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But his faith, though tried, was still strong, and every attack of bodily suffering only served to confirm his hope of immediate dismission when his work was done. On Sunday, the 25th of February, 1820, Mr. Toller was so far invigorated, that, with something of his old animation shining through his wasted features, he was able to preach. He had, after awhile, taken to himself a second wife, by whom he had five children; and doubtless his people listened with a kind of awe, as if their pastor were filled with the spirit of prophecy, when he concluded that memorable sermon with these words :

"To Thee our infant race we leave;
Them may their father's God receive,
That ages yet unborn may raise
Successive hymns of humble praise."

The next day he was in glory. He was buried amid the sighs and tears of a vast multitude; ministers and members of all denominations joined with his beloved flock, sorrowing most for the words, that in this world they should see his face no more.

MISSHAPEN CHRISTIANS.

BY AN AMERICAN WRITER.*

MR. Theodore Parker declared of a great revival in Boston, that a score of such excitements would never close a dram-shop or liberate a slave. Mr. Parker saw through jaundiced eyes; and yet he caught the shadow of a truth. What was it? Not that Christians have no religion, but that their religion needs to be better distributed over the character. It does not fit them. There is cloth enough, perhaps, in the garment; but here it draws and pinches, and there it bulges out too far to even touch the

shell! We have heard it explode in the parlour and at the dinner-table, to our utter consternation. We remember also a Christian woman, whose good works were carried on night and day at high pressure. There was hardly a ragged boy in the neighbourhood who had not been clothed by her busy fingers. No box went out to any home-missionary personage without its generous contributions from her needle. But her selfwill was simply a nuisance to her husband and her friends. Conceited, sour, censorious, squeamish-she We have in mind, for example, a seemed to feel that anybody so effigood brother, who, in somethings, is cient could afford to be unlovely. a model. He is orthodox as the What if a machine-shop is a perfect Catechism. He is generous in giving. Babel of harsh noises, and a den of He loves prayer and prayer-meetings. ugly Vulcans, all begrimed with oil But he has a temper like a bomb- and dust-provided the establishment

wearer.

* The sarcasm of some passages in this paper will, it is hoped, be forgiven, for the sake of its practical value; while its rebukes will give additional point to the lessons of the paper which follows it.-ED.

turns out good work?

ered

She considherself a sort of spiritual machine-shop.

Now, why do Christians make this sorry figure of mingled beauty and deformity, like statues finished half by a sculptor and half by a stonemason; or trees, loaded with foliage and fruit on the one side, and gnarled and blasted on the other? If we only were creatures of a normal growth and development, doubtless either good or evil would wholly pervade us. There would be no mixture. When angels ceased to be angels, they became devils. A healthy, vigorous body, digests a poison, and sends it with quick pulsations through the arteries to envenom every limb. A diseased, enfeebled circulation leaves it in the stomach, to gangrene and inflame. So too with the mind. Some men have a logical straight-forwardness that darts right on from the premises to its conclusion. Their chain of reasoning flashes, like chain lightning, in an instant through its length. They can hardly imbibe an error without becoming all error. But many a good soul, short-sighted, illogical, and self-contradictory, will hold a truth and a deadly heresy, lying snugly side by side-the peacefullest bed-fellows in the world.

But what is the remedy for all the distortion in Christian lives? "More religion "many reply. But more religion, merely, will never answer. The fact is that genuine piety, true love to God, may go on increasing, and yet hardly touch these strange self-contradictions. The Baptist Watchman and Reflector declared, just after the great revivals of 1857, that there were, at that time, more dissensions and bickerings in their churches than

almost ever before. And, worse than that, this mischief was brewing in the very churches which had largely shared in the great awakening. And, worse than that, the ferment began, often, in the very midst of the revival itself! Probably churches of every sect might make the same confession.

