pour on some, out of its horn of abundance, a glittering shower that might glut the very soul of cupidity itself, and bid it say 'enough.' We say nothing of the sufferings and the sorrows which it shall bring with it also. -Nothing of the coronets which shall be exchanged for coffins, and glaring equipages for nodding hearses, and laughter for tears, and peace of soul for agony of remorse, and pride of intellect for moping idiotcy. Nothing of those who shall sink struggling under the murderer's knife; or shrivel in the red flames of their own paternal mansions; or toss and welter upon the cold waves of the ocean, till the shattered corpses are flung as reeds upon some foreign shore. Those things shall be indeed ; but we pass them by, because with all the certainty of their approach, they form nothing to which men could look forward pleasureably. We consider only those anticipations of good things, which make us hail the coming year. And there fore, to touch upon the most momentous of all points, we would ask what will this year do for our immortal souls?

Now it is unquestionable that numbers have been, and are looking forward to it as the much desired æra which shall find them sincerely religious. There are many, the extent of whose Christianity goes not beyond a fond hope that they shall be ultimately Christ's disciples. By their own acknowledgment they are at present unconverted sinners. They admit themselves as yet under God's wrath, and not partakers of his love through faith in Jesus. They allow this. Yet, strange to say, they are cheerful and contented. For why? they purpose to repent and turn to God. They hope that the period is near at hand, when they shall be found walking in God, and him only. And the anticipation of this future excellence, consoles them under the sense of present deficiency. The retrospect of their religious course is confessedly dark enough, but then through God's blessing they are about to enter on a New Year.

That the expectations of some who look thus may ultimately prove correct, we must admit. Doubtless, the mighty workings of God's Holy Spirit will, during the next twelve months, do that in our physical world, which shall be done in the material. The now unsettled purposes of many hearts shall be ripened into sincerity of repentanee, and turning unto God by faith in Christ. But shall it be so with all the procrastinators of the year just departed? Alas! we know it will not. Alas! we know that many who look with tranquillity upon the green hopes now springing up in their bosoms, shall confess again, as they have often confessed before, that they allowed the opportunities which passed by them, to go away unused; and must exclaim with the Prophet, "the harvest is ended, the summer is passed, and we are not saved." It is to those who have so frequently allowed the deceptive promise of a future season to lull them into present peace, that we would cry out and beseech them

'Lay not this flattering unction to your souls.'

Do not deliberately listen again to that vague promise of remote piety; or take such an opiate to drug you into forgetfulness. Has not the soothing whisper of many a sincere heart been to its owner just as the language of the prophet to his fellow (I Kings, xiii. 18,) it sounded plainly indeed," but he LIED UNTO

HIM."

There are some who might reply in extenuation of their readiness to trust the future for what it has often promised though never yet performed, that though their hearts are frail, yet circumstances are powerful; and it may be that the voice of the preacher, the exhortations of Scripture, the eventful changes of a transitory world may do that for them, which has not yet been done; the influences of external causes may meet their souls with irresistible convictions. But is it convictions these people want? Surely not. He who says that ten years or ten days hence he hopes or purposes to be what now he is not, confesses his conviction that he should be so immediately. And for posing that those topics which now fail of converting us to God, will when oftener heard assume a more decided energy, this is a miserable fallacy. If he who has trembled to-day at the terrors of the law, and wept at the tender mercies of a dying Saviour, finds himself still undecided in his purpose of fleeing from the former and taking refuge in the latter, he gives as far as man is concerned, the strongest evidence, that he never will be decided at all. Time may diminish the solemnity of the appeals now made to concience, and familiarity take from their awfulness, but they cannot add to or enhance them.

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It is from reflections such as these, that we thought it adviseable to call upon our readers to think seriously upon the subject of a New Year. Let it be in the best sense a new one. Let those who have known the Lord, find it a new one in the increase of their graces, in their growing hatred to sin, and love of holiness, in the enlargement of their faith, hope and charity. And to the hitherto unconverted let it be a New Year likewise. A year not of fallacious promise, but of blessed proficience. A year to bring them to a real saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus, and to an adoption into the happy family of God's own children. Then indeed the chimes which ring it in may sound cheerily in their ears, for O! how lovely is it to hear, "Behold now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation."

