ment of exactly the same measure of faith in others. Let missionaries preach the gospel again as it was preached when it began the conquest of the Roman Empire and the Teutonic nations; when it had to struggle with powers and principalities, with time-honoured religions and triumphant philosophies, with pride of civilization and savagery of life, and yet came out victorious. At that time a simple prayer was enough. "God have mercy upon me a sinner." There is one kind of faith which revels in words, there is another that can hardly find utterance. The former is like riches which come to us by inheritance; the latter is like the daily bread which each of us has to win by the sweat of his brow. We cannot expect the former from new converts; we ought not to expect it or to exact it, for fear that it might lead to hypocrisy; but we must learn to welcome the latter, though it be as small as a grain of mustard seed. There is One who accepted the offering of the poor widow; she threw in but two mites, but that was all she had, even her whole living. The Pulpit and its Handmaids. CIRCUMSTANCES. "Some regard circumstances as their masters; others, as their servants. The former bow to them, and ascribe to them their condition and their character; the latter use them as the horseman his steed, the mariner the winds, the telegraphist the lightning— to carry out their purposes, and to do their work." EVERY MAN HAS TO DO THE WORK OF JUDGE.-"Judge right eous judgment, brothers. You have a judiciary function to fulfil in life. No man in ermine requires more scrutinizing thought, more gravity of spirit than you. The great God is submitting every day questions for your decision which are of transcendent moment. As one single figure wrong amongst a million in arithmetical sums will vitiate all the calculations, and give a wrong result, so one mistake upon these vital points may involve you in a terrible calamity." GOD'S WORD.-"It is a wonderful thought, that man has the capacity to take into his nature the Word of God; and profoundly solemn is the PRIESTHOODS. 66 The Priesthoods are, to the religious in man, what the clouds are to the ocean--the effect, not the cause. sun-gales of intelligence will scatter all priests as clouds; but the ocean of religious sentiment in humanity will remain full, deep, rolling as ever." NATURE.-"All should tread the earth, not as a garden, a playground, or a market, but as a temple, whose sounds are the voices and whose scenes are the symbols of the Eternal." CHRIST.-"The world wants Christ, not creeds. It can do without theories of bread; but must perish without the bread itself." MENTAL ATMOSPHERES."Men everywhere are living in the ideas and characters of others. The mental atmosphere of this age is formed of the thoughts and deeds of the generations that are gone. There are two great soul atmospheres, the one created by Adam, the other by Christ. All live in one or the other." THE TONGUE. "An ungoverned tongue is like a river whose embankments have given way, spreading disasters through a whole neighbourhood. But it can and ought to be controlled. It is not an involuntary organ, that works irrespective of the will, like the heart and lungs. It is always the servant of the mind, and never moves without volition." BUNYANISM NOT CHRISTIANITY. "We do not care much about making men Christians after the style of Bunyan's Christian, whose grand idea was to get into the Celestial City; but rather after the type of St. Paul, who would brave damnation itself if he could save others." TRUE FELLOWSHIPS.-"We believe in the fellowship of disinterested, unsectarian, and Christ-inspired souls, and not in any fellowship organized upon doctrinal formulas or denominational politics. Such fellowships are pools to be exhaled, not rivers rolling to the ocean.' EDUCATION." The heart, not the brain, is the spring of human conduct. Therefore mere secular instruction will not improve the world. Putting into the mind all the facts of science and history is not education, is not growth; nay, this may check growth, and crush the inner germs of life. Too much soil thrown upon the seed will exclude the sun's rays, and make it rot." THOUGHT-"Nothing is so fecund as thought: one thought often begets myriads. Every true idea is a key to unlock new treasures. It is to the soul as the opening of a gate into a more magnificent garden, or the unsealing of a deeper and a clearer well, or the discovery of a new and richer mine of wealth." IDEAS, ARCHETYPES. "In every grain there is, as it were, an archetype, or map of all the stages of its future growth: its dimensions, form, and foliage are all determined. The same is true in relation to animal growth. "All the million forms of life and beauty that I see around me, are but the filling up of certain plans that existed before the universe was: they are but the tangible embodiment of ideas which the Infinite admired and loved, and with His vital smile unfolded into being."" SELFISHNESS.-"Selfishness is a lens that minifies to the smallest speck the truly great, and magnifies to immense dimension the puerilities of existence. The man who looks at truth through a selfish heart, is like the man in some dreary wilderness, with the mists of the mountains hanging over him, whilst looking out upon nature. His horizon is contracted and clouded; the azure roof above and the meads and mountains around are shut out from him by the shadows of the wilderness and the haze of the atmosphere. And even the few things which fall under his eye are but dimly perceived; they appear not in the just proportions of nature, nor in the blush of beauteous life." SECTARISM. "As for sectarian dogmas, I care not for them; the sooner they are ex tinct the better. But the biography of Christ, the heart of the Bible, I hold that to be everything to human souls. 