obstruction, a postponement and fearful imperilment of the victory. Towards an eternal centre of right and nobleness, and of that only, is all this confusion tending. We already know whither it is all tending; what will have victory, what will have none! The heaviest will reach the centre. The heaviest, sinking through complex, fluctuating media and vortices, has its deflections, its obstructions, nay, at times, its resistances, its reboundings, whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating: "See, your heaviest ascends!" But at all moments it is moving centrewards, fast as is convenient for it; sinking, sinking; and by laws older than the world, old as the Maker's first plan of the world, it has to arrive there. Await the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and his might, at the close of the account, were one and the same. He has fought, and in exact proportion to all his right, he has prevailed. His very death is no victory over him. He dies, indeed, but his work lives, very truly lives. Fight on, thou brave, true heart, and falter not, through dark fortune and through bright. The cause thou fightest for, so far as it is true, no further, yet precisely so far, is very sure victory. The falsehood alone of it will be conquered, will be abolished, as it ought to be but the truth of it is part of nature's own laws, co-operates with the world's eternal tendencies, and cannot be conquered. THOMAS CARLYLE.

"WHO COVERETH THE HEAVEN WITH CLOUDS."-Psalm cxlvii. 8.

IT is a strange thing how little, in general, people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. Every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered if, once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, ugly,

black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with, perhaps, a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And, instead of this, there is not a moment of any day of our lives when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty that it is quite certain that it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest, or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that men should live always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence; he ceases to feel them if he be always with them. But the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not too bright nor good for human nature's daily food; it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart; for soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful; never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost Divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of the Supreme, that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accidents, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If, in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet, and another it has been windy, and another it has been warm. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that gilded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam

that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All has passed unregretted or unseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the earthquake nor in the fire, but in the still small voice. They are but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be addressed through lamp-black and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty; the deep and the calm and the perpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally; which are never wanting and never repeated; which are to be found always, yet each found but once. It is through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given. RUSKIN.

"Ye search the Scriptures . . . . and ye will not come to Me."-JOHN v. 39, 40.-"The Bible becomes dearer and more sacred to me the more I read it; I have no sympathy with its arraigners, even too little with its critics. Yet I feel compelled often to stand with both against those who turn it into a god, and so deny the living God of whom it bears witness. That idolatry is so fearful, and the numbers who are rushing into it so great and respectable, that I feel we ought to bear any reproaches and any suspicions rather than be the instruments of promoting it."FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE.

Selected Acorns from Stalwart Oaks.

"The smallest living acorn is fit to be the parent of oak-trees without end." -Carlyle.

TIME, SWIFTNESS OF.-"That is an apt personification of Time which represents him as a decrepid old man, with wings that are visible only from behind. While we watch his approach, he seems to creep tardily along; it is not until he has passed us that we perceive he has been flying."-Henry Craik.

THE WORLD'S HEROES." How often are the world's especial heroes men who throw the mantle of vigorous intellect over the falseness, the heartlessness, the restlessness which especially characterise a vulgar mind. The calf to which the Israelites bowed down, was it not made of the trinkets of the common people?"—Arthur Helps.

THE RIGHT USE of Knowledge."Knowledge is not a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and contention: or a shop for profit or sale,-but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate."-Lord Bacon.

MODERN INDIFFERENCE." Not many generations have elapsed since Englishmen were content to brave torture on the stake rather than subscribe to some abstruse formula about the mysteries of religion. These men had the courage of their convictions, but it is vain to expect the courage of their convictions from men who have no deep and fixed convictions, such as sustained the martyrs of old.”—H. L. Brodrick.

THE DELIRIUM OF THE HEART.- "It is a mercy in affliction to be preserved from the delirium of the intellect; and is it not also a mercy to be kept from the delirium of the heart? Now, what ice is to the temples, cooling the blood, lowering the fever, and tranquillizing the mind, that is hope to the soul."-J. A. James.

INTEMPERANCE.-"Drunkenness is a pleasant devil, a sweet poison, a pleasant sin, which whoever doth commit, committeth not a simple sin, but become the centre and slave of all manner of sin.”—St. Augustine.

GODLY HOPE AND FEAR. "Fear (godly) and Hope in the soul of a Christian are like the cork and lead to the wet; the cork keeps it from sinking and the lead from too much floating; so it is here. Fear keeps Hope from degenerating into presumption, and Hope keeps Fear from degenerating into despair."-Bates.

BRISTOL THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE.

T. BROUGHTON KNIGHT.

Reviews.

CREEDS OF THE DAY, OR COLLATED OPINIONS OF REPUTABLE THINKERS. By HENRY COKE. In Two Volumes. London: Trubner and Co., Ludgate Hill.

This is a very remarkable work, remarkable for the ability of its author, and the purpose to which that ability is directed. We have here presented to us the theological outcome of Biblical literature, of modern science, and current philosophy; and the reasonings and conclusions of the most eminent modern scholars and scientists in relation to these subjects. The whole is treated of under two heads;-Revelation, meaning miraculous communications from God to man, and Rational Theology which includes Natural Theology, or the argument from design, and Metaphysical Theology, or the theory of being. These points are dealt with in three series of Letters. Those who desire to learn what a man of immense reading, vast intelligence, philosophic penetration, and unusual logical force, can propound contrary to the current orthodox opinions concerning the Bible (including the Old and New Testaments), and concerning the Being and Government of God, could not do better than study these two volumes. Perhaps there could be no better discipline for a Gospel preacher than such a study. It will rouse his faculties, lead him to an earnest re-investigation of his own opinions, blow away from his mind all dogmatism, and enable him to speak with such broad intelligence and rational force as will commend his ministrations to all thoughtful men. For many reasons the man who contradicts our pre-conceived and traditional opinions, does us a greater mental and moral service than he who is their echo and advocate. He whose faith cannot brave the whirlwind and the storm of hostile criticism is, it beseems us, of little worth. He whose belief is rooted in those principles of absolute truth which are the basis and the force of all true reasoning, stands on the rocks against which the gates of hell cannot prevail.

ST. PAUL'S USE OF THE TERMS FLESH AND SPIRIT. By WILLIAM P. DICKSON, D.D. Glasgow: James Macleshose and Sons, St. Vincent Street.

This volume contains, in a revised form, six Lectures, given last winter, upon the foundation of the late Mr. Baird, of Auchmedden and Cambusdoon, along with various additions necessary to complete the design of the course. "My aim," says the author, "has been not to treat the

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