God's Word in the Heart the Power of True Reform, by Missionary, Domestic Life of a, 352.

Heaven, The Way to, by Henry Smith, Cambridge-Orphan Asylum, Founded in Faith, 155.

CONTENTS.

Primitive Christians, The Prayerfulness of the, by Talents, The, 126.

No. 1.

CHRISTIAN QUEST

A Family Magazine for Leisure Hours and Sundays.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1859.

WEEKLY NUMBERS, D.
MONTHLY PARTS, 3D.

become, in the true meaning of the term, spiritual beings.

He that loveth me, keepeth my commandments." The pervading spirit of this precept is embodied in the words, "Be ye holy, even as I am holy. Crucify the world and all sinful affections. Be clothed in the spirit of Christ. Strive to be assimilated to His lovely character, so that henceforth, it may be no more you that live, but Christ who liveth in you."

mence in the hearts of the professing disciples of the Redeemer. A renovating and lifegiving power, now in a great degree latent, would arise in our Evangelical Churches, vitalised by the warm gushings of piety from Christian firesides, where holy incense has arisen from the family altar as a sweet savour before God.

It is one source of the Christian's joy, that | he has a definite object in view, and that it is both his duty and privilege to unite all his energies to attain it. Men strive to attain a renown for greatness in intellectual power, in the social circle, in the business world; but it is often an ideal standard to which they aspire. The Christian entertains no ideal theory as the framework of his religious belief. He aspires after no standard of excellence that exists in the imagination merely. He follows the guide of no exemplar in whose character Could we always, in the exercise of a living the worldly element is mingled with the faith, look steadfastly on Christ as our teacher spiritual. A man may be unselfish in his and guide, and recognise as a principle of our longings after holiness, and in his efforts to lives the inspiration that emanates from Him subordinate the world to the necessities of in response to the longings of the soul, the his spiritual nature-he may be actuated by joyful millennium would be hastened, for that love to God and devotion to the great brother-revival which is so much needed would comhood of mankind; he may so live in the fear and favour of his Maker, that earth to him shall be the antepast of heaven; but even to such a soul, with all its spiritual culture and discipline, it is the sweetest, holiest joy that finite intelligences can ever know, to look with confidence to One who is exalted infinitely high, who is the perfection of holiness, and all that is lovely and adorable in the Divine nature, and to apprehend the truth, that such a being, himself God, is his pattern in holy living and spiritual attainments. It is then that a foretaste of the joy of heaven dawns upon the mind, when the apprehension is truly felt, that it is possible for man, through grace, to grow into the likeness of this infinitely Holy One, who has been set apart to be a Prince and a Saviour. When we read the story of His wondrous love for our souls, although in childhood a mother's tender love may have made it familiar; when we read of His benevolence, His pity, His sympathy, mysterious because so vast; we wonder that any being, burdened with a single element of humanity, could have attained such an exalted degree of spiritual power. The revelation comes to us, not only to confirm the truth of history, but to impart the assurance that we can tread the same luminous pathway, and

If we heartily desire to be transformed in the spirit of our minds, and to be conformed to the spirit and likeness of our spiritual Head, He will strengthen our feeble desires, increase and brighten our flickering faith, intensify our love, and thus draw us into a sacred nearness with Himself.

How exalted the happiness of the Christian disciple, to be like Christ, even in his poor, feeble longings after holiness. How enrapturing the thought, that one day we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

Let us then, Christian pilgrim, aspire after eminence in holy living. Our commission is a glorious one; to help to build again the walls of the spiritual Jerusalem.

Looking unto Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the author and finisher of our faith, as our great and only exemplar, let us press forward, with stout hearts and unwavering faith, towards the gates of the celestial city.

THE CHRISTIAN'S HERITAGE.*

BY THE REV. JOHN CAIRD.

