Are we thus magnified? Has the image of the earthly passed away, and given place to the new-the heavenly impress? Look into your hearts. Are the characters of the new man there visible and distinct? Look into the course and tenour of your life. Does the fulness of the renewed principle pour its sanctity and odour through your meek and healing speech,-through your righteous and beneficent actions? 4. By the new and elevated ends for which it teaches us to live. How low are the objects and pursuits of worldly men! For gild, and adorn, and hide them as you please; let them give to trifling the air of business, and to selfishness the aspect of public good and regard to the social benefit of others; the whole may be resolved into the epicurean maxim, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." A selfish and temporary gratification and interest is the sole epitome. But the ends of living proposed in our religion, and which are seriously kept in view by every true Christian, are of a kind as ennobling as those of worldly men are debasing and destructive; the approbation of God; regard to do his will as our only rule in all things; living not for ourselves, but for others; and the final acceptance of our persons in "the day of his appearing." By these ends true religion magnifies man; but have they caught our eye, and do they fix our undeviating regards? 4. It magnifies him by its singular principles of faith and love. By its faith; which is not the mere assent of the judgment, but the trust of the heart. It is the evidence of unseen things; that which makes visible the invisible God, as Witness, Ruler, Judge, and Saviour, "near at hand and not afar off,” so that we learn to walk with God, and to fear nothing but him, and to hope in nothing but him. It is that which unveils, too, the invisible world, as well as the invisible God, and teaches man to try all present things by measures taken from eternity, and to refer all actions to their fruits and effects there. By love; as singular a principle, and as peculiar to Christianity as faith; for it is not a mere philosophic approbation; it is not admiration of God merely, nor esteem for his perfect and holy character; but it is ardent attachment to Him as the supreme Excellence; it is an infinite gratitude to Him as to an infinite Benefactor; it is delight and joy in Him as our Father; it is the principle which leads to communion with God through the Holy Ghost, and which sensibly unites every soul made vital by regenerating grace, with the vital influence of God. It is not necessary to stay to point out what is so obvious, that such principles must, wherever they vigorously exist, be the source of great and high thoughts, purposes, affections, powers, and enjoyments.-RICHARD WATSON. A MINISTER'S VIEW OF THE DUTY OF [From an Address to the Parishioners of St. Ebbe's, Oxford.] I HAVE also, my friends, every reason to thank God, with all my heart and soul, that he has been pleased to bless me with helpers and fellow-labourers to supply my lack of service in behalf of my flock. The exertions of those who have kindly undertaken to visit their poor brethren and sisters in the hour of sickness and distress, and to spread abroad, as far as they can in the district committed to their charge, the Gospel-seed and leaven-their exertions are, doubtless, most acceptable to God through the great and good Shepherd of his people. Let me entreat you to continue your labour of love with renewed zeal every day; consider how true a blessing you may be to your respective neighbourhoods; and do not fail to ask continually for help from heaven in this important and lovely work of faith. But let me remind you that your spiritual work is only that of a helper, and not of a minister. You may speak with love, kindness, and entreaty, but not with authority. You may out of God's word admonish and comfort the needy sinner as a brother; but you must not rebuke or teach as an overseer or father. You make speak as the oracles of God; but you cannot speak as ambassadors for Christ, or deal as ministers and stewards of his mysteries. If you succeed in doing any good work, then be thankful and humble; give to God alone all the glory for making use of you as an unworthy instrument in his hands of love. And let humility be the daily dress of those who have consented to "feed the lambs of Christ," to teach his little ones in the Sunday-schools. The souls of that dear little flock are, in a way, committed to your charge. Before you will be able to instruct them, you must be yourselves instructed by the Spirit of God. Search, therefore, without ceasing the holy Scriptures, and pray without ceasing for wisdom from above; reading by the light of the Spirit, and praying in the Holy Ghost. And what a delightful thought, to think, and hope, and believe, that when the day of account shall come, you may each lead up to the throne of Christ some little tender spirit, whose feet you may have been allowed to guide in the ways of pleasantness, and to direct into the paths of peace! And doubt not but that your reward of grace shall be great indeed; it shall be with Urbane and the beloved Persis, with Tryphena and Tryphosa, with Phebe and with Clement, and with other fellow labourers, whose names are in the book of life.