must have a right purpose? What is yours? It must have a proper character. What is yours? Do you LIVE after the flesh? Then you shall die, for "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Do you live in pleasure? Then you are dead while you live. Are you alive without the law? Then it will prove your condemnation. Have you a name to live and are dead? Then your works are not perfect before God. It is a serious thing to live, and an awful responsibility to pervert life, as the unsaved continually do to their own destruction. Reader, look to Jesus, who came to give life to those dead in trespasses and sins. Come to him. Believe in him. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting life." BELIEVE AND LIVE. This is the way of life. Faith in Jesus is its portal. "Inscribed above the portal, from afar Legible only by the light they give, Stand the soul-quickening words-BELIEVE and live.” To study life, acquaint yourself with Jesus, who is the Life, and the author of life. Thus only can you ever say— 66 For me to live is Christ." It was Christ that first taught the world "that life in every shape is precious." Only since He came did men build hospitals, stoop down to the degraded, and send missionaries to the heathen. Only since He came have men learned that God's image may be engraven upon the wreck and off-scouring of humanity, and that none on earth are too far gone to be beyond the power of the gospel, to regain the real purpose of life, "to glorify God and enjoy him for ever." Only since He came are all invited and made welcome to everlasting life, to the new creation in the image of God, to union with Christ. Only since He came has the life of man been fully consecrated to the best employment. His own life was a sacrifice to reconcile men to God. It was a revelation of man in the image of God. It was a seed to be scattered over the world, and to be reproduced among all nations. Every true believer is a reproduction to be employed for Christ and the good of souls. Many have realized their high vocation, and have been able to say with the apostle, "For me to live is Christ." Biography has preserved the memorials of several of these. Their lives were real as yours, chequered as yours, theatres of conflict between the flesh and the Spirit as yours: but they were spent for Christ in walks of usefulness. Recent times have produced not a few who have thus exhibited the life of Christ. Of these we have selected some examples. They have been taken from various classes and circumstances from the work-shops of the labouring, the marts of business, and from the saloons of the noble. They had their daily cares, their secular engagements, and their family ties, yet they lived to the Lord. These all having "served their own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep," but their record remains for the study and imitation of succeeding ages, and by which, "being dead, they yet speak." The lives of good men all remind us Foot-prints that perchance another, CHAPTER II. CHRISTIAN DEVOTEDNESS. "They first gave their own selves to the Lord, and to us by the will of God." -2 COR. viii. 5. "Yield to the Lord with simple heart, All that thou hast, and all thou art." THE age in which we live is pre-eminently busy. In the pursuits of manufacture, commerce, and trade, energy and zeal characterize those employed. Almost all inventions and discoveries of modern times conspire to promote business. Steam engines, railways, and electric telegraphs, seem now essential to its successful prosecution and increase. Steam is now the great motive power. In ten years railway traffic has trebled. In seven years messages by telegraph have increased fifty-fold. The post-office has received a development almost incredible. But what do these results teach? They testify to the important fact of the engrossing business which now engages men. It is the effort of every man to make the most of his means and opportunities. "Time is money," therefore he travels by "express," writes by "telegraph," and prints by "steam." It is the special vocation of some to devise schemes for economizing time, and toil, and money. Science is made to surmount the barriers of nature, and to improve itself. Utility is sought in all things, and business is its producer. Our commercial towns are utility embodied and business intensified. The church also partakes this feature of the world. A busy hum sounds throughout its several branches. The numerous organizations, societies, and schemes, which recent times have developed, require a great amount of practical skill and earnest labour. More active efforts, greater variety of them, and multiplied means for their prosecution, are now manifest in the visible church than in any former era. Usefulness is a characteristic of Christianity. This has ever belonged to it. Religion has been the fertile source of all beneficence. But by reason of the advantages of modern times, schemes of usefulness, scenes for its exercise, and agents in its fulfilment, are abundant. Mind is on the stretch; heart is anxious; and the life of many wears rapidly in making most of the present opportunity to do good. And all are needed who are engaged. The demand is greater than the supply. If any are not employed, it is not because of want of call, or opportunity, or obligation. "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few.” Amidst engrossing duties, we are prone to neglect spiritualmindedness, and to become more busy than godly. In order to guard against this danger, and to stimulate such as are not yet labourers in the vineyard, let us examine the true source of Christian usefulness. It was beautifully exhibited in the churches of Macedonia in apostolic times; and St. Paul, in writing of them, gives us the secret of their devotedness, when he says, "They first gave their own selves to the Lord, and to us by the will of God." PERSONAL DEDICATION TO CHRIST IS THE SPRING OF CHRISTIAN USEFULNESS. “They gave their very selves to the Lord first." Such is the rendering of this passage of Scripture by the critical authors of the Life and Epistles of St. Paul. The Macedonian converts were doubtless believers ere this dedication took place. They had fled for refuge to the hope set before them. They had believed in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins, and acceptance with God. The first experience of an awakened soul is the desire for salvation. There does not, then, enter so closely into his heart what he can do for Christ, * as what Christ can do for him. He is anxious. His sins disturb his conscience. The broken law alarms him. The coming judgment overawes him. The terrors of hell seize him. "What must I do to be saved?" is then his cry. "Lord save me, I perish," is then his prayer. His helpless. and distressed condition exhibits an anxious desire to be rescued from danger. An incident in the life of Sir Brook Watson, commemorated in one of our "Art Treasures," illustrates this most forcibly. He is in the sea, spent and sinking. A hungry shark is hurrying to seize him. Turned upon his back, the drowning man looks imploringly to the sailors in the boat, who have thrown out a rope which he is too feeble to grasp. What then occupies his mind so long as consciousness remains is, the desire to be saved. Thus is it with the awakened soul. It is a blessed wish. Jesus never refuses to save. The cry from the depths is sweetest music in his ear. "Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth." The helplessness that depends on him has around it his everlasting arms. "Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." To produce this desire and suggest this prayer, is the great object of gospel preaching, and of all expostulation and appeal addressed to the sinner. Many are careless of danger-unconscious of its nearness and its fatal issue. Hence the need for words of thunder, that sinners may be awakened; and of words of love in a revealed gospel, that they may be won to the Saviour. Has the reader been thus led to ask what Jesus can do for his soul? When a soul has been brought to Christ, and obtained a good hope of eternal life, the emotion that succeeds the joy of deliverance is gratitude to the Redeemer. The saved feels that he is no more his own, that he belongs to his Saviour. Such is a proper feeling. Christ's work in saving is a redemption. It was a purchase. At the cost of his precious |