Right revealed in the word of God, that the exercise of selfscrutiny will develope itself into its appropriate fruits, of pious feeling and holy living. And herein it is that we see one ground of the necessity for the revelation of the man Christ Jesus. There were other ends higher than this, attained by the incarnation and obedience of the Son of God. They were necessary as elements in the basis of the sinner's justification; as illustrating the holiness of the law, and vindicating its authority. But they were needful also as furnishing in the character of Jesus, a perfect standard for all succeeding generations, which Christians may strive to imitate, and in comparison with which they may feel continually their own unworthiness. In this character, therefore, were combined the purity of the loftiest abstract principle, with the individuality and attractiveness of the strictly personal character. It embodied a beauty higher than Plato imagined, in a life as real as Plato lived. It is united with divinity, and therefore impressive; and yet it is human, and therefore clothed with all that is attractive in similarity and sympathy. No Christian can rightly meditate upon it, none ever did thus meditate upon it, without discovering more fully his own depravity. It has been sometimes imagined that certain species of electric light yet undiscovered, might so illuminate the body that seats of disease should be perceptible, which were before unknown, and causes of weakness be discerned, that had never developed themselves in actual debility; and so the light which comes from the life of Christ, illustrates the presence of sin where it was least suspected, and shows our need of continual support. By such an examination must the Christian's conscience be quickened, his humility deepened, his penitence increased. The production of such effects rests upon laws of mental operation with which all are familiar. The painter gazing upon a Madonna of Raffaelle-the sculptor admiring the matchless symmetry of that wonderful Apollo, which all of after time have united in attributing to an almost creative chisel-are humbled, yet animated as they look. They see more clearly than before their own defects; but only because their very Ideal of beauty is heightened and made more distinct; and thus in their present discouragement lies the promise of their future progress. It is upon a nobler form than any Apollo that the Christian looks. It is by gazing upon a higher beauty than that of the richest coloring that the Christian is humbled; even upon the beauty of the inner life of Him, the glory of whose outward form no pencil of the painter has been able to reproduce. His humility, therefore, shows that his conscience is impressed. It is at once the ground of a present penitence, and the pledge and promise of a future and more consummate holiness. Oh, my friends, let us ever study ourselves in full view of the character of Jesus; with his high and passionless purity contrasting always our low ambition, our craving appetite, our struggling and tu

multuous passions. Thus shall our hearts burn within us by the way. From every act of such self-scrutiny, we shall rise up refreshed and purified; with consciences more sensitive; with minds more open to the influence of the truth; with higher aspirations; with new resolves.

My Christian friends, the subject we have considered addresses itself to us. There is always danger that the Christian will neglect to examine himself. His constitutional indolence may unite with the pride of his heart, in prompting to this. The tendencies of a particular era may set so strongly towards outward and visible. action, as naturally to divert the soul from the scrutiny of itself. So it is, emphatically, at present. The calm, contemplative piety of the fathers is almost forgotten, is certainly not imitated; and an aggressive activity, sometimes regular and wise, and sometimes impetuous and impulsive, has usurped its place. There is now, therefore, peculiar danger that we shall not study our own hearts. Against this, we are bound to guard. Knowledge of self is always useful, and the power to gain it a high prerogative of the soul. But to us as Christians, this knowledge is indispensable; for without it we cannot know our points of weakness; we cannot know for what to pray. There will be sources of danger within us of whose very existence we are unaware. Proclivities to sin may be slumbering in our hearts, which only need a fitting occasion to develope themselves in the vilest excesses. Passions may be dormant there, that in some moment of incaution shall spring upon us, in full panoply, and with an unimagined strength, like the Spirit of evil, when touched by the spear of Ithuriel. We are therefore false to our trust if we do not examine ourselves; if we do not so study our hearts, as to be profited thereby. To this end, we must be watchful and vigilant; not so searching ourselves as merely to gratify the curiosity; nor as if we were unmindful of other means of spiritual improvement; but examining ourselves with the same regularity with which we come to the house of God; doing it with earnestness of attention, and with an honest and prayerful desire to learn the truth, and to be benefited by it. Above all, we must try our character, comparing it constantly with that mind which was in Christ Jesus; that so we may gain new vigor of Christian principle, and new activity in Christian duty that from our rigorous self-scrutiny, under the influences of the Spirit of God, may spring a piety more grand in its symmetry, more beautiful in its coronal of love, richer in all the fruits of holy living; that we may here experience a truer penitence, a more contrite humility, a more triumphant faith; and that at last, being strengthened with might by the Spirit of God, we may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know that love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.

BY REV. CHARLES H. READ,

PASTOR OF THE PEARL STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK.

THE PLACE OF REST AND HOME OF THE SOUL.*

"As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place." PROVERBS 27: 8.

A most important lesson, which has a legitimate application to many, if not all the relations and duties of life, is taught in this text, and enforced by a very simple and striking comparison: "As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place."

The text needs but to be stated, in order to be understood. It is taken for granted, that the allusion is to that class of birds, with which we are all familiar, whose instinct prompts them to select a particular place for the building of their nests. The natural skill of such birds, in selecting their place, in the process of erecting, excavating, or searching out natural or artificial fixtures and retreats, to be occupied by them during the period of procreation and incubation, is sufficiently well understood by us all. The watchfulness, steadfastness of purpose, industry, and fidelity of such birds during all this period, is so characteristic of them, that when we know where they have reared, or chosen their nests, we know where they are to be found, unless driven away by necessity, or danger. When the end for which the tenement was chosen, or made, is accomplished-then, and not till then, is it deserted. Very few, indeed, are the exceptions to this rule, and such exceptions are fatal. The eggs of the wandering bird are barren, and its brood dies from neglect.

