for ever from the society of men. They do not now say, 'Cure us, and we will go.' They go as they are, rightly reckoning that the gift lies somewhere in the road-way of the command.

To choose one out of the manifold applications of this principle, turn its light upon prayer: look at prayer by itself, and the philosophic objections to it are unanswerable; or, at the most, you get a poor apology instead of a good answer, alleging that prayer is effectual, in that it brings the pleader's heart and mind into a right state for receiving the Lord's blessing. This may well serve as a commendation for prayer, but by no means as a sufficient ground for it. The right way here to meet every objector's argument is that of the Hebrew confessors: 'We are not careful to answer thee in this matter.' My Lord has made an express appointment with me as to where I may always find Him, and all His resources ready for my help; and there will I go. Keep you your argument. As for me, I mean to keep God's tryst.

2. But see now how far faith may go, and yet stop short of its true end. All these lepers believed in the power of Christ to heal them; hence their concert of supplication, and their readiness to go to the priests at His bidding; and, according to their faith, it was done to them. They were all healed. Wherein, then, was their faith defective? The defect is shown in its fruit;: nay, rather in its barrenness. Their desire was the measure of their belief. They had the leprosy; they heard that Christ healed lepers; they went to Him for a cure; they got it, and they cared for nothing more. Thus said Jesus to the eager people thronging after Him in Galilee: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.' Thus has He often occasion to speak still. Such seeking and faith as these look no further than to the Lord's gifts, and have but little regard to Himself. His help being gained, He may go His way until He be wanted again. As, in the days of His earthly ministry, He gave His temporal aids and benefits as signs of His far richer resources of spiritual power and blessing, that men, being lured to the Healer, might find the Saviour; so does He yet give that we may seek more. His comforts and succours pertaining to this life are but the alms dispensed at the temple gate. that we, being drawn to the threshold, may catch a glimpse of the blessedness within, and hear the same Voice which summoned us to the outward dole, bidding us enter and find rest in all the fulness of God. How grieved, then, and how jealous must the Lord be, when He sees us eagerly snatch at His 'earthly things,' and hurry away with them, little heeding His 'heavenly things'! Well may He ask,-how often during the past year has He had occasion to ask,—'Where are the nine?' Gone. So content with the gift that they forgot the Giver.

This ill use of the Lord's mercy is certainly most notable in those pressing emergencies of our fear and suffering, wherein He has helped us in answer to our urgent cry. But how much of the same sad fault spreads over our common life! We take for granted that, almost as a matter of course, the Lord will supply all our ordinary need, will maintain our life, and continue

our necessary food. We deem it hard if He serve us not well as our purveyor; and we cry,―sturdy beggars that we are,—' Give us this day our daily bread,' unmindful that, for so long a time, we have been content to let the Lord serve at our table, while we have too often despised His most loving invitation bidding us to come and feast at His. We have, it may be, trusted Christ's power and His goodness, but have scarcely trusted Christ Himself.

taking to God our want Thus, not only are our

Herein is the very essence of true faith, that, in and wish, we commit all submissively to His will. wants and His supply brought together, but ourselves and Himself are united in the act of faith.

II. A LESSON OF THANKS.

Now we have come to the very root of real thanksgiving, and have found the key to the parable-meaning of this history.

He who, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks,' has not, in receiving the boon, lost sight of the Hand that bestowed it. The pure selfishness of his companions ends the matter in getting the blessing. It is like a sandy waste, ever thirsty, swallowing all showers that fall, and yielding nothing. This one is of a different spirit. They are as men who sit down at once to spend the royal bounty on themselves. He hangs the gold piece about his neck, and says, 'See, this the King gave me!' They have filled their vessels at the stream, and have set out on their journey. He having tasted how

sweet that water, elects to dwell beside the stream for ever. Thus would our Lord ever have us do. The gift, of all others, He would fain bestow upon us, is Himself. Nay, all others are given to this end, that we may seek Him. He waits to bless us perfectly. And what are we that we should undertake to teach Him the measure of that perfectness? Yet, this we do, when our prayer goes no further than our immediate want. Those lepers cried out for mercy;' and nine of them saw no meaning in mercy beyond the curing of their disease. This one saw that where there was so much there must be more. He was not satisfied with watching whither the mercy would go; he must needs trace whence it came. Jesus and His cure have never been separated in his expectation; neither shall they be sundered in his enjoyment. The blessing is as divine, now that it is in his hands, as it was when he was longing after it; and he uses it accordingly, with reverence and worship. He has cried for mercy; and not in vain: now, says he, 'My song shall be of mercy.'

