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94 "There is but a step between me and death" (1 SAMUEL XX. 3).

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Say not to thyself, To-morrow I will repent, for it is thy duty to do it daily.

He that forgets his friend is ungrateful unto him; but he that forgets his Saviour is unmerciful to himself.

It is not my good frame that makes my righteousness better, nor my bad frame that makes my righteousness worse, for my righteousness is the Lord Jesus, and He is always the same--"yesterday, to-day, and for ever."

Prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan; therefore pray often.

When God saves one great sinner it is to encourage another great sinner to come to Him for mercy.

The Greatest Street Preacher.
RCHBISHOP LEIGHTON, return-

ing home one morning, was asked by his sister, “Have you been hearing a sermon?" "I've met a sermon," was the answer. The sermon he had met was a corpse on the way to the grave. The preacher was Death. Greatest of street preachers! nor laws nor penalties can silence. No

tramp of horses nor rattling of carriages, nor rush and din of crowded streets, can drown his voice. In heathen, pagan, and Protestant countries, in monarchies and free states, in town and country, the solemn pomp of discourse is going on. In some countries a man is imprisoned for even dropping a tract. But what prison will hold this awful preacher ? What chains will bind him? He lifts up his voice in the very presence of tyrants, and laughs at their threats. He walks unobstructed through the midst of their guards, and delivers the messages which trouble their security and embitter their pleasures. If we do not meet his sermons, we cannot escape them. He comes to our abodes, and, taking the dearest objects of our love as his text, what sermons does he deliver to us! His oft-repeated sermons still enforce the same doctrine, still press upon us the same exhortation :-"Surely every man walketh in a vain show. Surely they are disquieted in vain. Here there is no continuing city. Why are you labouring for that which I will presently take from you and give to another? Take no thought for the morrow. Prepare to meet thy God!"

GOD's guidance does not make man's needless, for a very large part of God's guidance is ministered to us through men. And whenever a man's thoughts and words and words more clearly, to love them more teach us to understand God's thoughts earnestly, or to obey them more gladly, there human guidance is discharging its noblest function.-Maclaren.

GOD never deprives us of any good thing but it is to give us something better.

"Seek the Lord, and His strength" (PSALM CV. 4).

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A Free Offer of Christ to Every One. "My Beloved is Mine, and I am His.”

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for my life say that is the Gospel; but the Gospel I desire to preach to you is, Will you have a Christ to work faith, repentance, love, and all good in you, and to stand between you and the sword of Divine wrath? Here there is no room for you to object that you are not qualified, because you are such a hardened, unhumbled, blind, and stupid wretch; for the question is not, Will you remove these evils, and then come to Christ? but, Will you have a Christ to remove them for you? It is because you are plagued with these diseases that I call you to come to the Physician that He may heal them. Are you qualified for hell and damnation? and have you much mischief and misery about you? Why, there needs be no better qualifications for you to come to Christ. Are you a child of wrath? I offer Christ as a Saviour to redeem you and deliver you from the wrath to come. Are you a poor bankrupt? I offer Him who is the heir of all things; that has unsearchable riches to pay all your debt. Are you a poor ignorant creature? I offer Him as made of God unto

you wisdom. Are you guilty? I offer Him as made unto you righteousness. Are you polluted? I offer Him as made unto you sanctification. Are you miserable and forlorn? I offer Him unto you as made of God unto you complete redemption. Are you hard-hearted? I offer Him in that promise, "I will take away the heart of stone." Are you content that He break your hard heart? Come, then, put your hard heart into His hands. Ralph Erskine.

CANTICLES ii. 16.

ONG did I toil, and knew no earthly rest;

Far did I rove, and found no certain home: "At last I sought them in His sheltering breast Who spreads His arms and bids the weary come. With Him I found a home, a rest Divine; And I since then am His, and He is mine. Yes, He is mine; and naught of earthly things— Not all the charms of pleasure, wealth, or power, The fame of heroes, or the pomp of kingsGo, worthless world!" I cry, Could tempt me to forego His love an hour. "with all that's thine. Go! I my Saviour's am, and He is mine." The good I have is from His store supplied :

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The ill is only what He deems the best; With Him my Friend, I'm rich with naught beside, And poor without Him, though of all possessed.

Changes may come-I take, or I resign

Content while I am His, and He is mine.

