"Looking unto Jesus." -HEr. xii. 2.

LOOKING UNTO JESUS.

Amid the world's vain pleasures, din, and strife,
The Chriftian treads the upward path of life;
Though forely tempted to forsake the way,
He presses onward still from day to day;

On worldly honours he with scorn looks down,
Content if he at last shall wear a crown ;
And worldly wealth without regret he leaves,
He treasure has beyond the reach of thieves.
The Syren Pleasure with voluptuous strain,
Strives to ensnare him, but she strives in vain ;
His ear he closes to their idle noife,
And hastens upward to celestial joys;
At God's right hand he owns an ample store,
Of joys substantial, lasting evermore;
He looks to Jefus, his Almighty Friend,
Nor fails at last to reach his journey's end.

THE Christian is here depicted making his way up the path of life. The wealth of this world is offered to him on condition that he will turn aside. He rejects the offer with disdain; he points upward, intimating that his treasure is in heaven. Honours are presented; these he despises also, content with the honour that comes from God. The votaries of finful pleasures next address him; they promise all forts of delights if he would stay and dwell with them. He clofes his ear to their deceitful fong: he looks upward to Jesus his Lord and his God, and, taking up the fong of an old pilgrim, he goes on his way, finging :

"Thou wilt show to me the path of life,
In thy prefence is fulness of joy,
Pleasures at thy right hand for evermore."

But what will not men in general do in order to obtain those very things which the Christian rejects with so much disdain? What have they not done? Answer, ye battle-fields that have heard the dying groans of so many myriads! Answer, ye death-beds that have listened to the lamentations of the votaries of pleasure! Answer, ye habitations of cruelty, where the life's blood of the victims of avarice oozes away from day to day, under the rod of the oppreffor! And who or what is the Christian, that these things have no influence over him? Is he not a man? Yes; an altered man from what he was once; a new

man.

Old things have passed away. All things have become new. He looks to Jefus. Here is where his great strength lies. Here is the power by which he overcometh the world, even by looking to Jesus. Do you afk what is this looking to Jesus? What magic is there in this so powerful? Listen! Our fins have separated us from God, for "all have finned, and come short of the glory of God." Death temporal has passed upon all men, as the forerunner of eternal death, except we repent, and be converted. But how shall we repent and be converted? How shall we guilty ones dare to approach the Holy God? He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. What shall we bring to gain his favour? Alas for our poverty, if it were to be bought with money! Alas for our finfulness, if our own righteousness could have fufficed to recommend us to God! Alas for our impotence, if we had been left unaided to descend Bethesda's pool! Alas for our blindness, if we had been left to ourselves to discover a door of Hope.

While in this plight, Jesus comes to our relief. He brings a price a righteousness-a strengtha light. He is the light of the world-the Sun of righteousness. He shines and dispels the gloom. O how cheering are His rays! As the beams of the morning give hope and confolation to the benighted traveller in some dreary wilderness, so does Jesus, the "dayspring from on high," give light and hope to those who fit in "darkness, and in the shadow of death." The light of love and the hope of heaven. The path of duty is revealed, the promise of immortality is given. Do you afk yet again, what is meant by looking to Jesus? Again listen. The exercise of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what is meant. Man is made capable of confidence, of confidence in man. In this confifts the charms of domeftic felicity. A man without confidence in his race is an isolated being; he is cut off from all the sympathies of his kind. Just so, man without confidence in God, is separated from him. He is in the world without God, and without Hope. Faith unites man to God. The Christian is a man of faith. He is united to God; he walks by faith, he lives by faith. The life which he lives is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved him and gave himself - wondrous gift-for him.

He looks to Jefus, as unto an "offering for fin." He receives it as a faithful saying, worthy of all acceptation, that "He hath made Him who knew no fin to be a fin-offering for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." That