questions started than in this age, and never was there more need of studying profoundly the great principles of religion, by those who take upon themselves to be the guides of the public mind. The true questions which agitate this age are not those of the monastic system or the crusades, or the points mooted by the "angelic doctors" Aquinas and Scotus; nor are they the questions about the "three orders" in the ministry, or the apostolic succession, or the inquiries that have been started at Oxford. There has been, indeed, and is, an attempt to foist these inquiries of bygone years upon this generation, and it is well to be prepared to meet them; but those are not the things that are moving the mind of the world in this age. How limited, after all, is the circle which these inquiries can agitate! How few of the race at large can be interested in the question about the "three orders," or the "succession!" There are deeper things moving on the public heart. Great questions of liberty, of government, of education, of freedom of thought, of temperance, of right to the Bible, of exclusiveness, of war and peace, of the social organization, of the adaptation of the Christian religion to man, are the points which

this age, as such, is looking at; and a man may be an entire master of all the theology that can be made to converge around the questions that have come up at Oxford, and yet never awake to the inquiry whether he is in the eleventh or nineteenth century; and while he is re-arguing points which have been determined ages ago, society shall move on in strides which he will never dreani of overtaking, towards the point which it is destined yet to reach, and all they of Oxford, and all who moot similar questions to those agitated there, shall be left far behind.

But further. A preacher should not only be able to appreciate his age, and to come up to it in adapting his instructions to the great questions which are started in the times in which he lives, but he should be in advance of his age. He should be able intelligently to take positions to which society in its progress has not yet come up, but which it will most certainly reach in its onward progress. He should be able to throw himself into the future, and, taking his stand on great principles which are to live in all times, and which are yet to be regarded as settled principles, he should be prepared to defend them, and to do what in him lies to bring the world to embrace them. There are not a few such in the Bible -in the comparatively unexplored views of divine truth, which are to be brought out, and which are to make the world what it is yet to be. Whether those positions have been held in the past or not; whether his own age adopts and practices on them or not, he who preaches the theology of the Bible should defend them, and should be able to show what important changes the fair application of the principles of the New Testament would make in the world. The men who have done much for the race have gone in advance of their age; they have maintained positions, offen in the midst of much persecution, which society had not yet reached, but to which it was destined yet to come, and have shown their greatness, and their sagacity, and their acquaintance with the oracles of truth, by being able to take such advanced positions, and by holding and defending them in the face of the sneers and the frowns of the world. Such men were Luther and Knox; such men were the Puritans and the Pilgrims; such a man, in relation to the rights of conscience, to war and slavery, was William Penn. Thus, now, we are to take our stations on the watch-towers, and defend not only what has been defended, and maintain not only what has been inwrought into the texture of society, but we are to search out and maintain those great principles which will prevail in the world's millennium, and to which, though slowly, yet most certainly, the world is advancing. The theology to be preached is not only that which has been settled as true in past times by experience; not only that which is fitted to the great questions of these times, but that which will be fitted to the state of the world when society shall have made its highest progress, and shall have reached the point on which the eyes of prophets and apostles were fixed.-Rev. Mr. Barnes.

THE DOOR OF HOPE CLOSED.

It will be a most fearful thing to him who finds at last the door of hope and of heaven closed and barred against him for ever. Let the impenitent reader of this seriously revolve in his mind this dreadful thought, and imagine the possibility of the tremendous result in his own case, till his heart deeply feels the force of the momentous truth.

Few men have had deeper experience than Bunyan, or have been able to present these affecting truths more vividly or impressively before the mind. In his work on the unspeakable loss of the soul, Bunyan writes the following solemn dialogue between God and the lost sinner. After recounting the conduct of the sinner, and his treatment of the great offers of salvation, Bunyan says:

Of all these things God takes notice, writes them down, and seals them up for the time to come, and will bring them out, and spread them before them, saying, I have called, and you have refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; I have exercised patience, and gentleness, and long suffering towards you, and in all that time you despised me, and cast me behind your back; and now the time, and the exercise of my patience, when I waited upon you, and suffered your manners, and did bear your contempts and scorns, is at an end; wherefore I will now arise, and come forth to the judgment that I have appointed. But, Lord, saith the sinner, we turn now.

But now, saith God, turning is out of season; the day of my patience is ended.

But, Lord, says the sinner, behold our cries.

But you did not, says God, behold nor regard my cries.

But, Lord, saith the sinner, let our beseeching find place in thy compassions.

But, saith God, I also beseeched, and I was not heard.
But, Lord, says the sinner, our sins lie hard upon us.

But I offered you pardon when time was, says God, and then you did utterly reject it.

But, Lord, says the sinner, let us therefore have it now.
But now the door is shut, saith God.

And what then? Why, then, by way of retaliation, God will serve them as they have served him; and so the winding up of the whole will be this-they shall have like for like. Time was when they would have none of him, and now God will have none of them. Time was when they cast God behind their back, and now he will cast away their soul. Time was when they would not heed his calls, and now he will not heed their cries.