doubt, in this recall to faith! And at these accents so well known, at these marks of pain, and, above all, at these words, the same that Thomas had pronounced in his error, and that Christ alone could know without having heard them, the disciple passes in an instant to the most profound conviction, and equally prompt in his faith as in his devotion and his doubt, can only utter a cry of admiration, of gratitude, and of love: My Lord and my God! What a reply, my brethren; what an admirable and simple confession of faith! Acknowledge that he who believed in this way, could not have been incredulous in a very culpable manner. With what earnestness he believes; how he throws himself wholly toward his divine Master, who comes to him; how he abjures his vain error, and now what is there in the world which can shake his confidence? Nothing. It is to Christ alone that Thomas was able to say: My Lord and my God! And these words he will repeat during the whole course of his apostleship, from country to country, and from island to island, even to the coasts of the Indies, if the Lord sends him there.

II. The scene that I have just retraced for you, offers all the characters of grandeur and simplicity that one loves to recur to in the gospel. Christ raised to life, shows himself there with his accustomed glory and charity, and it is impossible not to be moved in representing him to one's self, when he deigns to address to the disciple these touching words: Be not faithless, but believing. One doubt remains to be cleared up: On this memorable evening, when Jesus came to show himself to his disciple, and thus to fill his heart with a lively and positive faith, did he think only of Thomas. It remains for me to prove to you, that at this moment Jesus thought of all those who, in the course of time, must be added to the church in order to obtain salvation.

Breth

An apostle has said, "We walk by faith, and not by sight." ren, how true and profound are these words! You who believe in God and Christ-you who consider the gospel as the sole rule of your opinions, your hopes, your duties-look around you; contemplate the world, life, religion, Providence; of all that you believe, you see nothing. Tell me what there is to be seen in the church of Christ; tell me what are the visible things which can occupy your faith. O vanity! A little water for the foreheads of our children, once in their infancy; a little bread, a little wine for ourselves; that is all we see. Is, then, that Christianity? No. Christianity is invisible, like the God who made it. Christianity is within, and not without, the human heart; behold its only domain; and we walk by faith, not by sight.

Pursue this idea into its details, and you will recognize how simple and easy it is. You expect, you desire sanctification; for you know that without holiness no one will see the Lord, and that we are commanded to be perfect as our Father who is in heaven is perfect. You are impatient to be freed from the fatal faculty that we have of sinning; you are anxious that all terrestrial defilement should be effaced from our hearts,

and that all our passions should be changed into a pure and virtuous energy; you seek sanctification, and what you see above all else around and in you is sinfulness. Where is this holiness that you desire? You have never seen it-you never will see it on earth; for we are all unprofitable servants, and, on a thousand articles, we could not reply to a single one.

Again, you await impatiently a condition happier than this life; a state in which your peace will not be so often troubled; one without disquietude, without suffering, without poverty, without injustice; you expect perfect felicity, and you see around you only misery and trouble; in vain you look through this world; an ever pure happiness does not exist here; we know it so well that we no longer seek it here; everywhere there are some leaves dried and faded on the most flourishing and beautiful tree.

Finally, you desire-you impatiently await-immortality, and you see around you only tombs. Immortal beings as we are, we all have borne, bear now, or shall bear, sorrow; and the sorrow is seen, but the immortality is not seen. And in vain you who weep over the grave, in vain you who, like Mary, seat yourselves at the door of the sepulcher-in vain do you essay to pierce the shades of death; in vain, through your tears, do you attempt to catch a glimpse of immortality. No; you see only the dust, a shroud, and the worms; all the rest is concealed. Brethren, with so many examples, you must acknowledge that sanctification, true bliss, immortality-admirable objects for our efforts, holy promises of the Lord, celestial certainties of our future-all are invisible. We walk by faith, and not by sight. To believe, is to represent the truth to one's self, and not to see it.

We walk by faith; and a thousand generations before us, and all those who shall pass upon this earth after us, shall do the same. We walk by faith, and not by sight; and behold, a disciple, an apostle, Thomas, one of the most ardent and zealous, who cries, "If I do not see and touch, I will not believe." Do you conceive now all the danger of this example? If it were necessary to see in order to believe, who, then, would believe? How many Christians would there have been in this world, and how long a time would the church have endured? There would have been a single generation of believers, and the church would have ended at the ascension of Jesus Christ.

What, then, did Jesus do, in order to adjust every thing, to reconcile the interest of a disciple whom he did not wish to abandon in his error, with the interest of so many believers who lived their life either before or after the gospel, and who could not see Jesus on the earth?

O, my brethren! Jesus anticipated the apostle; he accorded to him the proof that he demanded; he made the disciple look upon him; he showed to him the wounds of the nails of the cross; he forced out from his heart these words of consecration and faith: My Lord and my God! and in order that no one should imagine that he had any reason to regret

this privilege, and the right to say: When I see I shall believe, Jesus said to Thomas: Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed! that is to say, their faith is better still than thine, and their recompense will be better than thy recompense. What wisdom and equity in these words! What a just division established between the cotemporaries of Jesus on the one part, and on the other, the believers who preceded him upon the earth, and we who come after him! What justice is this, which weighs thus the faith of the entire world in its balance, forgets not to place in the line of the account the difficulties or facilities that one finds in believing, measures the success by the efforts it costs, and approves in proportion to what it has been necessary to do in order to be approved.

