Communion. "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3). What a favor this is! What grace that men should be admitted to it!

Communion is having things in common. It is a true mark of friendship when two persons can sit down together and enjoy the same things, especially if one be much the greater. It is no small matter for a poor, sinful creature to be brought to God in such a fashion as to be able to sit down with God and enjoy communion with Him. There are two great lines of communion with God:First, about His purposes, and then about His character. He has unfolded His purposes to us in His Word. We can sit down with Him and there enjoy all He has been pleased to reveal to us of them. It makes us wise; it makes us intelligent about all that is now going on among men:it lifts the veil of the future, and enables us to read clear into the eternity ahead of us. It fills us with delight at the prospect of what is awaiting all who are subject to Him and His ways; it turns us with holy fear from all which opposes Him, for we know well that nothing opposed to Him can finally succeed, but must fall, to the eternal shame and dishonor of those who have persevered in it.

Then, by the revelation of His purposes and ways, He makes His character known to us, and we learn to love it; we fall in with it; we admire it; we are awed by the awful justice of His unerring and unfailing government; we are won by His prompt forgiveness of any and every repentant offender; we are captivated by the grace which He exercises so richly without transgressing in the least against His other holy attributes; we nestle in His bosom as, in Christ, we learn He is love and our Father.

Who that thus sits down to commune with God does not delight in the wonderful plans and purposes of His will, and does not long to be like Him in character-"followers of God as dear children"?

The Power of the Name of Jesus.

While laboring in the gospel a few years ago in a little village of Ontario, the lady at whose house we were entertained proposed a visit to an afflicted family six miles away. On our way there she pointed to a cottage by the roadside, and said, "An aged Scotchman lives in that cottage; he loves the children of God, and I am sure he would enjoy a call from you." So we alighted at his door and went in.

Judging by the deep furrows of his face, he must have been at least eighty years of age. Addressing him, we said, "The Scriptures say, ' We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. This lady tells me you love brethren; and as I am one of them, I have come in to see you."

His face fairly beamed with joy, and he expressed himself thankful for a visit on such a principle. "Have you known the Lord very long?"we asked.

"Well, there is a story to that," he replied. " I belonged to the kirk from quite a young lad; but whether I belonged to the Lord, He alone knows;

I cannot tell. But I came to Canada, and was steward in a gentleman's house in Kingston, when a poor penitentiary convict killed his guard in trying to escape. He was sentenced to be hung, and during his days of grace was converted through the ministry of an evangelist then preaching in Kingston. This evangelist wrote a little book telling about his conversion. I read the book; and ever since that time I know I belong to the Lord, and no doubt about it; and I tell ye it's a mighty different thing to belonging to the kirk."

" I am very glad to hear my little book has helped you."

"Na!" he cried.

"Yes, I wrote the book."

" Na, it canna be!" he cried again, in much excitement.

'' Yes, it was I who was preaching then in Kingston, and ministered to that poor convict, and wrote the book."

Convinced at last, he rushed to me, grasped me in his arms, and for a long while sobbed aloud.

Christian reader, this is God's way of uniting His people. Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of man, who died for our sins, who rose again, who sits on the right hand of God, who loves the Church, who is coming again to take us where He is:what that blessed Jesus is, and has done for us, and is doing, and is going to do, is the only worthy tie that binds the children of God together. When the power of His glorious name ceases to be in our souls, we are like a flock of sheep without a shepherd, at the mercy of every prowling wolf. Good, precious and needful as sound doctrine and correct living are, they will not keep us if the power of Jesus' name is gone from us. It is the power of His blessed name held in the soul which unites and which preserves us from all that is contrary to it. If it has lost its hold upon us, let us not deceive ourselves, nor lie to Him. He knows it; He loves us still in spite of it; He longs for our hearts, for love like His must have love in return. Let us hide nothing from Him then, and He will yet make us to know the prevailing power of the tie that is in Him. Why should He bid us repent from the loss of first love if there were no recovery from it. ___

He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord" (1 Cor. 1:31). It is wonderful height to which God has exalted His people of this dispensation, that they should be "the Church, which is His (Christ's) body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. i:23). It is wonderful grace to live during the present age, when the Spirit of God indwells His people, and gives them a place, a relationship, an understanding of His purposes, and a capacity to commune with Him which others in other ages have not had. All indeed is wonderful height; but if we glory in our height of blessings, instead of in the Lord, we will soon be made to know that pride ill becomes poor worms of the dust taken up and thus exalted by infinite grace.

The cloud of glory did not rest over the great honor put upon Israel, and their supremacy over the nations of the earth; it rested over that marvelous central Tent where was the ark of gold and shittim wood-the Source and Secret of their glory.