REFLECTIONS ON THE COLLECTS, EPISTLES, AND GOSPELS, FOR THE ENSUING MONTH.

THE CIRCUMCISION OF CHRIST.

THE EPISTLE, ROM. iv. 8.-THE GOSPEL, ST. LUKE ii. 15.

The Collect, which brings to our remembrance Christ's submission to the painful rite of circumcision; and His being "obedient

to the law for Man," awakens us to an earnest supplicating of our God, that we might be made partakers of the benefits thus procured for us. It is the having "the true circumcision of the Spirit;" the being separated in taste and inclination, as well as in name and profession, from the courses of this world, which gives true Christians the ability "in all things" to "obey God's blessed will;" which the unconverted can never attain to, even though they should affect to aim at it. The expression used in this prayer," that our heart and all its members" may be "mortified from all worldly and carnal lusts," is extremely forcible. A part which is mortified, has lost completely its former sense of feeling; so the spiritual mind no longer relishes its once-delightful sins. It is "dead to sin," that it should no longer live therein.

In the Epistle, St. Paul, speaking of the benefits of the Christian dispensation, calls it, with beautiful propriety, "this blessedness;" and, by a quotation from the 32d Psalm, explains, previously, in a concise, yet comprehensive manner, wherein its excellence consists, "blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." This is a very different view from that which some modern Christians take of the scheme of redemption, who describe it as a lowering, as it were, of God's demands upon the sinner; and a readiness, for Christ's sake, to accept a partial obedience instead of a perfect one. To accept men with the acknowledged stain of sin upon their souls, neither is, or could, be any part of God's dealings with his creatures. And herein is the preciousness of the Gospel, that it bids us "behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." Those who believe in His name are presented "faultless," through the all-perfect atonement and mediation of their Saviour. That the Jews were not the exclusive objects of God's favour; and that the old covenant was not, as they thought, the way to justification, the Apostle proves, from the circumstance of Abraham's being counted righteous through faith, before his receiving, at God's command, the seal of circumcision. Every one who believes becomes a child of Abraham, and an inheritor thereby of the promise made to his seed, not " through the law, but through the righteousness of faith."

The Gospel for the day is a simple narrative of the going up of the shepherds to Bethlehem, after the wonderous vision of angels which had appeared to them by night, announcing the coming of a Saviour and concludes with relating the fact of Christ's cir-, cumcision, which, as with all Jewish male children, took place upon the eighth day, which was also that of the mother's purification. In analogy to this last Jewish rite, our Church has appointed the service of the thanksgiving of women after child-birth, commonly called the Churching of Women."

THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY.

The Epistle Rom. xii. 1. The Gospel, St. Luke ii. 41.

The word Epiphany, which is of Greek origin, means manifestation; and has been used to signify the festival appointed by

* Jude. 24.

the Primitive Church, for the commemorating the appearing of the star to the wise men, leading them to Christ.

In the Collect for this day, we are reminded of the necessity of having ability to do as well as to know. The Gospel does certainly set before man, in a clearer light than any other scheme has ever done, "what things they ought to do;" but this would be no blessing to man, frail and imperfect as he is, were it not also a vehicle to him of " grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same." Knowledge without goodness, is the characteristic of devils.

It should be the prayer of all Christians, that they may be enabled to do that, which the Apostle beseeches us in the Epistle to do, to "present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God." There must be a perfect devotedness of all the powers and abilities to God; in which the not being "conformed to this world" forms a great part. The expression, in the original Greek, is borrowed from the theatre, and signifies as much as "don't wear the same dramatic dress with them." Don't appear to be interested in, or busied about, those things which occupy the actors in that medley of sin and folly which men call life. Humility is also insisted on with all that earnestness which its importance deserves. Perhaps in nothing does the current of this world's opinion run more strongly against the declarations of God's word, than in its estimate of this grace. That which in the Bible is set forth, as the very root as it were, of our chief Christian excellencies, is denounced by men as a poor and pitiful thing.