Learn here, 1. However perfect and satisfying any good thing is which thy Lord gives thee, do not deem thyself to have encompassed all its preciousness. It may be it surely will be-that the chief value of this gift is not in itself so much as in the way it opens to yet better things. When thou shalt have well considered Who it is that holds the other end of the chain, thou wilt not like to spend all thy admiration on one separate link, though it be golden and beautiful. He deals with us as Jacob dealt with Esau. He sends on presents

before Him, and puts 'a space betwixt drove and drove ;' so that, when we meet Him, we may be already overwhelmed with His goodness. Blessed are

all they who thus 'follow on to know the Lord,' where His blessings mark the track to Himself!

2. Let the first use to which you put every Divine benefit, be sacrifice. Having got it, forthwith, before it serve any other purpose, consecrate it as a thank offering. Here is the only remedy for selfish forgetfulness of God. Let Him have the handseling of all His own gifts. Thus, not only great and eminent occasions of blessing shall become occasions of praise, but the whole life, filled as it is with unintermitted good, shall be filled with the holy gladness of an uninterrupted worship.

3. Learn yet another lesson from 'this stranger.' There was but one gave thanks, and he was a Samaritan.' Is there anything else here than the fact, that his worship is the more notable and conspicuous, because it comes clad in so outlandish and unlikely a garb? Surely there is. When he had joined his voice with the rest to call for the Master's mercy, his companions were the bolder to ask because they were Jews. The great Nazarene Prophet was a Hebrew, and declared that His powers were devoted to the welfare of His own nation. As children of Abraham, they had a sort of right to claim the service of One, Who, whatever He was, was sent by the God of Abraham to His people. But the Samaritan had no such claim,—had no claim at all. He could beg for nothing but pure mercy; and when he won what he sought, there was nothing to hide, or disguise, or lessen, the mercifulness of the mercy. You cannot sound the full chord of thanksgiving unless that note of acknowledged unworthiness be there. Or say, rather, the empty shell itself is voiceless, but across its hollow dumbness are stretched the strings of worship; and every measure of praise must owe its resonance and volume to the conscious depth of my demerit and the emptiness of my want.

4. This subject is never out of place. Just now it is specially seasonable. At the close of a year's mercies, some of them of distinguished value, the Lord, who gave them all, awaits our homage. Are these debts of grateful acknowledgment left unpaid. You cannot send the payment, you must take it. He who purposed to give Himself to you, as, once for all, He gave Himself for you, will not have your thanks separate from yourself. Has your religion been but an orderly going to the priests-a studious performance of prescribed duties? Then Jesus stands, still asking for you,—'Where are the nine?' You have taken His gifts, but have you accepted Him? You will never praise Him, until, lying low at His feet, you magnify the mercy which has saved you, delivered you from all condemnation, and given you to see, with thankful composure, the year's record put away, sealed with the pardon bought by His most precious blood.

Never forget, TRUE RELIGION IS NOT ONLY THE HAVINg of the Lord's BLESSINGS, BUT IS THE ENJOYMENT OF HIMSELF.

MEMOIR OF THE REV. JOHN SCOTT.

