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or later, come to Me, and him that cometh to Me, come when and how he may-I will in no wise cast out. And after all, I come down from heaven not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me. What better could I do? Since His will is that of all whom He has given Me I should lose none, but that to every one that believeth on Me, I should give everlasting life." Thus Jesus comforts Himself in the hour when he feels all the sadness of unrequited toil. Thus, also, He comforts us; for from this gracious soliloquy, uttered apparently as, detaching Himself from the crowd, He went up from the sea shore to the synagogue, we learn that, though we delay to come to Him and reject the bread He offers us, yet if ever, and whenever we do come and hold out hands of faith for the gift long refused, He will not and cannot send us away empty, since He came fron heaven, not to reject and receive men in arbitrary capricious self-will, but to execute the steadfast impartial will of the Father; which will is, that all who believe should have the life eternal, and that nothing of them, no part of them, should be lost, their very bodies being raised up at the last day.

Jesus of Nazareth being "the bread from heaven," and the snort of indignation with which they would at last break out into speech, “Is not this man Jesus, the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How dare He then say, I came down from heaven?"

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Jesus takes it on himself to answer this question, speaking with the strange quiet authority with which the Scribes, with all their noisy assumptions, found it so hard to cope. First, He exhorts them to that tranquility of soul which alone accurately reflects the forms of truth, Murmur not among yourselves." Then, as though unmindful of their question, as though bent only on pursuing His own train of reflection, He reverts to the consolatory thought, that the Father had given Him many who should believe on Him, and explains this giving by the drawing of the Father: "No man can come to me except the Father draw him"-a very simple yet profound word. For this drawing is that secret divine attraction of God the Father's love, which underlies all the varied forms of His providence, even the most afflictive, and all the divers revelations of His will, even though they take the shape of stringent command or indignant threat. By this word we are admitted into the interior secrecies of His divine rule, and taught that if God chastise us, it is only that in our need and sorrow we may turn to Him; that if He lay the axe of threatening at the root of any tree, it is that the tree, thus warned, may replace evil fruit with good. In all the varied manifestations of His divine and perfect nature which God has made-from the beauty of the tiny moss in the desert which speaks peace to the exhausted traveller, up to the cross on which the punitive and redeeming energies of His grace shine forth in their clearest splendours-there is a secret yet strong attraction, the attraction of an infinite love, by which the Father draws His children to Himself. And if any of these manifestations quicken a longing after God in any man's soul, this longing is the secret remote influence of the eternal love which, if he * John vi., 41.

Meantime, while Jesus was thus seeking and giving comfort, certain official persons of Capernaum had evidently joined the crowd, and discussed with them the strange claim which Jesus had advanced. For the Apostle John no longer speaks of "the multitude," or "the people," but of "the Jews,*—a title which, throughout His Gospel, he reserves for the official classes,-Elders, Scribes, Priests. And, indeed, the order and devotion of that morning's service in the synagogue must have been a good deal disturbed; for though no doubt the usual prayers were recited, and the usual psalms chanted, yet we gather from the narrative that there was an unwonted buzz of excitement and muttered controversial eagerness in the place, which must have been very distressing to the sleek comfortable Scribes, who hated any thought of disturbance and change. One can fancy the incredulous face with which these official persons would murmur at the notion of

respond to it, will draw him onward and upward till he find God and life in Him. Staying Himself on this strengthening and most comfortable thought, Jesus proceeds to answer the question of the Scribes :-"Verily, verily, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life, your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from Heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread, which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." He commences His answer by repeating His former assertion, that He is the true bread of life;

but He repeats it with an explanatory difference-His bread is His flesh given for the life of the world. He reverts also to the manna, but only to remind his hearers, that their fathers who ate manna in the wilderness never came out of the wilderness, and that the bread which could not save them from death could not possibly be the heavenly bread of life. The true bread of life is that of which if a man eat he does not die. This bread He declares Himself to be-Himself, and not His word, or His doctrine, or His miracles.

All this, however, He had said or implied before. Now for the first time He adds to "I am the bread," the explanatory thought, "I am the bread which I will give, and the bread which I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." Jesus is the life; but if he is to become our life, He must give himself to us. Bread is always bread, but it is only bread for us when it is broken and placed in our hands. He who is the bread must give us bread; His body must be broken for us. His flesh once broken becomes "a meat indeed;" His blood once shed becomes " a drink indeed."

But is not all this figurative and sacra

LIKE FATHER,

mental? It may be, but if it be, its symbolic meaning is based upon its literal truth. Flesh and blood are constituents of our humanity; as bere used by Christ they stand for our humanity and His. The first and ruling meaning of His words is, that the new, pure, perfected humanity of the Word become flesh, is to be communicated to us; that our humanity, weakened and tainted by sin, is to be raised by the indwelling energies of His perfect life, to the level of His strong and spotless humanity; that His redemption is not partial, extending only to the soul, but finished and complete, extending also to the body, which, in this chapter, He so often assures us that He will raise up at the last day.