The difficulty is the want of a special application and enforcement of religion on the special sin of the church or individual. We have gone on the false assumption that religion, once received, would apply itself. We have expected that in its liquid flow, it would diffuse itself through all the channels of the soul; as it would in

any warm, generous nature uncursed by depravity. We have forgotten that the coldness of a sinner's nature chills the stream to a sluggish current, that stops while half the channels yet are dry.

The good brother we mentioned, with the explosive temper, apparently never thought of bringing his religion to bear on that infirmity. The redoubtable sister, with her bustling charities and her ugly will, asked God for everything but the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. The churches, in the great revival, were more anxious to save souls, than to temper their zeal with love.

Now there are disciples who, it may be with no more sincerity or selfdenial than the one-sided Christians we have alluded to, have a rounded and admirable beauty of character. Take them in any state of fortune or misfortune, turn them upside down and over and over with agitations and calamities; and somehow, like a kaleidoscope, they will come up as orderly and beautiful as ever! The reason is plain. They carry their

religion around the whole scope of their character, bringing the whole equally under its power. They "grow up into Him in all things which is the Head, even Christ.”

Every one will remember the blundering military policy with which we began the war with the rebellion.

We forgot Napoleon's maxim, to be always strongest at the decisive point, however weak at any other. Precisely that is the mistake of these one-sided Christians. What cares your neighbour for your closet-hours, or your heavenly experiences, provided you meet him in a passion or over-reach him in a bargain? Be strongest at the decisive point. And the decisive point, in practical life, is the point of contact with the world. If you are weaker than your godless

neighbour there, no

matter how

mighty in grace or works you may be elsewhere.

We need more religion in every church and every heart. But if we

can learn to make the best use of what religion we already have, the gain will be immeasurable ! We want a balanced character, every grace holding every other in counterpoise. We want the circle of virtues complete. A break in it is like a break in the magic circle of the old astrologers, letting in some demon unawares. We want to remember that doing good is a small matter compared with being good. We want to breathe toward God the unceasing aspiration,

"More careful, not to serve Thee much, But please Thee perfectly."

PAINSTAKING NEEDFUL TO SPIRITUAL PROGRESS.

SOME people, without being reckless or deliberately negligent in the use of the ordinary means of grace, are nevertheless disposed to take things very easily, and to hope that all will turn out well at the last. They have got, they think, into the proper current, the current that flows heavenward, and they have no doubt that it will carry them with it, and stream them comfortably into the haven they desire to reach. But they do not take into sufficient account the eddies and cross-currents, the storms and contrary winds, which they are sure to meet with, and which render necessary all the skill, and vigilance, and energy of the best spiritual seamanship.

Or, taking another figure, Christians are plants in God's vineyard. And their advancement in godliness they conclude is to be not a manufacture

but a growth. They are not to rise higher as a wall is raised, by the toilsome addition of brick to brick, but by a living inward energy, causing spontaneous progress in heighth, and width, and strength. Now, most true in the main is this idea. No laws and rules will make Christian character what it ought to be. No mere adding of duty to duty, and of virtue to virtue, will secure the increase and expansion of the Christian character. There must be a living principle like that of the plant or tree which shall give consistency to the whole, and which shall be the true parent of both the blossoms and the fruit, the beauty and the strength of the entire spiritual

man.

But let this figure be properly understood. There are trees and plants which need no attention and

care. Weeds sow themselves, and grow and thrive anywhere without culture; but Christians are not weeds. The same may be said sometimes of our best trees. Many an acorn has dropped into the ground, and grown into a mighty oak, without man's care or culture. But let it not be forgotten that for every acorn which has thus grown, thousands have rotted and perished. You must go into the seedsman's nursery grounds to find our true symbol. There you will see saplings of all useful woods carefully tended and protected. Their proper seeds were sown by man's hands; their first sproutings were tenderly dealt with; and all that skill and watchfulness could do has been done to bring them to their present condition of young health and beauty. Byand-by they will be transplanted to the exposed common, or to the mountain side. But even there they will not be wholly neglected or left to themselves. Their bark will be protected from animals' teeth and other enemies. And if the forest should be too crowded, the forester will cut down the undergrowth, and with it, perhaps, many a beautiful tree, to secure a free circulation of air.

