Would men then be happy? Let the love of Christ reign in their homes. Let them yield to that heavenly power which alone can quell tumultuous passion, or charm away the unhallowed effects of sin from scenes which should ever be sacred to holiness and peace. That love /should/ well up in the Christian soul like a stream in the desert, refreshing all, and turning sterility into greenness. Now, is that the case? Has the truth been lodged in the heart? Is the mind of God, the law of the Lord, our guide? Then the cheerfulness of heavenly peace will glance through our abodes. They may be only a straw-built shed, or they may be the halls of the princely; but wherever the love of Jesus reigns, there is peace with God, joy in God, and preparation to be for ever with Him. CHAPTER III. RELIGION IN THE WORKSHOP. There is no error in religion more common or more deadly, than to put the means for the end. So rarely does man regard aright the great object of the soul's pursuit, that he is ready to repose supinely upon something done, without ever solemnly inquiring whether he has reached the right result by doing it, or only been deceived by a semblance and a form.--We read the Word of God, and think that it can accomplish what only He of whom it tells can achieve. We hold certain doctrines, and because we hold them firmly, we hasten to the conclusion that we actually possess the blessings which these doctrines reveal or imply. Or finally, the intellect of some is filled with truth in its loftiest forms; but there it lies, exercising no influence upon the life. It quiets the conscience, but it does not sanctify the soul; and the anomaly of a spiritual creed side by side with a carnal life is thus frequently found among men--the worst of all heresies, the most deadly of all deceptions, a repetition of Chorazin and Bethsaida. THE CHIEF END OF REVELATION. Now, it can never be made too plain that revelation, with all that is glorious in it, is only a means to an end. Even the death of Christ, solitary as it stands in its moral grandeur, among the events of the universe, was only a means--the end was /God's glory in man's holiness/. To bring a clean thing out of an unclean; to transmute enmity against God into love to him, or wounds and bruises and noisome sores into the beauty of holiness--behold the grand result aimed at alike in the life and the death of the Son of God. By dying he did accomplish other results, and the influence of that death is felt to the utmost verge of creation, as we know it is felt among the angels on high. But still it is the /grand result/ we should ever aim at, and that is, deliverance from sin in its condemnation, its pollution, and its power: "This is the will of God, even our holiness." THE CHRISTIAN WORKMAN.