To this end, His body was about to be broken for us, given for us, and to us, on the Sacrificial Cross. Not till then would the trial of His humanity be complete; but then, when it had stood the last test, when even death could neither hold or taint it, it would be proved to be a living and life-giving humanity; then the whole world would have fresh assurance of the fact, that to become a partaker of His nature was to eat a veritable bread from heaven, to receive a life over which death had no power-no power even over the body, save to purge it from taint and defect, and to prepare it for a joyful glorious resurrection.

Thus His flesh becomes our bread. He will so lay down his life as to overcome the death by which we are held, the inner death of the soul in sin, and the outer death of the body in corruption. Just as He broke the barley loaves, and by His blessing multiplied them into food for the hungry multitude, so also his body should be broken and blessed, and become the living, quickening food of the whole hungry world. This is the true bread which came down from Heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever,'

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LIKE FAMILY.

BY REV. THEO. L. CUYLER, NEW YORK.

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MANY a sermon has been preached to mothers; many a tract and treatise written on the mother's influence. But how often are sermons preached to

fathers? Is there any power for good or evil greater than the influence of him who leads the family, who propagates his own character in the persons and the souls of his children, who lives his own life over again in the lives of those whom he has begotten?

Like father, like family. Set this down as a philosophical principle. Occasional exceptions do not undermine the rule; it is an organic one. The father impresses himself upon his children just as undesignedly, but just as surely, as I impress my shadow on the ground when I walk into the sunshine. The father cannot help it if he would. The father leads, by God's decree. He makes the home-law; fixes the precedents; creates the homeatmosphere, and the "odour of the house" clings to the garments of the children, if they go around the globe. "His father was a Papist, or his father was a Protestant, or his father was a Democrat before him," is the sufficient reason that determines most men's religion or their political opinions. "He is a chip of the old block," said some one, when he heard the younger Pitt's first speech. "Nay," replied Burke, "he is the old block himself."

In nothing is this so true as in moral resemblances. A father's devoted godliness is often reproduced in his children. But still oftener are his errors and his vices. He commonly sets the habits of the household. Whatever "fires the father kindles, the children gather the wood." If the father rises late on the Sabbath morning, the boys come down late and ill-humoured to the table. If he goes on a Sunday excursion, they must carry the lunch and the fishing-tackle, and share in the guilty sports. If he wishes to read a Sunday paper, then George or Tom must go out to buy it. If he sips his wine at the dinner-table, they are apt to hanker for the residuary glass, or at least they grow familiar with the sight of a decanter on the board. To do that, is like hanging up lascivious pictures on the walls of the sitting-room. The lads get familiarized with evil; and woe to the youth who gets "used to" the face of the tempter.

In looking over my congregation I find that, while several pious fathers have unconverted children, there are but few prayerless fathers who have converted sons. The pull of the father downward is too strong for the upward pull of the Sabbath-school and the pulpit. If the father talks money constantly, he usually rears a family for Mammon. If he talks pictures and book at his table, he is likely to awaken a thirst for literature or art. If he talks horses, and games, and prize-fights, he brings up a family of jockeys and sportsmen. If he makes his own fireside attractive in the evening, he will probably succeed in anchoring his children at home. But if he hears the clock strike eleven in the theatre or the club-house, he need not be surprised if his boys hear it strike twelve in the gambling-house, the drinking saloon, or the brothel. If he leads in irreligion, what but the grace of God can keep his imitative household from following him to perdition? The history of such a family is commonly written in that sadly-frequent description given in the Old Testament-"He walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him."

I find two very different types of paternal religion. Both are nominally Christian. The one parent prays at his family-altar for the conversion of

his children. He then labours to fulfil his own prayers. He makes religion prominent in his family; it is as pervasive as the atmosphere. The books that are brought home, the papers selected, the amusements chosen, the society that is sought, the aims in life that are set before those children, all bear in one direction, and that the right one. God is not invoked by that father to convert his offspring to godliness, while he is doing his utmost to pervert them to worldliness, or self-seeking, or frivolity; no more than he would ask God to restore his sick child, while he was giving the poor boy huge doses of opium or strychnine.

