a closer connection than you think between your multiplication of new moons and sacrifices, and the mournful companies that are going down to the chamber of death? If they be not the "crying sin," may they not be one of the causes that produce it? Or, if they do not actually produce it, do they tend to prevent its immediate removal? No crime is so small that we can afford to commit it, no mistake so slight that we can afford to make it. A single misplaced figure in the calculation sends a ship plunging upon the pitiless rocks, and the waters sweep over it forever.

That people sin is no reason why we should go on blundering. Our brother's faults are no excuse for our foibles. Because men cheat each other, shall we lie in bed in the morning? Shall we pursue a course of action not the best, because it is not the worst?

In

Man's chief end is to glorify God. But there are two ways of glorifying him; one is to worship him, the other is to work with and for him. the one, we meet to call upon his name, to praise his excellences, to discover his will; in the other, we strive, or ought to strive, to get his Gospel into the heart, and bring it out in the life, of Smith the merchant, and Brown the farmer, and Jones the pickpocket, and Jenkins the politician. If a great sin stands in the way of Christ, and prevents his advance, by all means slay the great sin; but if a little error retards his ap

proach, do not hesitate to remove that, even if the sin be not slain. Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with thy might.

I do not consider that those who stop at home in the morning because it is cloudy, in the afternoon because it is warm, in the evening because it is foggy,—who saunter lazily, or ride aimlessly, or read indiscriminately, or doze listlessly through the Sabbath hours, have solved the problem. While I do not desire to see the Sabbath become a Jewish rite on the one hand, neither do I desire to see it become a German holiday on the other, but a Christian festival. It should be a day of rest; but indolence and negligence are not rest; nor is a mere ceasing from labor the highest kind of rest.

Let us neither

Let it be the

The Sabbath was made for us. abuse nor neglect, but use it. servant of our souls; not the slave either of our prejudice or our folly. I claim and desire no liberty but that wherewith Christ hath made us free. That I want in largest measure.

O for the tender, loving, considerate spirit of Christ, who, by a new consecration, gave the Sabbath doubly to man, to be alike the servant of his humblest needs and his highest aspi

rations!

4*

F

OTWITHSTANDING the high estimation in which we hold public worship, we keep back a large part of the community from joining in public worship. While with one hand we unduly press men into the Church, with the other we unjustly shut them out. This must be wrong. Any system must be wrong which prevents the poor from hearing the Gospel. When the disciples of John would know from Christ's own lips whether he was indeed the Messiah, the Deliverer, he gave them certain signs whereby they should be able to judge for themselves. One of these signs was "the poor have the Gospel preached unto them." If that was a criterion in the days of Christ, I know no reason why it should not be a criterion now. But if it is, there are many churches whose creed may be profoundly orthodox, yet whose practice in this respect would not entitle them to be called Christian churches.

Magnificent church edifices are not objectionable, if rightly come by. Nothing is too rich, too beautiful, too grand, for the temple of the Most High; but if, when these structures are built, they are accessible only to the rich, they are not the temples of the Lord, but the temples of the money that built them. I do not see how they can be anything but an abomination to the Lord. A majority of Christians profess to believe that the ordinances of the Sabbath day are an especial and paramount "means of grace." If, then, Christians build costly churches, and cause that "every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys," what are they doing but practically and effectually, on their own showing, shutting poor people away from the means of grace? Combining the doctrines and the customs of some churches, we can but arrive at the conclusion, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven. Why should we send money to convert the heathen abroad, and shut church-doors in the faces of poor Christians at home? We do it. Pew-rents in several - I think in many-of the churches in our large cities are such as to render it impossible, not only for the impoverished, but wellnigh impossible for any but the rich, to obtain seats. A mechanic, moving into the city from a country village, with a family to support, a clerk with a salary of a thousand dollars, a young

merchant struggling for existence, cannot take a pew and go to church with his family. And if he stays at home, and gradually loses the distinctiveness of Sunday, -if his children grow up without any church home, or any of the influences and associations that often do, and always should, cluster around a church home, am I my brother's

keeper?

How must these things look to those who are thus shut out? The industrious and respectable mechanic, who has been trained under religious influences, though he has not wholly yielded to them, and who, coming from the social and homelike country into the city, naturally seeks among the first requisites a place where his family may weekly worship according to their wont, — what does he think, how does he feel, as he turns away from one and another church because the expense will not permit him to enter? The povertystricken, squalid, houseless, friendless poor, do such customs tend to induce the belief and the faith that Christianity is the common blessing of all mankind? How long shall the right hand baffle the left? How long shall we declare that the Gospel is to be the redemption of all, that the good tidings of great joy shall be to all people, and then stall up the very place where that Gospel is dispensed, the very place where those good tidings are proclaimed, as closely and exclusively as if salvation were the prerogative of moneyed