have been encouraged, if not evoked, by the circumstances in which we have been situated, Christianity is meant to sanction and hallow, so as to make their objects means of good to us, or us the means of good to them. "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers." When too timid to speak of things Divine, or too far off to speak at all, God's rich gift of written language should be hallowed to godly uses. Do we think of the souls of our friends, as Newton did, when we write :-and breathe a prayer for them, as he did, when we seal up the letter? Do our sympathies embrace Christ's universal church, and do we love all true Christians, not because they are of our sect, or because they are interesting to us for their own sake, but because they are His,-the purchase of his blood, and the dwelling-place of his Spirit? Home joys will soon wither:

"Friend after friend departs:

Who has not lost a friend?
There is no union here of hearts
Which shall not know an end."

Forlorn we shall ere long be-friendless in the world of outer darkness, if our social affections be not sanctified by the faith and hope of the gospel, and if our first, chief, and strongest love be not given to that Friend "who sticketh closer than a brother."

CHAPTER XII.

HENRY MARTYN;

OR, SELF-DENIAL.

"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."— MATTHEW Xvi. 24.

WHEREVER piety is found, there is self-devotion. It is an element in the religion of angels. God's will, not their own wish, is to them the guide of life. They are "ministers of his, that do his pleasure."

Now it is very true that we conceive of them as so fully sanctified, with minds in such perfect sympathy with the infinitely perfect Mind, as to be doing their own pleasure while doing God's. We cannot doubt, that while "hearkening to the voice of his commandments," there comes up from the depths of their souls a glad response, a joyful echo; that " as face answereth to face in a glass," so does their will to the will of God. Yet there is room, perhaps, even in their case, for self-sacrifice. Such a thing may be imagined as the dwellers in Paradise foregoing repose at the call of duty; springing up, regardless of their own ease, to fulfil an arduous mission prescribed by the Divine

oracle; laying aside an intellectual pursuit, relinquishing grateful study, to perform some active service in obedience to the Divine behest. It can be conceived that in an angelic mind there are innocent predilections, which may be crossed by a supreme conviction of duty; these predilections, however, making no resistance, but falling in at once harmoniously with that mind's great master-law. Thus one can picture altars in heaven, on which seraphs may sacrifice self, the offering filling the temple with its odours, acceptable to the Divine object of such worship; grateful also to the worshipper. The rich harmonies of an angel's obedient life in praise of God, appear all the richer from this under-tone of self-denial.

The most perfect of all beings that ever entered the service of law, was Himself an example of what he enforced. The law was indeed his delight, the will of his Father was in fact his will; no thoughts nor aspirations can be conceived more entirely accordant with perfect truth and rectitude than his; yet of him it is affirmed, that "he pleased not himself." And in the light of his history, the affirmation appears most obviously true, and is most clearly explained. For had he pleased himself, he would have remained in heaven, or he would have chosen a different lot on earth, or he would have avoided the death of the cross. From the manger to the cross, his life was manifestly a progress in self-denial. His crucifixion, with its attendant woes, was its acmé-its highest climax. Self-sacrifice, then, seems to be universally, more or less, an element of holy obedience.

If in any one province of the Divine dominion more than another, self-denial must. mark obedience, surely

Y

it is in this world of ours. In the infancy of our race, when the earth and man were no otherwise than what God had made them, Eden was constituted a school of self-denial. The law which was to decide the fate of the human family was essentially a law of self-denial. The tree of knowledge was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, a tree to be desired; but God said, "Thou shalt not eat of it." Since the fall, the range of selfdenial, and the extent of its demands, have amazingly enlarged. All duty now to us more or less involves it. Virtue and piety find their foundation in its exercise. Men are prone to excess in an immoderate indulgence of their natural appetites and passions; temperance, therefore, in us involves self-denial. Men like to retain what they have: they wish to increase their stores; they are apt to covet what belongs to others; their desires of happiness, power, and glory are prone to degenerate into avarice and ambition. Then the rights of others are endangered. The interests of themselves, and those of their neighbours, clash; and therefore justice in us often involves selfdenial. Men are naturally selfish, every man looking on his own things, not on the things of others; therefore benevolence in us involves self-denial. Religion, in the form in which it is revealed and enforced by our blessed Lord, has very much in it of the same character. Repentance is the first duty enjoined in the gospel; but this is quite opposed to natural inclinations-to pride of heart, to men's characteristic unwillingness to acknowledge that they have done wrong. Faith is prescribed, and urged as the only means of acceptance with God; but does not faith contradict that self-love, self-pride, and self-flattery which are so common to

all, and which lead directly to self-righteousness and self-dependence? Spirituality is a frame of mind earnestly inculcated, but to this we are averse; for our thoughts and affections have a downward bent, and fasten on earthly things with great tenacity. Resignation to the will of God under trials, is continually required; but is it not a duty of such a character, that the name given to it is recognised as synonymous with self-denial? Hence, the spirit of self-denial runs through all morality and religion. Scope for selfdenial, however, will vary under different circumstances, in different characters, and at different periods of the same person's life. What in one man's position may be an act of self-denial, is not so in another's. The temperament of this man may make certain duties easier to him than they are to that man. Changes have taken place in customs and public opinion, which divest certain acts now of the self-sacrifice which, if performed in earlier times, they would have expressed. Through education, example, habit, some things formerly difficult have lost much of their difficulty. Especially where the grace of God has renewed the heart and purified the inclinations, and inspired Divine 'love as the governing principle of the soul, Christian duty is ever involving less and less of inward conflict, and its performance becomes more and more like a second nature. The coarser and ruder forms of selfdenial may have scarcely any place in the experience of confirmed and advanced Christians. Temperance and justice may cease to demand the sacrifice of self, for self may have disappeared as an antagonist to them. Benevolence, too, may become so pleasant, that, except in occasional instances, it may ask only what the mind