cry out, 'What a fine Gospel sermon!' Surely Methodists have not so earned Christ. We know no Gospel without salvation from sin."

It is because not only those who are called by his illustrious name, but other sects also, have to a great extent neglected this, that the pulpit has been filling men's brains with theories about the Trinity, the Atonement, Justification, Election, the Future State, Heaven and Hell, &c., and left the souls of men without any practical conviction concerning the rights of man as man, the mutual claims of the rulers and the ruled, the employers and the employés, the rich and the poor; concerning the elements of true moral greatness, the anti-Christianity of all wars, and the innumerable practical evils that are cursing the race.

For these reasons, then, I hope my humble work may win the approval of some of my contemporaries, and subserve to some degree the higher interests of mankind.

N.B.-He who would form a just judgment of David must study the BIBLE account of him-the ONLY TRUE account-in 1 Sam. xvi. to xxxi.; 2 Sam. i. to xxiv.; 1 Kings i. and ii., and 1 Chron. xi. to xxix. He must go to these verses, and nowhere else.

THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST'S CHARACTER.- "Our four Gospels have given us a type of perfection such as the world has never before, or since, seen equalled. This high ideal is found not as one of those bold generalisations, which are the fugitive and brilliant dreams of the spirit, but in the perfectly simple form of a human iife unfolded before our eyes The humble village in which He was brought up, is known to all. He lived the common life of the lower classes of His people: He was despised because He sat at meat with publicans. He sought no distinction by extravagant mortification, nor did He make any appeal, like Mahomet, to the warlike passions. He bequeathed to His disciples, not the scimitar and its conquests, but the cross and its reproach. In the conditions of every-day life was displayed that moral perfection which is without a parallel, because it united all the qualities elsewhere found apart."

E. DE PRESSENSEE, D.D.

Suggestions for Science Parables.

All material Nature is but a parable of spiritual realities.

"Two worlds are our's, 'tis only sin

Forbids us to descry,

The mystic Earth and Heaven within,
Clear as the sea or sky."

THE TREASURES OF THE SNOW.

"HAST THOU ENTERED INTO THE TREASURES OF THE SNOW?"—Job.

"HAST thou entered into the treasures of the snow?" the Almighty is made to ask impatient Job. And Job himself uses the term three times, always, however, in the sense of melting or melted snow, as if the man had not come into actual contact with it, but had seen it, as I saw it, melting and pouring from the mountains in Switzerland under the August sun. In the Psalms there is an exquisite hint of a snow-fall through the perfect stillness, and a magnificent storm piece into which the snow comes with other elements. In the Proverbs, again, there is a passage, how that there is nothing new under the sun, in the matter of ice-cold drinks in summer, where the writer says, "As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so a faithful servant refreshes the soul of his master"; from which we may also infer that even Solomon, in all his glory, had trouble with his servants. Isaiah had a noble image of the truth falling softly and fruitening the heart, as the snow falls and fruitens the earth. There is not a word about the snow from the lips of the Saviour; and it is only noticed at all in the New Testament in a secondary sense,-used as a comparison, never as an experience. . . . . When John Foster learned that snow had been detected on the poles of Mars, he argued that the presence of the snow meant cold; cold, suffering; suffering, sin; and sin on another planet, a frighful extension of the curse and fall. . . . It was the man's misfortune that, otherwise so great and good, he could permit his soul to be bolted fast

E

in a prison so dark that the very stars in heaven were no better to him than a great penitentiary and grave-yard. . . . . The flakes call to us for ever through the moan and shriek of the storm, or whisper as they fall in silence and rest on the land like wool, "Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? and tell us how the revelation of the microscope chords with the words of the Master about the robing of a lily; that down to the minutest and most common thing the hand of their Maker and our Father reaches as perfectly as up to the most celestial and divine. It is disorder to us; it is order to Him. He directs the storm. Snow and hail, fire and vapour, and stormy wind fulfil His word. Not a sparrow or a snow-flake falleth to the ground without the will of your Father. I ask the star, as it melts on my hand, "What proof can you give me that you are not born of the mere spume of the tempest?" It looks at me from beneath its six-rayed crown and answers, "I am no more that than the Atlantic. I come out of order and light, a child of the day.” . . . . The snow is, in its measure, the power of God unto salvation. It is not an aggravation of winter, but a defence against it. Philosophy blends with Science to tell of its grace and goodness. . . . . God sends in the snow-flakes a guardian angel for every grass-blade and flower seed He will keep from the frost, to protect them from frost; then to sink into their hearts and rise with them in the morning of their resurrection. If God so shape the snow-stars, can He fail finally to shape the soul? And if He giveth snow like wool to keep the shivering seed; if He so clothe the land as well as the lily,-will He leave me naked? . . . . We speak of the snow as an image of death. It may be that; but it hides the everlasting life always under its robe, the life to be revealed in due time, when all cold shadows shall melt away before the ascending sun, and we shall be, not unclothed but clothed upon, and mortality shall be swallowed up of life. From "Nature and Life,"-DR. COLLYER. T. B. K.