6 STILL WATERS. "On the whole, still waters' to me are not so interesting as water in agitation. I like the purling brook, the rattling stream, the rushing, roaring river, better than the sleepy lake. The spiritual blessings of the Gospel are often compared to 'waters; they are the rivers of soul-life. Jehovah leads His people, not only to that river, but along its flowery banks, where they inhale the sweet aroma that floats in the air, and slake their thirst with the refreshing streams." ORIGINAL SIMILITUDES. DIFFERENT RESULTS OF THE SAME INFLUENCES. "The same soils, dews, and sunbeams that fill the hemlock with poison, fill the wheat with food for nations; and the same events which transform some men into devils, transfigure others into seraphs." LOST.-"What is meant by souls being lost? They are lost in the sense of not fulfilling the purpose for which they were created. That clock is lost that has become incapable of marking the flight of time; all the machinery is there, but the clock is gone. That ship is lost that has become incapable of ploughing the ocean; its bulk, masts, and sails may stand before you, but the ship has gone. That organ is lost that has become incapable of pouring forth music; it may still stand in the cathedral and look as well and imposing as ever, but it is lost as an organ. Man is lost SO. There is the corporeal frame, there is the mental economy, but the man is lost." CHARACTER.-"A good character is everything to thee, brother. It is the house in which thou dost really live, the temple in which thou dost worship, if thou worshippest at all. It is, indeed, the very organ of thy soul. Through it thou seest all outward things, and hearest all outward voices. According to it, God and the universe are to thee. Is it not of the utmost importance, then, that thou shouldst work in building up a good one?" CONSCIENCE." Conscience is not an attribute of man, but the substratum; not a branch, but the root, from which all the branches of his being spring. Hell's hurricanes, through a thousand centuries, have failed to extinguish one conscience. Like the moon, it may be eclipsed, but it remains intact, holds its own orbit, and remains unaltered in its relation to the eternal sun." HAPPINESS. "The soul whose hope is directed to the realization of that eternal ideal of goodness that shines in the universe, that walks with majesty the chambers of the conscience, and is embodied in the life of Christ, is alone filled with happiness." "Moral goodness should always be held up as the object of virtuous hope, moral evil only as the object of justifiable fear." The Preacher's Scrap-Boom. SHORT ESSAYS. TEMPTATION. NE of the most dangerous elements of temptation, is its subtle power of confusing our sense of right and wrong. Even if we could always preserve our judgment pure, and regard the sin which is presented to our minds, in the moment of temptation, with a moral loathing not less intense than that with which we should recall it, in a repentant mood, after rashly yielding to its influence, it would often be a most difficult matter to resist evil. Our virtues are so weak, and our vices so strong. But, unfortunately, the wish that a certain course of ill-doing were not wrong, is often father to the thought that it is not wrong; so that, in addition to such stimulus to evil as proceeds from a disordered moral appetite, there is the further stimulus which proceeds from a disordered moral sentiment. The corruption of the life has, from the fall of our first parents, been generally preceded by this corruption of the conscience. "Thou shalt not surely die," is still the insidious, and often seductive, prompting of the fiend that lures from virtue. 66 WORLDLY SUCCESS. We often hear and read of instances of worldly success being the results of what is called "luck." Now, there doubtless is such a thing as luck," by whatever name it may happen to be described. For example: a man, being compelled to endeavour to travel by a particular vehicle, of the time for the departure of which he has no knowledge, and proceeding leisurely to the starting-point on the merest chance of being able to meet the conveyance, arrives there just in time to do So. That is, certainly, what, to human judgment at least, appears a stroke of fortune. No action of the man's had the slightest influence in determining whether he would or would not succeed in travelling by the vehicle. But, in many cases, what passes for luck is nothing more nor less than the natural result of ability or industry, which, often begetting ability, not unfrequently begets also superior rewards to those which proceed from that alone. "Learn to labour and to wait," my brother; and the time will arrive when the seed which thou hast sown in secret shall be reaped openly. True, accident is sometimes an essential auxiliary of individual effort, which, however, may be an equally essential auxiliary of accident. The instance already assumed, slightly modified, will serve to illustrate my present position. Let us suppose that the man, instead of being compelled to endeavour to travel by a particular vehicle, of the time for the departure of which he has no knowledge, is at liberty to proceed to the point which he desires to reach by any mode whatever; that then, carefully considering the various means of performing the journey expeditiously, he wisely decides in favour of the vehicle in question; that, instead of going leisurely to the place of departure, he loses not a moment in reaching it; and, finally, that he arrives there just in time to meet the conveyance. Or again, let us assume that a man, by a provident and judicious utilization of his "odd moments," makes himself master, at length, of several languages; and that after, perhaps, many |