the annihilation of the sin, it is its transmutation; it does not arise out of ignoring, but out of accepting its existence, out of looking it firmly in the face, and resolving to use it as a means of conquering itself.

We see forgiveness in nature. She redeems her evil when she makes fertile soil from the ashes of the volcano, and covers her ruin with meadow, flowers, and vines. Her prodigal effort creates new beauty out of her devastation, and the beauty is richer for the evil, and by the evil. The hurricane has laid waste the forest, but it is only the decaying trees and those whose lofty and overarching heads shut out the light which perish. A few years after, the pardon of nature fills the rents of ruin with young plants, rejoicing in the air and the light. The running fire has devoured the prairie, it lies before us a coal-black plain. Next year it is of a fresher green, the flowers have livelier hues. The roots were untouched, the rain has washed into the earth the carbon and nitrogen, and the bounteous forgiveness of nature has made a lovelier life out of the very elements of her unkindness.

But as this analogy is open to attack, let us take another. The history of science is the history of exhausted errors. One after another their impossibility was demonstrated. All the mistakes possible to be made with regard to the system of the universe were made. Were they unforgiven? They were necessary steps in the progress of knowledge; one after another they were found out, and their forgiveness was secured when men, having experienced and rejected all the errors, rested securely in the truth. The same law

holds good in the history of national progress. Nations advance through exhausting errors, and, as they find them out, paving with them the path of their progress, till full forgiveness is realised in the attainment of true forms of government. But the true was found only through knowing and conquering the false.

To come to the experience of men. Who are the men who succeed in a noble manner, who influence the nation's heart, who advance her commerce, who rule her thought? They are those who can rise out of failure and shake it off; who when they err, accept their error, and say, 'Now I know where I am weak, that I will never do again;' who look their sin straight in the face, and say, 'It is bad and vile, but it can be redeemed by effort, lived down by perseverance in good;' who do not despair and hide their face in a cowardly remorse, but who believe that the world forgives sins if it sees determined action towards their opposite; who make their mistakes, their failures, the stepping-stones to their success.

And shall we, because we have laid hold of half a truth, that results cannot be changed, forget the other half-that if we change, results, though remaining the same, change to us ?-shall we in our spiritual life deny the lesson of nature, and of history, and of human life, and fold our hands and say, 'There is no forgiveness '?

It is true, as they say, that results cannot be changed; that they follow upon sins by unalterable law. But the forgiveness of sins is not in taking away punishment, but in changing the heart with which we meet punishment. Everyone knows in life how different are

the effects of suffering when it comes on us from one we hate or from one we love. When we are angry with God, the natural results of our sins produce in us hardness, hatred, and misunderstanding of Him. But when we are led to love Him, the same results, not changed in themselves, but changed to us, for we are changed, lead us to penitence, to love of God, to cast our care and life upon Him. That is forgiveness of sins. Their moral burden is removed, and their inevitable results become means of good.

Moreover, everyone knows that there is such a thing as forgiveness. We have the word, we use it day by day; is there no fact which answers to it? Friends have forgiven us our wrongs to them, and greater love has followed on forgiveness. We forgive our children, even when they sting us most bitterly; and does God never rise to the height of the human nature He has made? Is the Father's charity below the children's ?

Therefore, I say, because we may redeem the past in Christ, let us go forward with the patience and effort of men. We will not despair while we are wise, nor let the soul in utter faithlessness commit the sin of Judas. God is mightier than our evil, too loving for our sins. We shall be punished, but healed through the punishment.

Again, we turn and look upon the valley of the past year. There, below, are the spots stained by our evil and our fear. But as we look, a glow of sunshine breaks upon the past, and in the sunshine is a soft rain falling from the heaven. It washes away the stain. The spell is broken which kept us weeping on the ridge.

The phantom cloud of sins, errors, failures, melts away in the growing light, and from the purity of the upper sky a voice seems to descend and enter our sobered heart: 'My child, go forward, abiding in faith, hope, and love;' for 'lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'

[Jan. 1870.]

YOUTH, AND ITS HOPE OF PROGRESS.

'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'
Matt. xxviii. 20.

WE stood last Sunday on the ridge which divides the valley of the old year from the valley of the new. Today we have passed away from the summit and begun the unknown descent. Every step brings us and the nation and the world into a new position, into scenes similar, it may be, to those we have passed by, but never identical. It was right the last time we met here to look back, that we might gather into a practical form the experiences and lessons of the vanished year. It is equally right now to look forward, that we may understand our feelings, clear our hopes from errors, and muster the armies of the soul in disciplined array for action. We have indulged ourselves enough in retrospect. While we are as yet upon the upper ledges of the hills, we will indulge ourselves in prospect. But we cannot see clearly; the mist closes and opens in the vale below. Strange voices come up to us from the world beneath, phantom tones of weeping and of mirth; notes whose sound we do not know, of friends whom we shall make in the coming journey, of events