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LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

CHILDREN, do you love each other? Are you always kind and true? Do you always do to others

As you'd have them do to you?

Are you gentle to each other;
Are you careful day by day
Not to give offence by actions,
Or by anything you say?

Little children, love each other;
Never give another pain;
If your brother speak in anger,
Answer not in wrath again.

Be not selfish to each other;
Never spoil another's rest;
Strive to make each other happy,
And you will yourselves be blest.

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BY THE REV. J. C. RYLE, HELMINGHAM, SUFFOLK.

EADER!" Guilty!" is all that any one, young or old can say of himself before God. Before men we may pass muster tolerably well. We may be moral and respectable. But when we draw nigh to God we can say nothing but "guilty! guilty! God be merciful to me a sinner!"

We are all great sinners. Sinners we were born, and sinners we have been all our lives. We take to sin naturally from the very first. No child ever needs schooling and education to teach it to do wrong. No devil or bad companion ever leads us into such wickedness as our own hearts. And the wages of sin is death. We must either be forgiven, or lost eternally.

We are all guilty sinners in the sight of God. We

have broken His holy law. We have transgressed His precepts. We have not done His will. There is not a commandment in all the ten which does not condemn us. If we have not broken it in deed we have in word; if we have not broken it in word, we have in thought and imagination-and that continually. Tried by the standard of the fifth chapter of St. Matthew, there is not one of us that would be acquitted. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, so after this comes the judgment. We must either be forgiven, or perish everlastingly.

When I walk through the crowded streets of London, I see hundreds and thousands of whom I know nothing beyond their outward appearance. But one thing I know for a certainty, as I look upon them, they are all sinners. There is not a soul among them all but is guilty before God. There breathes not the man or woman in that crowd but must die forgiven, or else rise again to be condemned for ever at the last day.

When I look through the length and breadth of Great Britain, I must make the same report. From the Land's End to the North Foreland,--from the Isle of Wight to Caithness, from the Queen on the throne to the pauper in the workhouse,- -we are all sinners.

When I turn to the map of the world, I must say the same thing. It matters not what quarter I examine, I find men's hearts are everywhere the same, and every. where wicked. Sin is the family disease of all the children of Adam. Never has there been a corner of the earth discovered, where sin and the devil do not reign. Wide as the differences are between the nations of the earth, they have been found to have one great mark in common. Europe and Asia, Africa and America, Iceland and India, Paris and Pekin,-all alike have the mark of sin.

To know your need of forgiveness is the first thing

in true religion. Sin is a burden, and must be taken off. Sin is a defilement, and must be cleansed away. Sin is a mighty debt, and must be paid. Sin is a mountain standing between us and heaven, and must be removed. Happy is that mother's child amongst us that feels all this! The first step towards heaven is to see clearly that we deserve hell. There are but two alternatives before us, we must either be forgiven, or be miserable for ever. See too how little many persons know of the design of Christianity, though they live in a Christian land. They have yet to learn that the leading mark of Christianity, is the remedy it provides for sin. This is the glory and excellence of the gospel. It meets a man as he really is. It takes him as it finds him. It goes down to the level to which sin has brought him, and offers to raise him up. It tells him of a remedy equal to his disease,- -a great remedy for a great disease,—a great forgiveness for great sinners.

Reader, I ask you to consider these things well, if you have not considered them before. It is a matter of life and death. Try, I beseech you, to become acquainted with your own heart. Sit down and think quietly what you are in the sight of God. Bring together the thoughts, and words, and actions of any day in your life, and measure them by the measure of God's word. Judge yourself honestly, that you may not be condemned at the last day. Oh, that you might find out what you really are! Oh, that you might learn to pray Job's prayer, Make me to know my transgression and my sin" (Job xiii. 23). Oh, that you might see this great truth, that until you are forgiven, your Christianity has done nothing for you at all.

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"The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin."-1 JOHN i. 7.

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