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mental and moral activity, is condensed. It is possible for the longest life to be really briefer than the shortest, and the child or I SHALL endeavour to illustrate the asser- youth may die older, with more of life crowded tion, "all things are yours," by adverting to into his brief existence, than he whose dull and one or two of the special blessings here enu- stagnant being drags on to an inglorious old merated, as constituting parts of the Chris- age. But if it be so, surely, estimating life by tian's inheritance. I shall take, as specimens, this principle, it is only the Christian, the man these three "The World," "Life," "Death." who lives to God, who can really be said to live 1. In what sense, then, to take the first of at all. To that man only who can say with these, may the Christian understand the an- the apostle, "To me to live is Christ," can we nouncement- "The World is yours?" If make answer in the full significance of the not literally, yet in this sense may the world words, Then "life is yours." be said to belong to the Christian, that he 3. And if you are Christ's, then, finally, may only has a legitimate title to the benefits and we add with the inspired writer in the text, blessings he enjoys in it. Return to God, "Death," too, "is yours." His power over you let your soul be brought back into living is gone. He has no right to detain you in his union with the Father of spirits through His possession. In his hands you shall no more dear Son, and thenceforward the world will be the weak, but the strong; for your condibecome yours, because you are God's. In tion will be analogous to that, not of the criharmony with the Great Centre, you will minal, but of the innocent, unjustly apprein harmony with all things in His universe. hended man, in the hands of the law. Over Nature will serve him who serves her God; the innocent man the law has no power. All and all her varied powers and agencies will its authority, its sanctions, its penalties, are rejoice to obey the behests and minister to on his side. Its retributive inflictions cannot the welfare of one who is the loved and loving touch him; they may not injure one hair of child of their great Master and Lord. The his head. He is no longer theirs, but they earth will be fulfilling its proper function in are his. If wrongfully accused and imprisoned, yielding you bread, and the heavens in shed- he can demand as a right all the aids and apding their sweet influences on your path. For pliances of justice to free his character from you the morning will dawn and the evening stain and his person from unrighteous redescend. For you "the winds will blow, earth straint. Or if he himself be incapacitated rest, heavens move, and fountains flow." You from action, his friends, if they can establish will be able to claim a peculiar property in the his innocence, may demand his person at the works of your Father's hand, and the bounties hands of the law-may insist on his instant of your Father's providence. You will have liberation. And so, if "ye are Christ's," if, served yourself heir to Him who is the Uni- reconciled to God through His dear Son, the versal Proprietor, and become "heir of God, and stain of guilt no longer rests upon you; then joint-heir with Christ." And so "the world" has death no longer any claim to your person, and the fulness thereof will become "yours," any right to retain you in his hold. It may because "ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." be still your mysterious fate to submit for a 2. Another of the blessings comprehended little while to the universal penalty, to pass in this roll of the Christian's possessions is into the prison-house of the destroyer; but "Life." What, then, let us ask, is the import He to whom, body and soul, you truly belong, of the declaration, "Life is yours?" There will soon claim you as one who, like Himself, is a sense most real and true in which the cannot be "holden of death," and who must, Christian may apprehend it. For if the at His summons, be set free. Not one soul good do not live longer, they live more in the dear to Christ will He permit to remain as same space of time than other men. Life is death's prisoner, or to receive any injury at to be reckoned not only extensively, but also death's hands. Nay, the very dust of Christ's intensively; not merely by the number of its saints is dear to Him. He guards their very days, but also by the amount of thought and graves with a deeper and tenderer care than energy which we infuse into them. Existence that wherewith earthly affection watches over is not to be measured by mere duration. An the spot where a loved one rests. At His oak lives for centuries, generation after gene- omnific word, death and the grave shall one ration of mortals the meanwhile passing away; day yield up their unlawful captives; and but who would exchange for the life of a then, when the grave has heard the voice of plant, though protracted for ages, a single day the Son of God, and death, His servant and of the existence of a living, conscious, think-yours, has delivered up, unscathed, unharmed ing man? The briefest life of rationality, again, is worth more, has more of real life in it, than the longest of a mere animal. And, amongst rational beings, that life is longest, whether brief or protracted its outward term, into which the largest amount of mind, of * From "Sermons" published by W. Blackwood & Sons.

yea, more glorious and beautiful than when they fell for a while into his charge, the bodies of Christ's redeemed, when "this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality," then shall the believer discover the full and blessed import of the words, "Death is yours."