"CHRIST is the way; and he will continue such to the most advanced disciples, who will feel his moral and spiritual superiority the more, the more closely they imitate him. The greater our spiritual sensibility, the failer for us the revelation of his character, and the fuller for us the measure of his inspiration. We should believe that branch of the Church destined to wither, that severed its connection with the Vine; and the sooner it withered the better; for its fruit could be only ashes, and its seed barrenness." - Dr. Bellows.

"Oh! since from those mighty words, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you,' the veil has withdrawn itself from before me; I stand before them in amazement, as before an opened sanctuary, and know scarcely how to bear myself for astonishment and rapture at the abundance of magnificent and blessed thoughts contained therein. I behold, as it were, a throne of God erected upon this saying. Gleaming lightnings shoot forth therefrom on all sides, only to illume to my view the Holy of Holies in the temple of Christianity. The most blessed articles of the New Testament stand there grouped around it in unveiled splendors, like sweet messengers of peace; and in its centre appears the whole glory of the gospel, condensed into one wonder-teeming, majestically-refulgent, burning point." — Krummacher.

22

The Need of a Cross.

THE great want of the human soul is a Saviour; the imperative necessity of man is some one to bear his heavy burden, release him from the curse of sin, and emancipate him from the iron bondage of God's stern, relentless law. For six thousand years, the blinded, bewildered faculties of men have been groping in their stupidity among the altars, temples, schools, and systems of earth, to find some one to stand between the guilty race of Adam and the offended God of the universe; some daysman, who could touch with the same hand, weeping, crushed humanity, and unsullied, unshaken divinity. There is a universal consciousness of wrong, unrest, and danger, an unceasing call for some higher good than man has yet attained;

and the whole history of our race, the immense struggle of humanity, has been an effort, too often abortive, to reach that higher state, and secure that higher good. All men everywhere have the same unsettled and restless longings which nothing on earth can gratify. They are conscious of

"An aching void

The world can never fill."

The number of really contented persons is very small, the circle of truly satisfied mortals is very limited, and the desire of which we speak is general if not universal. The young merchant says, "When I am settled in business, and have a good run of custom; when I am proprietor of one of those marble warehouses that lift their proud fronts in yonder city, and my patrons come from all parts of the sunny South and the out-stretching West; when wealth rolls in upon me like a flood, and I can afford to live in a brownstone palace in some noble avenue or on some aristocratic street, I shall be perfectly satisfied, completely happy." He secures