This is the true likeness of the Christian. He is a plant or tree, having life in himself, producing growth. But he is not independent of care and culture. Every branch that beareth fruit the husbandman purgeth, that it may bring forth more fruit.

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This is the point of our present remarks. Our Christian character is not to be left to haphazard, or to the tides and currents which may be bearing us along on their bosom. While it is to be a growth, the outward body of an inward life, it is not to be on that account untended and uncared for. The soil in which this plant is planted is unkindly, the circumstances which surround it are often very unfavourable, and the plant requires, to use Leighton's words, "much care and pains, and that of a skilful hand."

The

By this we do not mean that it must be shut up from wind and weather, as in a hothouse. Nothing could be more fatal to its life and health than such a treatment. There are exoties which carmot live in our climate except under glass, and in an unnatural heat. But put our own common trees under glass, and in such a heat, and they will perish. birch, the oak, the fir, the lime tree, must be braced by the colds and storms of winter, as well as nurtured by the genial showers and sunshine of summer. Even so is it with Christians. Shut them up where the world's breath cannot taint them, and the world's storm cannot disturb them, and you will weaken rather than strengthen them. The shoots which they shall put forth in such circumstances will be those thin, soft, leafy shoots which the vinedresser or the nurseryman, instead of culturing and preserving, cuts off, that the tree thus pruned may acquire more of strength and substance. These shoots may be taken as a true representation of the piety of the cloister, the piety that is to be attained by hot-house cultivation; a piety very different from that which has to discharge the duties of

the family and of the world, and which will alone enable us to encounter the enemies of our spiritual life.

Be it distinctly understood, then, that when we insist on the necessity of care and culture, we do not mean hothouse culture. The remark of Samuel Rutherford is as true as that of Archbishop Leighton: "Grace is a strange plant, it grows best on the weatherside of the hill." The good Covenanter knew from experience how

grace could thrive amid the storms of persecution, and believed it would not thrive so well in the sheltered sunny retreat as on the weatherside of the hill. The fact is, it will thrive in any position in which God's providence is pleased to place it, only let it have the culture which God's Word enjoins: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do, of his good pleasure.”

THE LAST OF THE GORDONS.

A MEMOIR OF THE LATE DUCHESS ELIZABETH.

Ir was the lot of the two last Duchesses of Gordon to occupy a larger space in the public eye, than is usually done even by ladies of their exalted rank. The career of both was remarkable, but remarkable in ways directly opposite. One chose the path of worldly pleasure and ambition, and pursued it with an eager recklessness which caused even her own pleasure-loving and frivolous world to stand still and gaze with wonder. Through grace the other was early led into the narrow way of holiness, and walked therein with such steadiness and zeal as to leave to the Church a bright example of devout consecration.

The story of the Duchess Jane is full of melancholy interest. Jane Maxwell, called from her exceeding loveliness, "the Flower of Galloway," became early attached to a young officer. He was ordered abroad, and afterwards tidings of his death were received.

After a season of stormy sorrow, Jane sank into a state of listless indifference, and while in this condition was easily persuaded by her

friends to receive the addresses of the Duke of Gordon. On her marriage tour a letter was brought to her, addressed to her maiden name. It was from her lover, informing her that he was on his way home to make her his wife. She rushed from the house, and after a long search was found by the side of a brook "nearly crazed." And where did this poor stricken heart seek healing and peace? Not where alone it was to be found.

She ap

pears next in the gay world, the perpetrator of many "wild frolics," yet nevertheless one of the most brilliant and potent leaders of fashion. All the pleasures which wealth and rank could bestow were hers. Her family ambition too was abundantly satisfied. Her five daughters all married noblemen, three of them dukes. But the end came. In the midst of the gay London season, the Duchess was suddenly struck with mortal illness, and then conscience awoke, and with it the agonized enquiry, "What shall I do to be saved?" Amongst her connections were two pious ladies. These she

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