FEBRUARY 1.

"Do ye now believe?" John 16 :31.

    THIS was in reply to the profession of his disciples. They had said unto him, "Now speakest thou plainly. Now we are sure that thou knowest all things : by this we believe that thou earnest forth from God."

    It is not easy to lay the emphasis with perfect certainty, and yet, according as it is laid, the language will strike us with some shades of difference.

    We may consider the words as an inquiry. " Do ye now believe ? I have a right to ask, and I do ask." He is not inattentive to our condition and our experience, our deficiencies and our improvements. And though he needed not that any should testify of man, because he knoweth what is in man, yet he will know these things from ourselves, that we may be urged to consider, and be affected with our own communications.

    We may regard them as a censure. "Do ye now believe? Ye ought to have believed long ago ; yet hitherto, it would seem, according to your own avowal, you have not, that is, as you ought to have done, and as you might have done. How strange and blameable, that, with all your advantages, you have been, even down to this hour, filled with hesitation and doubts!" For he can reprove as well as encourage. Do we not remember? Do ye not yet understand? After his resurrection, he upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart.

    We may consider them as a check to presumption. " Do ye now believe? You think so, but have you not expressed yourselves with too much confidence ? You now consider yourselves confirmed believers, and you suppose that you shall never err again, fail again. I know you better than you know yourselves. Imagination is not reality. Events will prove that you have much less faith than you now suppose. "Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone."

    There is a difference between hypocrisy and instability. We may feel what we utter at the time, but emotions are not principles, impulses are not dispositions. There may be goodness, but it is like the morning cloud and early dew, that soon passeth away. How often do we become a wonder, as well as a grief, to ourselves! How little do we know of our own hearts, till we are tried!  The little ants disappear in the cloudy and rainy day, and the observer might suppose they were all dead. But let the sun shine forth, and they are again all alive and in motion. There is the same mud at the bottom of the water when calm, but the waves thereof cast up the mire and dirt.

    Let us not, therefore, make too much of frames and feelings. Let us not imagine, because we are now walking in the light of God's countenance, that we shall never again mourn his absence. Behold, the hour cometh when we may consider all our present joy as only a delusion. Do we now believe? A change in the weather, a depression of animal spirits, may renew all our doubts and fears, and we may be all apprehension again.

    Therefore let us rejoice with trembling. Let us remember our own weakness, and instead of depending on the grace that is in us, "be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus."

"Beware of Peter's word ;
Nor confidently say,
I never will deny thee, Lord
But, Grant I never may.
Man's wisdom is to seek
His strength in God alone,
And e'en an angel would be weak
That trusted in his own."

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