"Every malignant creature, like every perverted intelligence, is a sphinx. A terrible sphinx propounding a terrible riddle; the riddle of the existence of evil."-VICTOR HUGO.

Selected Acorns from Stalwart Oaks.

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

TIME, FLIGHT OF.-" My weeks and months are hardly distinguished in memory other than as a running-web out of the loom; a bright stripe for a day, a dark stripe for a night, and when it goes faster, even these run together into endless gray."-Carlyle.

LIFE, PRECOCIOUS.-"There is a set of men who begin to live at full gallop while yet they are boys. As a general rule, they are originally of a sickly frame which can scarcely trot, much less gallop without the spur of stimulants."-Lytton.

DEATH, A PROMOTION.-"What is death? -"What is death? A change of situation—an enlargement of liberty-a privilege-a blessing-an apotheosis."-Landor. ETERNITY AND TIME." When I go out of doors in the summer night, and see how high the stars are, I am persuaded there is time enough here or somewhere for all that I must do; and the good-world manifests very little impatience."-Emerson.

ETERNITY, WORKING FOR.-"I was perfectly aware that I was planting acorns while my contemporaries were setting kidney beans; the oak will grow, though I may never sit under its shade, my children may."-Southey. THE FUTURE, FAITH IN.—

"Faith over-leaps the confines of our reason,
And if by faith, as in old times was said,
Women received their dead

Raised up to life, then only for a season
Our partings are, nor shall we wait in vain

Until we meet again."-Longfellow.

HEAVEN AND DEVELOPMENT.-"Be assured there will be no such imperfect and incomplete beings in Heaven as infants in intellect and in sense for ever. All will be perfect and complete according to the plan of God, who made us for fellowship with Himself and with all His blissful family."-Dr. Macleod.

MAN-A PESSIMIST VIEW OF HIM. "What is man? A foolish baby; vainly strives, and fights, and frets; demanding all, deserving nothing. One small grave is what he gets."—Carlyle.

Reviews.

STRAY PEARLS. BY CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. In two Volumes. London: Macmillan and Co.

These are Memoirs of Margaret de Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaises. The talented authoress tells us that the "state of French society, and the strange scenes of the Fronde, beguiled her into this tale," which is a historic romance written in the form of an Autobiography. The Fronde, as our readers will know, was the name given to a political faction in France, during the minority of Louis XIV., and which was hostile to the court and the prime minister, Mazain, and caused great domestic troubles from the year 1648 to 1654. Both the incidents-which are numerous and striking-and the free colloquial style, give to these volumes an interest which will secure for them, no doubt, a large circulation. The work is full of high life and political adventure.

SUNRISE ON THE SOUL; OR THE PATH FOR THE PERPLEXED. By Rev. OGMORE DAVIES, of Craven Chapel, London. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 27, Paternoster Row.

Here are twenty pulpit discourses, the subjects of which are,-"Jesus and the Fishermen-Jesus and imperfect Faith-Jesus and Humanness—— Jesus and Thoughtlessness and Thought-Jesus and the Possessed-Jesus and Man's deepest Sadness-Jesus Touched by the Way-Jesus Seeing the People-Jesus Giving His Power to His Followers-Jesus Comforting and Warning-Jesus and His Doubters-Jesus and Hidden ThingsJesus and His Rest-Jesus and the Two Ideals-Jesus to be TrustedJesus and His Brethren-Jesus and His Teaching-Jesus and His Bounty -Jesus on the Mountain and on the Sea-Jesus the Christ."

JESUS, what a name! what a grand intellectual and moral Personality! near to our nature but remote from our character, "separate from sinners." How, even in pulpits, popular sermons, and religious tractates, is it vulgarly defamed and hideously mal-represented. Conventional religion trades in this great Name! The volume in our hands is a refreshing exception to the popular discourses on "Jesus." There are here no rhapsodic whinings, no hoary platitudes, no ranting rhodomontade, no histrionic hootings, no match lightning or stage thunder, none in fact of those elements which charlatanic pulpiteers employ to attract the vulgar crowd, and thus enrich their coffers, and gratify at once their vanity and greed. The thoughts here seem naturally to flow from the fathomless font of