Cabinet of Things New and Old.

FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY.

"THESE three"-beautiful sisters they are! The first truscs; the second desires and expects; the third loves with all her heart. They have a common Father, who is the common object of their different emotions. They dwell together in sweet and holy concord. The tie that binds them together is strong and enduring as life. They constitute the three-fold cord that binds the soul to God and heaven. What power can break that cord? Faith justifies the soul at the bar where the law condemns. Hope lifts it above the dark and dismal shadows of mortality. Love animates it to run the heavenly race till it shall win and wear the incorruptible crown. Faith without Hope and Love would be but a dull and passionless trust. Hope and Love without Faith would be but the wild workings of an empty dream. Faith, working by Love, purifies the heart, and with Hope for her standard-bearer, achieves the most substantial victories over the world. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for;" that is, it gives a subsistence, imparts a reality to the objects of Hope, without which the life of the Christian would be an uncertain conjecture. It evidences to the mind the "things that are unseen, and thus assures Hope that her expectation of those things shall not be in vain. Nay, when her sister begins to droop, the steady tones of her cheerful voice reanimate and encourage her, for "against hope she still believes in Hope"-firmly believes, in spite of every discouragement, that the objects of Hope will be accomplished.

Survey, now, the stature of these sisters-their attitude, countenances, motions-and you will confess their heavenly birth, you will be charmed with their divine features. Behold the firm step, the majestic gait, the fixed, yet serene gaze of the elder sister. At every step she treads upon the thrones and principalities of earth; she spurns the pomps and pleasures that enchant and enslave the earthly, for she walks with God." Her fellowship is with the kingly Mediator who reigns on high. She beholds "with open face, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, and is changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.* Look now at the other, on whose face, radiant with life and joy, that glory is reflected. See her ethereal form, her elastic, vivid, changeful movements. All is bright before her. She forgets the things that are behind, and is wholly taken up, deeply enraptured with the visions of beauty and blessedness that unveil themselves beyond the horizon of time. The desires of her soul follow hard after God. Thither the warm current of her emotions flow. Thence is all her expectation. By her side is her still more beautiful companion, her countenance beaming with benevolence,

her mantle flowing as with the light of heaven, her eye suffused with a tear, for she is still on earth, though aspiring to heaven. All that is lovely she loves with an unfaltering passion, and that affection overflows in pity and compassion for the alienated and the lošt.

Leaving personification, let us advert to that precious sentiment of inspiration which concludes one of the most eloquent descriptions even of inspiration itself: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." Not the longer in duration, for when shall faith, or confidence in an electing, a redeeming, a regenerating God cease from the bosoms of the elect, the redeemed, the regenerated hosts of heaven? When shall they cease to trust the everlasting grace that saves them to all eternity? At what point of glorified felicity shall a shade of distrust intrude into the hearts of the holy? Or when shall hope intermit her warm pulsations in the souls of the just? Will they not desire the glory beyond? Will they not expect it? These are the living elements of hope-desire and expectation of future good. The perfection of hope will be theirs, for no cloud will intervene to dim its brightness. But love will have a wider range there as here; for all excellence, all holiness, whether in God, or saints, or angels, will be its object. Then will the glowing thought." God is love," kindle the fire of a perpetual devotion on every little altar in every mansion prepared by the Lord of glory. Love will be the element in which all holy beings will move. It will be the habitation of the saints, for "he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' So, "if we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." The inspired writers dwell with peculiar emphasis and powerful emotion on this grace. They ascribe to it properties that may well excite the wonder of the contemplative mind. It is something that "passeth knowledge," yet is as real and demonstrable as if perfectly known. It possesses an undying vigour and vivacity, for it is a fruit of the Spirit. It has a universality as wide as moral being. It is diffusive as the light, being not only "shed abroad in the heart," but through all heaven. It pervades the very essence of faith and hope, and is to them as the atmosphere in which they breathe. Glorious grace! dwell thou in my heart through all the generations of the ages upon ages of eternity! Amen. Eph. iii. 21. J. N. D.

THE END OF CHRIST'S INCARNATION.

BY DR. SPRING.

WHEN the great Ruler of the world was pleased to accomplish his purposes of mercy towards sinful man, he saw fit to do it in a way that expressed the mysterious fulness of his own eternal nature.

God is one in nature and three in persons. A fundamental article of the Christian religion is, that one of these three Divine persons became incarnate. "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

us."

When the fulness of time" was come, "God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons." His birth was humble, away from home, and in a manger; but it was announced by angelic voices, "Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy; for unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord!" Behold the wonder! the immortal Deity clothed with the nature of mortal man-the Everlasting One born in time-the God Omnipotent swathed in the bands of infancy, and lying in a manger! This was the beginning of the Saviour's sorrows. Had he any sense of loftiness to be subdued, any honest pride of character to be wounded, any inbred sentiments of virtuous exaltation to be mortified, it would be in view of such mysterious humiliation as this. No pomp of earth was there; no show of worldly magnificence; no regal splendour; though there slept on that pallet of straw One "who hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, and LORD OF LORDS." Judah's crown and sceptre might have belonged to his honoured parents, and he should of right have been born in the palace of David. But this were ill fitting One who came to pour contempt upon the pride of man, whose " kingdom is not of this world," and who, before he assumed this low attire, foresaw that he should put it off only on the cross.