The Gospel describes the remarkable circumstances of Christ's discussing points of doctrine (a practice with the learned Rabbies of His day) when only twelve years old. The custom which the Jews had of travelling in large bodies together to the feasts, accounts for the parents of Jesus not being alarmed, at the first, in not observing their son for a whole day. They supposed He was with some relative or friend. The manner in which our blessed Lord disclaimed any necessity of submitting to His earthly parents in things which might interfere with the great objects of His mission, while yet He tendered a perfectly dutiful respect in all other matters, furnishes a beautiful lesson to such young persons as have the unhappiness to find the courses of filial obedience aud Christian duty, occasionally interfering. The young disciple must do his father's business;" but then let it be done humbly, with prayer to God for guidance, and with regret that he should be obliged, in any way, to go counter to the wishes of those whom he is commanded to "honour." But in every thing which does not compromise his principles, let him be earnest to shew his imitation of that divine Lord he serves, who being very God, yet having, in "his human nature" earthly parents, was subject to them."

THE SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY.

The Epistle, Rom. xii. 6.-The Gospel, St. John ii. 1. What an awful world would this be to dwell in, did we not know that our God is that eternal King who governs "all things

in heaven and earth." He can restrain alike the wrath of man and the fury of the elements, and the assaults of the prince of the power of the air, He can keep us from "the pestilence that walketh in darkness; and from the sickness that destroyeth in noonday. What one truth is more precious to the Christian soul than that he is enabled to say, let what will happen, "The Lord God. reigneth." It is with the conviction of God's Almighty power that the Collect for this day bids us supplicate him and say, Grant us thy peace all the days of our life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." He can give peace of soul and of body, or peace temporal and spiritual.

In the Epistle, the Apostle having in the commencement exhorted to a diligent and conscientious exercise of the various "gifts" then discernible in the Church, gives some additional precepts deeply fraught with meaning. How decided is that energetic one, "Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good." There is no encouragement to that method of tampering with things questionable, so common unhappily, even among professors of the Gospel. The latter clause of this passage is very forcible in the original. signifying literally, "being glued or cemented to that which is good." How admirably too is the line drawn for those who are obliged to labour for support." ""Not slothful in business." Christianity does not require men to withdraw from society, nor encourage a fanatical or mystical spirit. But again, the guard is placed against a growing love of gain, "fervent in spirit." Be sure that while your hands are busy your souls are thriving in grace. Those who do thus, in whatever station they are, are "serving the Lord." How superior too, to the hollow hypocrisy of what this world calls politeness, is that in junction, "Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another.” The exhortation "to be given to hospitality," was very seasonable, at a period when places of reception for travellers were uncommon. How fully the Primitive Church acted upon it, the book of Acts gives many instances.

The miracle recorded in the Gospel, is one of those which particularly called forth the sarcasms of that sneering infidel Voltaire, who found it much easier to provoke a laugh than to support an argument. It nevertheless was performed by our Lord under the influence of the most peculiar benevolence. The want of wine at a marriage feast, in a country where the vine thrives luxuriantly, indicated extreme penury. The Divine Saviour hastened to remove from his humble entertainers, one of the pains of poverty. The expression used by him to his mother, "Woman," was not disrespectful, being used frequently by the ancients on the most solemn occasions to females of high rank. He discriminates, however, between her right as a parent, and a mere daughter of Adam. The sentence,"mine hour is not yet come," has been rendered interrogatively by an eminent writer of ancient times, and we think happily: "Is not mine hour come ?" Am I not now to shew myself, not merely thy son, but the son of God? The ruler or go

* κολλώμενοι τῶ ἀγαθῶ.