Yet there is a class of professing Christians who do this very thing. They pray for a soul's conversion, and yet on the very evenings when revival discourses are being delivered, they take that son or daughter to the opera or the fashionable rout. They pray that their households may live for God, and then set them an example of most intense money-clutching and mammon-worship. One father prays for a son's salvation, and then flashes a wine-cup before his eyes. Another sits down with solemn face to the communion-table, and then comes home [very seldom it is hoped] to gossip, to crack jokes, to talk politics, to entertain Sunday visitors at a sumptuous feast, to do anything and everything which tends to dissipate the impressions of God's worship, and the sacramental service. Such fathers never follow up a pungent sermon, never watch for opportunities to lead their children Christward, never co-operate with God's Spirit for the conversion of an impenitent son or daughter. What must an ingenious child think of such a father's prayers.

I entreat parents most solemnly not to stand in the way of their children's salvation. If you do not help the good work, pray do not hinder it. The selfish or inconsistent life of some fathers is enough to neutralize all the teachings and appeals of both pulpit and Sabbath-school. To Paul's question, "How knowest thou, oh! wife, if thou mayst save thy husband?" we would add the startling query, "How knowest thou, oh! father, but thou mayst damn thy own children ?"

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How many a devoted, praying wife is struggling to lead her children heavenward, and finds her every effort nullified by the open irreligion of an ungodly father! She toils on alone, prays on alone, works alone, and weeps alone, over their perils and the fatal example at their own fireside. pity, and support her! She is striving to bear her children on her own shoulders toward virtue, toward purity and Christ; but to-day her sad failure is written in the homely adage, Like father like family.

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOSET.

"And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray and when the evening was come, he was there alone." (Matt. xiv. 23.) He left the crowded shore, the thronged highway, and crossing the turfy fields,

came to the edges of the mountains. His pulse throbbed and his breath quickened as he clomb, as ours does when we climb. The sparrow, not knowing its Creator and Protector, flew away from his coming. His form cast

its shadow, as he passed, over bush, and flower, and grass, and they knew not that their Maker overshadowed them. Sounds grew fainter behind him. Those who had followed him, one by one, dropped off, and the last eye that looked after him had lost his form amid the wavering leaves, and was withdrawn. He was in the mountain, and alone. The day was passing. The last red light followed him, and stained the air of the forest with ruddy hues. At length the sun went down, and it was twilight in the mountains, though bright yet in the open field.

But when it was twilight in the field, it was already dark in the mountain. The stars were coming forward and filling the heavens.

No longer drawn outward by the wants of the crowd, what were the thoughts of such a soul? And what were the prayers? Even if Christ were but a man, such an errand of such a man would be sublime. But how foolish are all words which would approach the grandeur of Christ's solitude upon the mountain when we regard him as very God, though incarnated, communing with his co-equal Father !

What was the varied prayer? What tears were shed, what groans were breathed, what silent yearnings, what voiceless utterances of desire, no man may know. Walking to and fro, or sitting upon some fallen rock, or prostrate in overpowering emotion, the hours passed on until morning dawned. When he went down to his disciples, they neither inquired nor did he speak of his mountain watch.

If prayer be the communion of the soul with God, it is but a little part of it that can be uttered in words; and - still less that will take form of words in the presence of others. Of outward wants, of outward things, of one's purely earthly estate, we can speak freely. But of the soul's inward life-of its struggles with itself-its hopes, yearnings, griefs, loves, joys-of its very personality-it is reserved to such a degree, that there can be no prayer expressive of the inward life, until we have entered into the closet and shut to the door. Every Christian whose life has

developed itself into great experience of secret prayer, knows that the hidden things of the closet transcend all uttered prayer as much in depth, richness, and power, as they do in volume and space.

Sometimes we mourn the loss of old books in ancient libraries; we marvel what more the world would have had if the Alexandrian library had not perished; we regret the decay of parchments, the rude waste of monks with their stupid palimpsests. We sorrow for the lost arts, and grieve that the fairest portions of Grecian art lie buried from research; that the Parthenon should come down within two hundred years of our time, with its wealth of magnificence, a voice in stone from the old world to the new, and yet perish almost before our eyes!

But when one reflects upon the secret history which has transpired in men's thoughts, and that the noblest natures have been they whose richest experiences could never have been drawn forth through the open, or recorded in books, but have found utterance through prayer and before the conscious glory of the Invisible Presence-I am persuaded that the silent literature of the closet is infinitely more wonderful in every attribute of excellence, than all that has been sung in song, or recorded in literature, or lost in all the concussions of time. If rarest classical fragments, the perished histories and poets of every people could be revived, they would be as nothing in comparison with the effusions of the closet, could they be gathered and recorded.

The noblest natures it is that resort to this study. The rarest inspiration rests upon them. Flying between the heavens and the earth, with winged faith, they reach out into glories which do not descend to the lower spheres of thought.

How many souls, so large and noble, that they rose up in those days of persecution, and left home and love for the faith of Christ, and went to the wilderness and dwelt therein, gave forth in prayer their whole life! Doubtless their daily prayers were rich and deep in spiritual life. But there are peculiar

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