The tears that flowed in Bethlehem, often flowed in after life. In his infancy he was sought as the victim of Herod's sword; in his youth he was often obliged to retire from the observation of men, that he might not provoke their rage. But while for thirty years he avoided the scenes of active and public life, his great work of suffering and redemption, in all its parts and consequences, was always present to his thoughts. Wherever he went, and in whatever he did and said, he conducted himself like one who felt that he had a great work to perform, and was assiduously hastening it onward to its final catastrophe. He knew what others did not know-that the hand of violence would cut him off in the midst of his days; and in view of his coming sorrows could often say, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" In this respect, as well, indeed, as in every other, he differed from all other men. Socrates, though he addressed himself to his fate with great calmness, and spake of it with wonderful tranquillity, and drank the hemlock with unshrinking firmness, did not anticipate his destiny from the beginning of his career, nor even many days before its close. Those there have been who have undertaken enterprises

of great toil and peril; but the suffering was doubtful, and many a gladdening though, perhaps, deceptive hope was immingled with their fears. But the Saviour was apprised of his career of suffering, as well as of its close of agony, from the hour he quitted his Father's bosom. In the eternal "council of peace" he " gave his life a ransom for many." All his arrangements were directed to this one end; his eye and his course were single; and the farther he went in it, the more "stedfastly did he set his face to go to Jerusalem." Nothing could divert his steps from that melancholy way of tears and blood. To every solicitation his reply was, “The Son of man must go up to Jerusalem, and suffer many things, and be killed."

SAVING FAITH.

SIMPLY as a saving grace, faith has but the same excellence with all other precious saving graces. As it is the fruit of the Spirit, it is more precious than gold, and so are all other graces. In this sense they all shine with equal glory, and that glory transcending all the glory of this world; but then consider faith relatively, as the instrument by which the righteousness of Christ is apprehended and made ours, and in this view it excels all other graces. This is the grace that is singled out from among all other graces to receive Christ, by which office it is dignified above its fellows. As Moses was honoured above the many thousands of Israel when God took him up into the mount and admitted him nearer to himself than any other of all the tribes might come, so faith is honoured above its fellowgraces in being singled out and solemnly anointed to this high office in our justification. It is that precious eye that looks unto Christ as the stung Israelites did to the brazen serpent, and derives healing virtue from it to the soul. It is the grace which instrumentally saves us. As it is Christ's glory to be the door of salvation, so it is faith's glory to be the door-key that opens that.

What shall I say of faith? It is the bond of union, the instrument of justification, the spring of spiritual peace and joy, the means of spiritual life and subsistence, and, therefore, the great scope and drift of the gospel, which aims at and presses nothing more than to bring men to believe.

It is the bond of our union with Christ: that union is begun in our spiritual quickening, and completed in our actual receiving of Christ: the first is the bond of union on the Spirit's part, the second a bond of union on our part. Christ "dwells in our hearts by faith." Thus it is a door opened to let in many rich blessings to the soul, for, by uniting us to Christ, it brings us into special favour and acceptance with God, makes us the special objects of Christ's love and delight, and draws from his heart sympathy and a tender sense of all our miseries and burdens.

It is the instrument of our justification. Till Christ be thus received by us we are in our sins— -under guilt and condemnation; but when faith comes, then comes freedom: "By him all that believe are justified from all things." It apprehends or receives the pure and perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus, wherein the soul, how guilty and sinful soever it be in itself, stands faultless and spotless before the presence of God; all bonds to punishment are, upon believing, immediately dissolved, a full and final pardon sealed. O precious faith! who can sufficiently value it?

FLAVEL.

TWO WORDS, OR THE RESURRECTION.

A MAN of intelligence, but of a very sceptical turn of mind, had many conversations with a minister, and was always stumbling at the doctrine of the resurrection as a vexation and plague to his reason. He stumbled at that stumbling-block, being disobedient. His friend did not succeed in reducing his scepticism: the evil proceeded not so much from particular difficulties and incredibilities in the mystery before him, as from the disease of the heart a proud, self-relying dependence, not upon God, but upon his

own reason.

At length they were separated. The clergyman did not meet his sceptical friend for years. Meanwhile the grace of God came into his heart, and he was converted, and became as a little child. All scepticism departed, and now he listened only to God.

The first time they met after this great change, the minister said to him, "Well, my dear sir, and what do you think now of the doctrine of the resurrection?" "Oh, sir," said the former sceptic, "two words from Paul conquered me, Thou fool!' Do you see this Bible? (taking up a beautiful copy of the Scriptures, fastened with a silver clasp,)—and will you read the

words upon the clasp that shuts it?" The clergyman read, deep engraven on the silver clasp, Thou fool!" "There," said his friend, "are the words that conquered me; it was no argument, no reasoning, no satisfying my objections, but God convincing me that I was a fool; and thenceforward I determined I would have my Bible clasped with those words, 'Thou fool!' and never again would come to the consideration of its sacred mysteries but through their medium. I will remember that I am a fool, and God only is wise."

How striking, how affecting was this! Ah, this is the way to come to God's word. Let every man put this clasp upon his Bible, "Thou fool !" and let him enter it, to sit at the feet of Jesus, and learn of him, just as a little child, remembering the saying of David, "The entrance of thy word giveth light: it giveth understanding unto the simple."

THE SILENT POWER OF TRUTH. A SWEDE, after receiving a good education, became a wanderer in the world. At one time he was a soldier, at another a sailor, and at length, having, while intoxicated, sustained an injury