- -Rev. JOHN GARNIER, M.A. CHRISTIAN CHARITY. Ir is a cruel mockery of our nature to represent Christian charity with all the decorations of a heathen goddess, and arrayed in the fond and romantic ornaments that charm and invite the imagination. Alas! Christian charity has no wings to bear her through a purer and loftier atmosphere, while she showers down blessings upon the multitude beneath, she does not drop the sheaf into the poor man's bosom, or the garland upon his cottage while she passes in her car of triumph over his head. But sometimes she is found in the most loathsome of human habitations, and in contact with wretches from whose guilt or whose misery the moral sense recoils, and at which the refinement of education shudders in disgust: sometimes her figure is scarcely discernible while she struggles her lonely and weary way through the crowd of poverty, impurity, and sin. She may be seen turning into the dark and comfortless hovel, and speaking the blessed Gospel of God over the dying embers of a winter's fire, to the shivering, perhaps hardened, beings that surround it. At other times, she stands over the damp and squalid bed, where the frame is racked with suffering and disease—where perhaps conscience is doing her angry work, or is lying still more fearfully asleep. It is folly to attempt to reconcile this to the Christian's mind, by painting her with the graces and virtues in her train. Alas! even the blessed beings that are then perhaps actually around him. -the constituted authorities of Heaven, that minister to a Christian's imagination, and upon which his fancy is permitted to repose, even these often appear to forsake him; the guardian-angel seems to stand far aloof above the cabin that is the scene of pollution and depravity; the waving of golden pinions is but dimly seen through the soiled and shattered lattice; the song of cherubim and seraphim is only heard faintly, aloft and at a distance, through broken intervals, between the shrieks of bodily pains or the groans of mental agony. But the Christian recollects, that there was one gracious Being who went before him, and who left an invigorating spirit behind him, whose office was to support those whom all the world had forsaken. [Wolfe's Remains.] LIGHT IN DARKNESS*. [A Narrative.]1 Ir was about Christmas, 1833, that my attention was called to a new case of extreme distress, within the limits of a District Visiting Society with which I was connected; and well do I remember the feeling of hopelessness that mingled with the pity it could not fail to call forth. In a small room of the humblest description, and nearly destitute of any other furniture than a bundle of rags in one corner, which served as a bed, was a young woman of rather prepossessing appearance and manner, but barely covered from the inclemency of the season, with an infant a few months old, suffering severely from hooping-cough. Her story was soon told.—After sinking from one degree of poverty to another, till reduced to utter destitution, her husband had left his wife and child, and gone to some part of the coast, in the hope of getting away to sea. She expressed not only much gratitude for the trifling present relief, which could not be withheld, but an earnest desire to be directed to any kind of employment by which she might be enabled to support herself. After supplying a few of her most urgent necessities, we endeavoured to put the sincerity of this desire to the test, by giving her • Published by Seeleys; the profits to be given to a District Visiting Society. coarse needle-work, sending her on errands, &c.; and were pleased to find her always willing and trustworthy. Looking at her, meantime, as not only a distressed fellow-creature, but an immortal being, we were gratified by discovering some traces of early instruction, which she said she had received in a Sunday-school, and which the circumstances of her after-life had not altogether obliterated from her mind. The winter passed away. One of great privation and suffering it necessarily was to poor B. No tidings cheered her from her husband, and with a little sickly infant, it was impossible for her to procure any permanent employment. Nor did the summer bring any very decided improvement in her situation: but her invention was continually taxed to devise some means of extricating herself from her dependent state; and though one after another failed, and all were not of a kind we could have recommended her to try, anything seemed preferable, in her mind, to sitting down in idleness. This marked characteristic, as far as regarded her temporal condition, we could not but take as a token for good; and the willing attention she gave to any means of instruction we pointed out to her, led us to hope that yet better things were in store for her. Few and faint were the first dawnings of spiritual light that we traced in the look of interest or the glistening tear that marked either our observations to her, or her own occasional allusions to what she heard in the house of God, where she had become a regular attendant; but they were hailed as harbingers of coming brightness; and proved, blessed be God, not as the beautiful "morning cloud, that soon passeth away," but "as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." For its increase, so gradual as to be scarce perceptible, except by comparing long periods with each other, we waited and watched, often fearful of the peculiar snares and temptations inseparable from her station in life, and to which she appeared peculiarly exposed, from a naturally yielding disposition. But as we found increasing ground to hope that the "good work" was really begun in her, we rested in the blessed confidence that "He who had begun" it, would assuredly also "fulfil it until the day of Christ Jesus." About two years passed by in this manner, unmarked by any particular incident in her little history, except that |