as man never spake; and irresistibly persuasive must have been the gracious words which fell from his lips, to have induced so many to turn to Him as their Master, whom they beheld in the form of a servant.

NOTE K. Page 81.

In the history of our Lord, we find that some said," He is beside himself;" we know that of St. Paul it was said, that much learning had made him mad; and we are quite sure, that if the world had to write a comment upon the latter part of the parable of the prodigal son, his deep humiliation and repentance, his willingness to be made even as a hired servant in his father's house, and in gratitude for that paternal love which had instantly received and freely forgiven, to work out his own salvation with fear and trembling, it would run thus ; "He went from one extreme to the other, from having been an outrageous sinner,

1 Happy are those who can answer with St. Paul, "whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God."

he all at once became an outrageous saint, losses and disappointments weakened his intellect, obscured his judgment, and destroyed the powers of his understanding." Every body knows that this would be the language of the world; that turn, however, which the world would consider synonymous with an aberration of the mind, our Lord describes as a restoration to its sane and vigorous functions, "When he came to himself." Now as these two judgments are diametrically opposed to each other, one of them must be false: which is it? We leave to our reader to decide.

NOTE L. Page 82.

We feel sure that, amongst worldly people,' there are to be found few, perhaps none, in

By worldly people, we must not be supposed to mean those who, keeping up a social and hospitable intercourse with their fellow-creatures, make for themselves opportunities of usefulness, which would be lost to them in the retirement (the sometimes selfish retirement) of a life of seclusion. By people of the world, we mean those whose thoughts,

whose inmost hearts there does not lurk a feeling of insecurity-a perhaps-a possibility, that all may not be quite so safe, that they may not be just quite so right, as their words (full of confidence and presumption) would lead you to believe they thought themselves; and slight as this feeling may be, yet it is so disagreeable, that to drive it from their minds. is the chief object of life; but

"As slight withal may be the things that bring

Back to the mind the weight that it would fling
Aside for ever,"

so an unexpected1 allusion to sacred things, perhaps in their social hours, an unexpected

feelings, and affections, centre entirely here, who consider all serious reflection as an enemy to their peace, all religious consideration as high treason against that world to which they have sold themselves, for which alone they live, in which alone they mean to die.

1 We say unexpected, because it is extraordinary how the man of the world, who cannot endure the slightest allusion to sacred things out of the church, will yet listen with patience, sometimes, indeed, with complacency, to the Sunday's sermon, delivered in all due form from the pulpit. The reason of this is obvious; he goes prepared for all he is to hear at church; he knows that it is the preacher's business to exhort, to reprove, to threaten : it is a thing of course,

exhortation to examine the scriptural grounds of their faith, a direct and personal appeal to the feelings in behalf of religion, startles into life this dormant feeling of insecurity, awakens this obnoxious doubt, which, when once dragged out of its lurking-place, is to some like the sting of an insect, a something, a nothing, not enough to make them feel the want, or seek the assistance of the balsam, but enough to fret, to worry, and to interfere with the sun-shiny and indolent enjoyment of a summer's day. With others of deeper sensi

and things of course, however important they may be in themselves, like the rising and setting of the sun every day over our heads, seldom make an impression on the mind. The preacher, too, deals in generalities; he tells us that we are all sinners, and the man who would be the very last to say, with Cassio, in the true spirit of christian humility, “One imperfectness shews me another, until I frankly despise myself," may yet be very ready to give a lip-assent to the doctrine of universal sinfulness. Again, the preacher tells us, that we must all be regenerated, and the man who is willing enough in religion, as well as in politics, to cry out for a general reform, may yet be the very last who feels disposed in his own proper person to pluck out the right eye, to cut off the right hand, and cast out from himself the sins that do most easily beset him.

bilities, or who have greater cause for selfreproach, this awakened feeling of insecurity

"Comes o'er them like a cloud

To damp their brainless ardours ;"

and just as they are preparing to beguile the thing they are by seeming otherwise, and, like Macbeth, to be "large in mirth," it conjures up the ghost of some sin gone by, to dash the cup of pleasure from their lips. Fain would they persuade themselves that the exhortation was out of place, and, therefore, they liked it not; that the appeal was out of season, and, therefore, they liked it not: they must not, however, lay that flattering unction to their soul, for if all were right within, the remembrance of the bounteous Giver of every blessing we enjoy, would, even in our social hours, serve but to gild with a brightness which they cannot in themselves possess, the glad moments of innocent festivity, as the sun gilds the light clouds which flit along the pure surface of a summer sky, "leaving no spot or blame behind." If all were right within, the word of the Lord could never be out of place, his praise never out of season; but all is not right within, and "the word of the Lord