JOHN SCOTT was born on the 17th of August, 1792, at Copmanthorpe, an agricultural village of some three hundred and fifty inhabitants, about three miles from York. Of his father, Francis Scott, who occupied a farm there, but little is known, except that he was a moral man, with no knowledge of experimental religion, until a few years before his death, which took place when his son was very young. John's mother, was, like the venerable Thomas Jackson, brought to Christ through the preaching of Mary Barrett, afterwards Mrs. Zechariah Taft. Mrs. Scott was a strong-minded woman, with great energy of character. She began her religious life with a full determination to serve God faithfully. Each morning she called together her children and servants, with such farm labourers as were disengaged, and read and prayed with them. Her husband, not approving of her conduct, would go into the room, and cracking his whip, call the men by name, and allot to each his work. Notwithstanding this she maintained daily family worship, and soon the heart of her husband softened, till he too was found kneeling among the rest. He sought and found salvation, and died happy in the Saviour not many years after, leaving two children, John and Elizabeth. Upon Mrs. Scott now devolved wholly the task of training her children in the right ways of the Lord; and when her son had grown up to manhood, he would tell how she used to kneel in prayer, with a child on either side, and entreat the blessing of God upon them; and how faithfully she endeavoured to teach them what she herself had learned of Divine things. Besides the inestimable blessing of a Christian mother's teaching, the children used to walk into York every Saturday afternoon to attend a Bible-class conducted by the Rev. Joseph Sutcliffe, whose teaching deeply interested them; and, better still, the Divine seed thus early sown in their hearts, sprang up, and bore fruit an hundred fold. John Scott, then only in his eleventh year, was led to seek the Saviour; and one day, while praying in a barn, he received the assurance of God's pardoning love, which (he was often heard to say in years long after) he never lost. The boy now wished to accompany his mother to her Classmeeting, and being allowed to do so, received his first ticket of membership from Mr. Sutcliffe.

His educational advantages were only such as in those days a village school afforded; but like so many others who have done good service in the world, he was fond of reading, and seized every opportunity of self-improvement. When taken from school and put to work on the farm, he had always a book with him. Once, when he had been guiding the plough, his stepfather found him letting his horses rest while he sat under a hedge reading, and his anger burst in the exclamation, Jack, thou'lt never be fit for anything but a parson! Although his time was fully occupied with his daily work and efforts at self-education, the youth continued constant in his attendance at the services of God's house, and would occasionally pray in the prayer-meet

ings. Probably those who heard him on those occasions, and who marked his Christian consistency, saw in him the promise of a useful Minister.

On Christmas Eve, 1810, the Superintendent, the Rev. James Macdonald, announced that Brother John Scott would preach at six o'clock on the following morning. As this was entirely unexpected by himself, his mind was thrown into great perturbation, but the night was passed in prayer and study, and in the morning he addressed the people from the text, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men;' and so convinced were the Circuit Ministers, one of whom was the celebrated William Edward Miller, of his call to preach, that his name was put upon the plan as a Local Preacher; and at the Conference of the following year he was appointed as a Travelling Preacher in the Winterton Circuit.

His principles, at this crisis of his life, were tested in rather an unusual way. He had an uncle possessed of considerable property, who, being without children, had resolved on leaving his money to his nephew; but as he was a strong Churchman he could not endure the thought that it should fall to the lot of a Methodist Preacher. So he gave the young man his choice, either to relinquish the ministry or his prospective fortune. He, without hesitation,

gave up the latter.

Of Mr. Scott's work during the first three years of his itinerancy, little is known. Winterton is a small town in Lincolnshire, in an agricultural district. While there he had no small share of the odd experiences which at that time so often happened to Methodist Preachers in country places. Not a few were the amusing stories he had to tell of the rough but kind entertainment he met with, and the queer sleeping rooms he had to occupy after preaching in distant parts of the Circuit; but, by remaining with his rustic hosts, and receiving their hospitalities, the young Pastor had good opportunity of becoming acquainted with the character and habits of those to whom he ministered, not always acquired in these days of easy railway travelling, which enables the Minister, after preaching to his village congregation, to return so quickly to his comfortable home. Nor was this longer absence from his study an entire loss to him, for with his book or manuscript, he turned to good account the time spent on country roads or by farm-house firesides.

In 1812 and 1813 he was stationed at Patrington, under the Superintendency of the fervid and eloquent Joseph Hollingworth. Whilst here, his talents and graces attracted the attention of his brethren, and of the leading Methodists in the neighbouring Circuit, Hull; and in 1814 he was appointed to the Hull Circuit. He lodged in the house of his Superintendent, the Rev. Jonathan Barker, an able man of literary tendencies. This was a formidable elevation for the young probationer, as Waltham Street Chapel-larger than City Road Chapel, London-was opened a few weeks after his appointment, and he had to take his turn in its pulpit with the greatest of Methodist divines and Preachers, the Rev. Richard Watson, then the second Minister in the Circuit. But the trial was vastly over-compensated by his acquisition of the invaluable

VOL. I.-SIXTH SERIES.

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