the Holy Communion, attend Divine worship, pray to GoD morning and evening, examine himself, and offer up the sacrifice of a thankful heart, nevertheless suspends them all, if business calls him, without a sigh or a feeling of compunction; such an one drifts gradually away, as life goes on, from that anchorage to which he in youth and early manhood so safely moored his soul, breaks up by degrees the discipline which surrounded it, and takes it away, as the portions of a scene which has been but a changing background through the acting of a drama. By degrees such a man, on the same principle, would give up the Creed if it interfered with the even course of his life, would break down the very bulwarks of Christianity to serve his turn. How many may not, at this moment, be prepared to do this? How many are really ready to say that Dan is as good as Jerusalem, and the unordained as the ordained ; or farther still to profess openly, if they would own it, that they are prepared to yield any portion of their religion to suit their own personal worldly interest, and that on the principle that they do not esteem it as possessing sufficient intrinsic reality and truth to make any real sacrifice necessary.

d. Such, too, is the man who, professing trust in religious principles, gives them up in the day of trial; yields to dishonest practices to remedy the evil of circumstances; to complaint and impatience, as the refuge from trouble; and to invective and slander to find a safetyvalve for anger and vexation, instead of showing, as he ever professed himself willing, prayer, trust, patience, and forgiveness, as the refuge from such conditions of mind. Such a one, and there are tens of thousands, is reduced to this dilemma; either that he has no faith in what he professed and has been throughout a hypocrite, or believing will not act, and thereby declares himself in open rebellion to GOD's will.

How much of the spirit of Jeroboam is at work in the day in which we live, when the doctrines of Holy Baptism, the Eucharist, the Priesthood, the service of GOD in public worship, the integrity of Scripture, the Creeds, are becoming matters of question, and men seem preparing to yield, one after the other, what in youth they believed, and up to the present moment, professed to believe, to be eternally true.

LXV.

RUTH.

DUTIES TO ELDERS IN FAMILIES.

RUTH I. 16.

“AND RUTH SAID, ÎNTREAT ME NOT ΤΟ LEAVE THEE, OR ΤΟ RETURN FROM FOLLOWING AFTER THEE: FOR WHITHER THOU GOEST, I WILL GO ; AND WHERE THOU LODGEST, I WILL LODGE: PEOPLE SHALL BE MY PEOPLE, AND THY GOD MY God."

THY

1. THE beauty of Ruth's character is acknowledged on all hands, and proverbially pathetic are the words with which she devoted herself to the fortunes of Naomi, "Where thou lodgest I will lodge; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried."

The biography of Ruth is of course introduced into the narrative of scripture for the sake, especially, of tracing the lineage according to the flesh, of our blessed LORD. But while this is the primary object of the narrative,

there can be no doubt that Ruth herself is intended to represent one of those exquisitely beautiful traits of female loveliness, in which Scripture abounds, and to which the Apostle refers, when he speaks of Sarah and the holy women of old as being examples to those who would devote themselves to the service of God in His Church. And how fair and perfect would be the entire form of female loveliness which was compounded of the separate elements of the holy women of old! Imagine a character formed of the modest reserve and energetic zeal of the ever-blessed Virgin; the tender affectionateness and docility of Rachel, the beloved wife of Jacob; the ardent devotion mixed with so much disinterestedness which shone out in the conduct and actions of Ruth; the maternal piety of Hannah, with her mind wholly wrapped up in the religious relations of her child, and lastly, add to these the majestic heroism and the elevated irony of Deborah, and you form an entire character which the world would gaze at with wonder, and of which no poet's fancy or philosopher's mind ever conceived the ideal. It is well worthy of remark that Holy Scripture describes the most wonderful variety of characters, and that each one

whose narrative we find there is necessary to fill up the whole-a picture of that glorious period hereafter, when in the Church triumphant above, each separate human disposition sanctified and glorified will take its part of the perfect and majestic whole,-presenting to the mind, as embodied in one form, "whatsoever things were lovely, whatsoever things were of good report" in the human race. We shall have our position there, and our distinctive and separate peculiarity or circumstance is as necessary to the completion of the whole as the single stone of the building which cannot be seen midst the rest, but the absence of which would lead to the fall and ruin of the structure. This position must be observed, not slighted, cultivated not despised, used as a talent and not "hid in a napkin."

2. What then are the lessons which women especially learn from the distinctive features of the disposition and conduct of Ruth? It is generally thought that the story of Ruth belongs to the time of Eli. At this period the Moabites were in a state of servitude to the Jews, and their country was open to them to sojourn in. Elimelech, a man of Bethlehem Judah, driven by scarcity took refuge with his wife and two