Whate'er may change, in Him no change is seen;
A glorious Sun that wanes not nor declines,
Above the storms and clouds He walks serene,

And sweetly on His people's darkness shines.
All may depart-I fret not nor repine,
While I my Saviour's am, and He is mine.
He stays me falling; lifts me up when down;
Reclaims me, wandering; guards from every foe;
Plants on my worthless brow the victor's crown,

Which, in return, before His feet I throw,
Grieved that I cannot better grace His shrine,
Who deigns to own me His, as He is mine.
While here, alas! I know but half His love,
But half discern Him, and but half adore ;
But when I meet Him in the realms above,
I hope to love Him better, praise Him more,
And feel and tell, amid the choir Divine,
How fully I am His, and He is mine.

REV. H. F. LYTE.

ALL men will be Peters in their bragging tongue, and most men will be Peters in their base denial, but few men will be Peters in their quick repentance. THE Bible contains the maxims of Heaven in human language.

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Thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek Thee" (PSALM IX. 10).

ENJOY the blessings of this day if God sends them; and the evils bear patiently, because God sends them. For this day only is ours; we are dead to yesterday, as it also is to us, and we are not born for to

morrow.

Father's Kneeling-Place. THE children were playing "Hide the handkerchief." I sat and watched them a long while, and heard no unkind word, and saw scarcely a rough movement; but after a time, little Jack, whose turn it was to hide the handkerchief, went to the opposite end of the room, and tried to secrete it under the cushion of a big chair. Freddy immediately walked over to him, and said, in a low voice, "Please, Jack, don't hide the handkerchief there; that is father's kneeling-place."

"Father's kneeling-place!" It seemed like sacred ground to me as it did to little Freddy; and by and by, as the years roll on, and this place shall see father no more for ever, will not the of this memory hallowed spot leave an impression upon the young hearts that time and change can never efface, and remain as one of the most precious memories of the old home? Oh, if there was only a "father's kneelingplace" in every family! The mother kneels in her chamber, and teaches the little ones the morning and evening prayer, but the father's presence is often wanting; business and the cares of life engross all his time, and though the mother longs for his assistance and co-operation in the religious education of the children, he thinks it is more particularly women's work, and so leaves it all to her.

But in the pleasant room in which I am sitting, among books and flowers and sing

ing birds, and the thousand and one little things that make a family parlour homelike and cheerful, there is one sacred spot known to dear little Freddy's heart as "father's kneeling-place."

man

WITH many of us the fleeting day of life is "far spent," and the shadows that deepen. on our path remind us that it is "toward evening." Morn, with its bright hopes and promises, is past and gone, "the burden and heat of the day" is well nigh over, and "the night cometh, when no can work." Saviour! the prayer of Thy disciples of old is ours, "Abide with us;" let the angel of Thy presence go with us for the few stages that may yet remain, and when the night approaches, and we sleep the sleep of death, Jesus! still "abide with us," and in Thy love and mercy grant us to abide with Thee for ever!

Now Ready, the YEARLY PARTS for 1883 of THE GOSPEL TRUMPET, Illustrated, price 6d., or with Chromo-Lithograph on Cover, 18., post free.

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THE GOSPEL TRUMPET.

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"Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."

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"As for God, His way is perfect" (2 SAMUEL XXII. 31).

countries; but had we attempted, at the time we refer to, to land on the Continent without one, we should soon have found ourselves either arrested as of suspicious character, or ordered peremptorily to return. Our passport, which we required to carry about with us wherever we went, made way for us into France, into Italy, into Germany, and wherever we wished to go. It secured for us honourable treatment as a subject of Queen Victoria, and the protection of the laws of every country we entered. For it was granted in the Queen's name, by her Secretary of State; being also countersigned by ourselves before leaving home, in order to furnish a ready proof (if needed) of our being the very person in whose favour it was issued.

The ancient hostilities and jealousies of nations (now, we are happy to think, gradually breaking down), gave rise to such precautions on the part of Governments for the purpose of preventing the admission within their territories of dangerous persons even in time of peace, or, in time of war, of any natives of hostile countries. The peaceful subject of a friendly sovereign alone was allowed to enter.

Now we need a passport into Heaven. For sin is a state of war between us and God. The gates of the Holy City have been barred against us.

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1. It must be granted by authority of the King, even God Himself. angel's name, no man's, will open us those everlasting doors. Beware, dear friend, of trusting the opinion or the promise of any man, or your own imagination, or the devil's deceitful whispers, when you hope for Heaven. Have you a Divine passport?

2. God grants passports to Heaven only by the hand of His great Representative, to whom "all power is given in Heaven and in earth" (Matt. xxviii. 18); power over all flesh, that He may give eternal life to as many as God hath given Him (John xvii. 2). For we have been rebels against the laws of Heaven; and God in His immeasurable compassion has entrusted to His own Son, who is one with Himself, the high work, to which none else was equal, of satisfying His broken law. Now, therefore, Christ bears the glory. To Him you must apply for your passport; with His own blood He has obtained the

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