sleepless watchings and sacrificings, can the counterfeit coin be any the more worth acceptance?

Counterfeit money always costs labor. Some gangs of counterfeiters labor harder on the productions of their base coinage, than the most industrious men for the good of society. And they always have a mixture of good metal. But all the great cost, pains, toil, self-denial, labor, and danger they have undergone cannot shield them from the penalty, nor make the coin go. If the die be not that of the government, it must be condemned. And so, if prayers and tears and labors after heaven have not Christ's signature, the bills are forged, and must be condemned. And this the more severely, because Christ always stood ready to give his signature, had it been asked; had the bills been given up to him, to do with them as he pleased, and not used for self without regard to him, they should have been accepted. He would have put his own name on the back of them, and so made them good, even though before they were worthless. The very act of bringing them to him would have legalized them. But as selfpossessions, self-complacencies, and self-riches, they are forgeries and vile.

We see, then, our entire dependence upon Christ. It is this which self-despair teaches. In ourselves how blind, ignorant, proud, deluded, self-seeking, helpless, hopeless. At every point turned away from God, and unlike him; dependent on him for grace to see Christ, even when Christ is directly before us. And even when convinced of sin, and anxious after heaven, still so blinded by selfishness, that we think we will gain heaven by praying, laboring, scourging, mourning, anything, everything, rather than letting all things go in self-despair, trusting to Christ; blinded thus until God opens our eyes. What wretched, lost, utterly miserable sinners!

Do we exaggerate in all this? God forbid. It is not possible. And the worst of all is, that we do not see nor feel this misery. But in the midst of it all, we march up

to the temple with the Pharisee, and though we have nothing but groans, and forced confessions of guilt and misery to bring with us, yet even out of these we extract the plea of self-confidence and self-righteousness. We pray thus with ourselves, God, I thank thee that I can at least bring sorrowful penance and good desires, and am thus on the way back from my sins, the way of salvation. Certainly, God, thou wilt have mercy on me after such long groaning and praying. What perpetuated, insidious, insinuating, hidden, subtle forms and wiles of self! And what misery, what wretchedness, to be thus under the dominion and deceptions of this lying, sinful, selfish self! Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me!

Aye! here is the point of self-despair, the soul sinking, lost, undone, convinced of it at length, and out of the very stress and agony of the consciousness of sinking into hell. crying out to Christ for mercy! Here is the very point where mercy can come, safely, lastingly. Here self is down, abased, quitted, lost; nothing left but a mere outcry of despairing faith to Christ. It is just such utterly lost souls that Christ came to seek and to save. And is not this infinitely better than to take a soul's counterfeit money? Is not this a merciful refusal on the part of Christ, and a most merciful and gracious discipline, to strip the soul of self before blessing it? You perhaps think Christ a hard master, because he says, Deny thyself, and, He that seeketh his life shall lose it; but he can be a kind and good master in no other way. If he should let you into heaven before you have been beaten down into this despair of self, and crucified, it would be no heaven to you. You must indeed be crucified with Christ, before you can be saved in Christ.

And now, art thou willing to learn this by experience? Dost thou wish to be thus humbled, and crucified, and selfdespairing in Christ? Then come to Christ. For he only can be the beginning of humility, freedom, and mercy to thy soul But alas, this way of salvation for us is only too

easy. If we were shut up to the law alone, and the burden of guilt were thrown and left upon us at the gates of hell, and no Saviour offered, perhaps then we would be crying out for a Saviour. If the way of salvation had been so plain to Luther at the beginning, in the midst of his ignorance, as it is to us in the midst of our light, very likely we should never have heard of Luther's religious experience. That experience grew out of self-despair.

My God! how perfect are thy ways!

But mine polluted are;

Sin twines itself about my praise,

And slides into my prayer.

When I would speak what Thou hast done

To save me from my sin,

I cannot make thy mercies known,

But self-applause creeps in.

Divine desire, that holy flame,
Thy grace creates in me;
Alas! impatience is its name,
When it returns to thee.

This heart a fount of evil thoughts,
No constant rest can know,
While self upon the surface floats,
Still bubbling from below.

Let others in the gaudy dress
Of fancied merit shine,

The Lord shall be my righteousness,
The Lord for ever mine.

CHAPTER XIII.

Faith guided of God.-Unbelief left to itself.-The separating pillar.—Sun-· shine and darkness in the same dispensation.-The source of infidelity.

If there are no great incidents on a journey, little ones may be useful. Every day's occurrences have their purpose, trifling though they may seem. My trunk shuts with a spring. One day in travelling, after I had opened my trunk, I carelessly threw the key upon the top of the articles in it, and then, forgetting this circumstance, I shut down the lid, and there it was, fast closed, with the key itself inside. I could not get it open in any way, but had to send for a locksmith. I was thinking afterwards what possible good could come out of this accident, which cost me on a journey some loss of time, and seemed very foolish. In the first place, the locksmith and I entered into a religious conversation, while he was at work upon the trunk. Some good, very possibly, came out of that. In the second place, it might teach me to be more careful. In the third place, it made me think of the need and office of faith, for the use of our knowledge.

Faith is to the understanding with its treasures of sacred knowledge, what a key is to a well filled trunk. You cannot get at these treasures, for the use of them, without violence, but by the exercise of faith. It is faith which opens the understanding, and shows God and divine things in it, and the divine meaning of the things which the understanding encompasses. But faith is above the understanding. Now some men make it inferior. They

put the understanding uppermost. They shut down the lid of the understanding upon faith, which is about as bad as my shutting up the key of my trunk inside of it. The key was of no use whatever in that position, and all my goods and wearing apparel, and books besides, were of no use to me while thus shut up, if I could not get at them. And just so, though a man possess all knowledge, yet if he have not faith to get at its true meaning, and make a right application of it, it is of no use; he must have the key. But some religionists wish to pack all mysteries into their understanding, and the key besides. When this is the case there is no way but to have it taken to the locksmith. And the locksmith can tell any man that his trunk is a finite thing, yea, though he should bring to be mended a trunk as big and as splendid as St. Paul's Cathedral. It is a finite thing, and cannot hold all mysteries, but only some fragments and germs of truth, some beginnings of knowledge, something given to him of God, and some poor and partial guesses of his own. And the bigger he thinks it is, and the more he prides himself upon it, the less of real truth it will hold, and the more easily it gets out of order, and then he himself can do nothing with it.

When the heart gets out of order, only he that made the heart can set it right. Only he who knoweth all its springs, sees precisely what is wrong, and knows just where and how to apply the remedy. Even when God has given us faith, and the key of the trunk is not lost, the lock itself may be out of order. A constant waiting upon God is necessary.

For Reason still, unless divinely taught,

Whate'er she learns, learns nothing as she ought.

The lamp of Revelation only shows

What human wisdom cannot but oppose.
That man, in nature's richest mantle clad,
And graced with all philosophy can add,
Though fair without, and luminous within,
Is still the progeny and heir of sin.