In other days, when men were in want of money, they sometimes tried to manufacture gold. The alchemist gleaned a portion of every possible substance from ocean, earth, and air, and put them all into his crucible, and then subjected the medley to the most tedious and expensive processes. And after days or months of watching, the poor man was rewarded by seeing a few grains of shining metal, and in the excitement of near discovery, the sweat stood upon his brow, and he urged the fire afresh, and muttered, with trembling diligence, the spell which was to evoke the mystery. And thus, day by day, and year by year, with hungry face and blinking eyes, he gazed into his fining-pot, and stirred the molten rubbish, till one morning the neighbours came and found the fire extinct, and the ashes blown about, and the old alchemist stiff, and dead, on the laboratory floor; and when they looked into the broken crucible, they saw that after all his pains, the base metals remained as base as ever.

But though men no longer endeavour to manufacture gold, they still try to manufacture goodness. The merit which is to open heaven, the moral excellence which is to render God propitious, the fine gold of righteousness, they fancy that they can themselves elaborate. As he passed along, the apostle Paul sometimes saw these moral alchemists at work; and as he observed them so earnest for salvation-as he saw them casting into the crucible prayers, and alms, and tears, and fastings, and self-tortures, he was moved with pity. He told them that depraved humanity was material too base to yield the precious thing they wanted. He told

them that they were spending their strength for nought; and that the merit which they were so eager to create exists already. He told them that if they would only avail themselves of it, they might obtain, without restriction, the righteousness of a Divine Redeemer. "I pray that you may be saved; I sympathize with your anxiety; I love your earnest zeal, whilst I deplore your deadly error. But ignorant of the righteousness which God has already provided, and going about to establish a righteousness of your own, you are missing the great magazine of merit→→→→ the great repository of righteousness-Jesus Christ. You need not scale the heavens to bring righteousness down; you need not dive into the deep in order to fetch it up; you need not watch, and toil, and do penance, in order to create it: for it exists already there. God has made his own dear Son the sinner's righteousness, and in the gospel, offers him to all. The gift is nigh thee. It is at thy door; it is in thy hand. Receive it, and be righteous; receive it, and rejoice." And so, dear reader, if you are anxious for peace with God, accept God's own gift-the peaceprocuring righteousness. Present, as your only plea with a holy God, the atonement of his Son; despair of bringing merit out of vileness, or sanctity out of sin. With Luther, "learn to know Christ crucified; learn to sing a new song. Renouncing your own work, cry to Him, Lord, thou art my righteousness, and I am thy sin. Thou hast taken on thee what was

Rom. x. 1-12; 1 Cor. i. 30; 2 Cor. v. 21.

mine, and given to me what was thine; what thou wast not, thou becamest, that I might become what I was not."

But among the other precious commodities purchased by the Friend of Sinners, and floated to our world in that comprehensive ark, his gospel, we must notice A PEACEFUL CONSCIENCE and A CONTENTED MIND. Should this be read by any one who has lately committed a crime, or by one who has newly discovered the holiness of God and the plague of his own heart; that reader knows the horrors of a troubled conscience. And no man can make it happy. We might put it in a palace. We might promote it to tread ancle-deep on obsequious carpets, or embosom it in balm and down. We might bid Araby breathe over it, and Golconda glitter round it. We might encircle it with clouds of hovering satellites, and put upon its head the wishing-cap of endless wealth. But if we have not taken the barb from its memory, the festered wound from the spirit,-the pale foreboding, the frequent gloom, the startled slumber will pronounce these splendours mockery and all this luxury a glittering lie.

And even where there is not this sharp anguish, there is in the worldling's spirit a secret wretchedness, and a prevailing discontent. He longs for something, he scarce knows what; and this dim craving degenerates to a depraved voracity. He feeds on husks and ashes, or even poisonous fruits. He tries to feast his soul with fame and glory, or satiates it with sensual joys and voluptuous revelries. But from the visionary banquet he wakens up, and still his soul hath appetite;

or recovered from the drunken orgy he recognises in his besotted self a fiend imprisoned,-his guilty soul the demon, and his embruted frame the dungeon. And be the diversion what it may, nothing will make a godless spirit truly happy. Get an unexpected fortune, and rise to sudden grandeur; lounge away your mornings in sumptuous club-rooms, and flutter out your evenings at balls, and plays, and operas; roam through continental vineyards or over northern moors; dawdle the long day in Brighton news-rooms, or trip it on Ramsgate Pier; gallop over Ascot, or yacht it round the Needles; and from each famed resort and costly recreation, the lover of pleasure must still bring back a hollow heart and a hungry soul.

But tarry where you are-continue in your present toilsome calling; and pray that prayer, "There be many that say, Who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us, and put gladness in our heart, more than when corn and wine increase." Learn, that for Christ's sake, God is reconciled to you, and life will wear another aspect. You will be like the primitive believers, after they received the remission of their sins. You will eat your meat with gladness, praising God. The same fir table is still your daily board, and from a homely trencher you still despatch your frugal meal. Work is still wearing, and winters are still severe, and still there will come hard times and heavy trials. But with heavenly entertainment at each repast, and a divine assurance deep in all your soul; in covenant with the beasts of the earth, and in league with the stones of the field,

you will pass, a cheerful pilgrim, through a smiling universe, and enjoy on earth your first of heaven.

And if you ask, which package in the freight,which passage in the book contains this priceless blessing? there are many which only need to be opened in order to obtain it. "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." "God is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us we pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." "This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life." "There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus."* Here is the amnesty, and you, my dear reader, are invited to accept it. So far as you are concerned, nothing lies nearer the heart of Jehovah than your return to his Fatherly bosom; and for this very purpose he has sent you the conditions of peace. These conditions have already been fulfilled by his own dear Son as the sinner's Representative, and to that red hand-writing you have only to countersign your consenting name. And no sooner do you thus fall in with God's way of saving sinners, than his beaming eye pronounces over *Is. i. 18; 2 Cor. v. 19-21; 1 John, v. 11, 12; Rom. viii. 1.