*

See, then, how senseless are the regrets and murmurs that one sometimes hears in regard to the eighteen centuries elapsed since the gospel. We have come too late into the world, say these imprudent Christians, and if we had seen Jesus Christ, we should know him better. Ah! how many of these rash men would then have seen only the son of Mary? How many, perhaps, would have taken him for a Samaritan, an impostor, a rebel? How many, the day after the resurrection, would have said: If I do not see the wounds of the crucified, I will not believe? and Christ would have replied to them as to Thomas: Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed! This one expression re-establishes the equilibrium between the cotemporaries of Christ, and ourselves, and all the generations of the earth; this one phrase recognizes to each his rights, assigns to each his hopes-it proves that salvation is open to all, and that no one is forgotten in the mercies of the Lord. * * Patriarchs and prophets, illustrious examples of the world, you who believed yourselves to be only strangers and sojourners upon the earth, you who hailed from afar the day of the Lord, trembling with joy, blessed are you, for you have not seen, and yet you have believed. People of all places, generations of all ages, to you also salvation is offered, and your faith may attend without uneasiness the moment to be changed to sight. Let us adore, O my brethren, these boundless mercies where we have each our part. Let us be persuaded that our faith is as acceptable to the Lord as that of any of his children. Let us be persuaded, that, in grace as in Providence, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day; let us not look behind, but advance toward the end which is proposed to us; let us keep the faith in a pure conscience, and walking with a firm step amid that which is but show, content with the assurances which are given to us; we shall prefer to these marks of the cross, to these signs of suffering and death, even to the open tomb near which the remembrances of this day reunite all believers, the glorious vision of Stephen, who saw the heavens opened, and the Son of man at the right hand of God; and from the depth of our hearts will arise this unanimous adoration: My Lord and my God!

*

"Ir would be impossible," says Dr. Baird, "to name in France a Protestant family more truly or more justly esteemed for its virtues, or for the number of its eminently useful members, than that of the Monods." The father was a sincere and honest Christian minister, and conscientiously desirous of doing his duty, as far as he knew it. He was a native of Geneva, where he received his education. When he entered the ministry, which was before the first Revolution of France, he could only find a place for laboring in French Switzerland, or in the French chapels of Germany and other foreign lands. He went to Copenhagen, and there preached to a small French congregation for many years. While occupying that position, he had it in his power to minister to the wants of not a few Frenchmen, whom the "Reign of Terror" in France drove from that land. Among them was Louis Philippe, son of the infamous Duke of Orleans (or Prince Egalité, as he chose to be called), who for a while figured in that bloody drama. This was not forgotten by that distinguished exile, when, nearly forty years afterward, he became King of France. As Mr. Monod was called to occupy a post in the Reformed Protestant churches of Paris, which were opened by the orders of the great Napoleon, he left the Danish capital and took up his abode in that of France, and was for many years before his death (which occurred, we believe, in 1836) president of the Consistory of those churches.

Eight sons survived the father's death, four of whom were ministers: Dr. Adolphe (now deceased), and Reverends Frederic, William, and Horace. Of the other four, Henry and Edward are merchants in Hânse, distinguished for their intelligence and probity, and both members of an evangelical church; one (Gustavus) is a highlyesteemed and useful physician in Paris; and another still (Valdimir) is a banker or broker in the same city. There are also three sisters, one of whom is married to a Protestant minister.

The Rev. William Monod is older than was Dr. Adolphe, though younger than his brother Frederic. He was, more than twenty years ago, pastor of a Protestant church in St. Quintin in the north of France. His health failing, he resided some time in France, and was afterward a minister in the Canton de Vaud, in Switzerland, and more recently in Algiers and Rouen. Since the death of his brother Adolphe, he has been pastor, in Paris, of the National church, where he has taken the place of Dr. Grandpierre, which was vacated by his being chosen the successor of Dr. Adolphe Monod.

He is an excellent man, of a truly evangelical and devoted spirit, and a strong preacher.

Says the Rev. Dr. Stevens, in his European correspondence: "Rev. William Monod reminds me of Channing. He looks feeble, and yet intellectually strong and elevated, as did Channing; and there is a striking similarity of feature, especially of forehead, though none of opinion, between them. He is, withal, a man of similar benignity—mild, amiable, tenderly courteous in his manners. No man here has made a deeper impression on my own heart. He is the great man among the great men of the Monod family, to whom French Protestantism is so much indebted. He has a thrilling eloquence; and the most powerful speech delivered at the convention came spontaneously from his lips in an appeal to French Protestants to have more faith in the signs of the times for their cause. He, too, has stood through troublous times; he is now the chief representative of Protestantism in old Normandy."

The sermon which we have translated for this work will increase his reputation on this side of the Atlantic. It bears the marks of great originality and mental power. Some of its passages, for strength of expression, are rarely equaled. It was published several years ago in pamphlet form, and is kindly furnished us by M. Edoir Stapfer, of New York city, himself a relative of the Monod family. The title of the pamphlet, in the original, is, "Le Procés de l'Eternel avec son Peuple."

GOD'S CONTROVERSY WITH HIS PEOPLE.

"For the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel: 0, my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.”—MICAH, vi. 2—4.

WHAT is this controversy between God and his people; and what is this plea which the Almighty uses? It is not a controversy which God has begun with Israel, but, rather, a controversy which Israel has begun with God. It is a plea in justification, offered by the Almighty, who regards himself as accused by his people. It is man who is the plaintiff in this astonishing process; and it is God who appears as the defendant to argue in his own behalf.

Israel has, thus far, said nothing; and we are at a loss, at first, to understand how God should regard himself as the accused. Israel has complained neither of the severity of his laws, nor of the severity of his judgments. But God has perceived in the conduct of his people something equivalent to a formal accusation-something proving that, while they honored him with their lips and their sacrifices, they had; no sincerity, and they regarded his service as grievous and fatiguing.

For this reason, God thus begins his plea: "What have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me." He summons Israel to an explanation; he bids the people to show what he has done to merit their ill treatment, and wherein his service is wearisome to them. He summons them, not as the sovereign judge of the universe,