No matter how beautiful their plumage-how gaily and sweetly they may sing, or how graceful may be their motion, in their roaming among enticing fields and flowers, if they neglect their home, they might as well have no home. A silly bird, indeed, is that which wandereth from her nest!

It is implied in the text, that some persons, some professedly rational, intelligent, moral, and accountable beings, are chargeable, in their sphere of activity, with a similar inconsistency and folly.

It is here assumed that every man must have a place, which is, by distinction and pre-eminence, "his place." The man who It is due to the author of this discourse to say, that it was written without the thought of its publication, and is printed without revision.-EDITOR.

squanders what he never earned-the man who steals for a livelihood, the man whose heart knows no bond to home and cherished friendships, to whom the face of a stranger is as acceptable as the face of a friend, who can find all he aspires after in eating, drinking, and sleeping, no matter where-in seeing, no matter what, in being seen, no matter by whom-in short, the individual who has no roots to his heart, nor fixed sympathies in his soul-such an one may float like a feather upon the wind-may have no place, nor be fit to fill one if he had :—it is not of such vacuities that the text speaks-but, as you perceive, it is of a man-foolish, it is true, but yet a man.

A man must have a place; his own place. He must have a place of business, if we look at the subject in the light of fixed worldly avocations-a place where he can steadily pursue his calling-where he can be found, where his energies may take root, and his industry be productive. If he wanders away from this place, his projects will be addled projects. Go to the places of trade for an illustration: Is the merchant a wanderer from his counter and counting-room? Is the mechanic away from his shop? Is the market-man away from his stand ?-the business of such persons will prove a failure.

The same is true of professional men. They must have a place, and times, when and where each may be found in his place. The family must have a place, and that place should be a home-not a mere contingent dormitory and refectory, as is the case with multitudes, but A HOME, where the kindly sympathies of the heart may expand, and be schooled into the habits of well-regulated social affection, and useful living. But not to particularize further in the way of tracing out the parallel implied in the text; I pass now to the opening and application of the subject in a more important point of view than has been alluded to in the foregoing remarks and illustrations.

Man is something more than a creature who eats, and drinks, and sleeps: he has other and higher interests than those which pertain to the worldly avocations in which he is engaged, and the domestic and earthly kindred ties in which the merely social sympathies are enlisted. I speak not disparagingly of any worldly calling, nor of the pure ties of the heart among those who love and are beloved; but there is a Being who is more to man than any other being. There is a place for man which is, by the highest moral distinction and pre-eminence, his place. That Being is God! and that place is the right attitude of man's soul TOWARDS GOD.

God is the great centre of Being, in the moral, as well as in the natural world. In the compass of all surrounding beings and things, God is the soul's polar point of rest, his heart's home-HIS

PLACE.

The similitude of the magnetic compass may be employed, ap

:

propriately, in the illustration of this idea: You have seen that wonderful and beautiful piece of mechanism, the magnetic compass :you have seen the polarized needle quiet at its place of rest; you may have caused it to forsake its place temporarily, by the application of some foreign controlling force, and when you withdrew your hand, no matter to which of the other thirty-one points you held it, it swiftly returned to its own place. Now, God is to the rightly disposed heart of man what the pole is to the magnetic needle-his place. The needle of the soul-the supreme and ever constant affections of the heart, should point to God.

The fall of man destroyed the spiritual polarity of the human heart, but divine Grace restores it, in regeneration and sanctification. The partially sanctified heart may yield to temptations, and, like the needle, follow some interposing foreign influence away from its place, but, as the needle shows its restlessness, and speeds back to its point with tremulous haste, so the truly pious soul is restless in its wanderings, and, breaking away from the seductions which may have caused it to depart temporarily from God, it flies, as with the wings of a bird, to its place; and the Psalmist interpreted the feelings of such a one, when he, under Divine inspiration, exclaimed, "Return to thy Rest, Oh, my soul!"

Show me a man whose supreme affections are fixed upon, or following after other beings and things, than God and His glory, and you see one who is out of his place;-the needle of his heart has no right temper. The merely speculative believer in God, the indifferent believer, and the blank Atheist meet here on the same ground; having eyes they see not, having ears they hear not, having hearts they feel not;-God, as the object of love, is not in all their thoughts;-selfish fears, or a respect for men, operating upon such persons, like external commotions upon a deranged needle, may sometimes jar and force them (if I may so express the idea) towards God, but the place of their rest is elsewhere; they rival the serpent in crawling upon the ground, and in satisfying themselves with dust.

"As a bird that wandereth from the nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place." Foolishness is personified in each; and, as the eggs, or the brood of the bird that wandereth, shall prove barren, or die; so shall the hopes of the sinner be cut off; he shall be driven away in his wickedness; having despised the place, the only rest of his soul, in the time of seeking a place, and rest,—he will at last be provided with a place where aversion to God will be punished, and his misery will be equal to his folly and guilt.

God appointed to Judas a place, to which we are told he went, when he died; and of the positive and eternal wretchedness of his condition we may be well assured from the language, "it were better for that man, if he had not been born."

Thus interpreting the text, in the light of Divine Revelation,