Shotover had short pastorates, and abundance of them. He has left the world a lesson which himself never would learn. Shotover was too politic; he played the politician about cabbages. He always had a plot, because he always imagined a counter-plot against him. If he had the simplest measure to carry in his church, his friends must meet; there must be a caucus; 66 we may have opponents; we must be ready for them, etc., etc.," until finally, he had use for all the machinery he had prepared; and what was very sad, Shotover could see the last need of his machinery, but never could see the origin of the evil. Wigfall I always sincerely pitied; for he had short settlements without any great cause. Somehow or other, he always made the impression that he was a great man, and in a few years the people always found out that he was not so great a man as they thought him. They were indignant, and rose at once to revenge their own mistake on their fugitive victim. He went to another vineyard to make the same impression and to find the same treatment. Sensitive was killed by gossips, busybodies, and tale-bearers. O if he could have put on the shield of indifference- but he did not wholly make himself. Wantwill tried to please everybody, and ended in pleasing none, not even himself. Rev. Mr. Flash had a most pleasing and pathetic voice, and might have spoken for years with effect, if he could have found anything to say; but he died a pastoral death, smothered in his own previous popularity. Wronghead had a short career, because he never could put two ideas together. His sermons generally consisted of one idea, which he would repeat over about seven thousand times, with astonishing variety of language. He would endeavor to make the bantling pass for a new baby by putting on a new slip; but when the audience. found it out, they dismissed him and his bantling together. But the most melancholy example of the temporary was my

every sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip and rasp an empirical alementary powder, to diet into some similitude of health and substance the languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation."-Burke's Works, Vol. II. p. 393.

dear friend Mr. Prim. Prim was a good scholar, a man of common sense, a diligent worker, and a true Christian; and yet he was slow to find a settlement, and never could keep what he had slowly found. What was the matter? Dr. Franklin makes poor Richard say, "a little neglect may breed great mischief: for want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; and for want of a horse, the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for want of a little care about a horse-shoe nail." Prim was obstructed by little impediments, and which he knew to be little at the time. Nobody must speak to him going to meeting; no one must intrude on particular hours; f he had a call for settlement, he must put in some vexatious condition: they must have a new bell, or change the lamps, or the hymn-books. His manner was always precise, and his very laugh was ungenial. In short, he was a rose-bush full of verdure, flowers, and fragrance; but you could not touch him but some hidden briar would scratch your fingers and repel your friendship. He fell a victim to little briars.

The conclusion is, that short pastorates are more owing to defects in the clergy than faults in the people. Let a preacher have discretion, industry, piety, and common sense; let him love his work and understand his people; let him be firm without stiffness, and yielding without false conformity; let him wish to be permanent, and he will be so, if he can only GET THROUGH HIS THIRD YEAR. Pindar, in one of his odes, speaks of those who reach the immortal fields by enduring the three purgations.

ARTICLE IV.

PLACE AND VALUE OF MIRACLES IN THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

BY REV. JOSEPH HAVEN, D.D., ProFESSOR IN CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL

SEMINARY.

As in all warfare, so in the attack and defence of Christianity, the battle-ground changes, from time to time, as the enemies of the truth change their tactics, or direct their assault now upon this, now upon that point in the line of our defences. At present, it is the supernatural element in Christianity that is more directly and fiercely assailed. Around this the battle rages. And, what is not a little remarkable, it is from the professed friends of Christianity, from those who call themselves its disciples, rather than from its open and avowed enemies, that this attack mainly proceeds. It is no longer the Jew, the Mohammedan, the pagan, but the rationalist and sceptic, within the sacred precincts of the Christian temple, and before its very altars, who take it upon themselves to call in question, or utterly to deny, the supernatural element of the Christian religion.

Miracles, we are told, are no longer to be relied upon as evidences of the divine authority of the Christian system. However appropriate they may have been in a remote and less enlightened age, they are now quite out of place. As civilization and science have progressed, they have left this method of thinking and reasoning wholly in the back-ground. It is now understood, by all cultivated and philosophic minds, that in the domain of matter everything moves on by fixed and determined laws, which are never violated, never suspended, and which never change. This invariable operation, this universal order and unity of physical causes, is the first principle of the laws of nature, and whatever is at variance with this principle must be unconditionally and unhesitatingly rejected. The material universe is discovered to be one great system of self-sustaining and self

evolving laws, a grand whole moving on in harmony, and adequate to itself. Even the idea of original creation is now coming to be rejected as an antiquated notion, in view of the recent developments of science with respect to the origination of species. In a word, any interference with or deviation from the established and eternal order of things, is a physical impossibility, which no amount of evidence can substantiate; and the miracles, so called, of the Christian system, which in a ruder and darker age were considered as its main supports and defences, are, in reality, at the present day the chief hindrances to its acceptance.

Such is the position taken by the modern sceptic and rationalist. It is a position which the advocates of Christianity are called upon to meet. Mere denunciation and reproach of those who thus reason, will not suffice. Ecclesiastical censure will not meet the case. There is a demand for thorough investigation and solid argument. The posi tion is one which overlooks and commands one of the most important defences of the Christian system; and to leave it in possession of the enemy, is to abandon Christianity itself as incapable of defence. Under these circumstances, it becomes necessary for the disciples of the Christian faith to re-examine, with special care, the whole matter of the supernatural element in Christianity, and possibly to re-adjust, in some respects, their own position with respect to it.

There are, in any such investigation, three questions to be specially considered: What is a miracle? What proves a miracle? What does a miracle prove?

I. What is a miracle?

It is of the first importance in this controversy that the advocates of the Christian system should understand precisely what it is that they are contending for, how much and how little is involved in, and essential to, the idea of a miracle. If we mistake not, some uncertainty, perhaps we might say some vagueness, of opinion exists on this point in many minds; some are disposed to include more, and others less, under that term. With some it means one

thing, and with some another. Sometimes it is used to denote whatever is wonderful, as prodigies, portents, matters inexplicable, the mirabile of the Latins, the répas of the Greeks. Others, again, restrict the term within much narrower limits, understanding by it some contradiction or violation of the laws of nature. By others, it is regarded as a suspension, rather than a contradiction, of those laws; while yet others would prefer to call it a deviation from, rather than either a contradiction or suspension of, natural laws. A miracle, according to some, is a departure from all law; with others, a departure not from all, but merely from all known law.

What, then, is a miracle, and how much shall we include under it? Is it any and every wonderful, apparently inexplicable thing? Is it a direct violation or contradiction of the laws of nature? Is it a suspension of those laws? Is it simply a deviation from them? Is it a thing without and above all law, or has it laws of its own?

If we seek for that which is essential to a miracle, in distinction from what is merely incidental or occasional, we shall find the ultimate idea to be that of divine interposition to accomplish, by special and supernatural agency, a specific end, not otherwise attained. Whether the result be a violation of the laws of nature or not, whether it be a suspension of those laws or not, it must at least be something beyond the power of mere nature to accomplish; something supernatural, requiring for its accomplishment divine interposition and agency. Whether this agency be immediately exerted, or mediately, through human or other instrumentality, the power must be ultimately divine power, and that not according to the ordinary course of divine operations in nature. Where we have this, we have all that is essential to a miracle, — Deity interposing to accomplish, by special agency, an effect not to be reached in the natural course and order of events.

This is accordant with the definitions given by standard authorities. Thus Webster-"an event or effect contrary to the established constitution and course of things, or a