or Nation, do not necessarily, or always, tend to the aggrandizement or even the temporary happiness of the individual here. On the contrary, their practice is often fatal to his success, or to his comfort in this life, and even to life itself; while their rejection leads, as we frequently see, to the attainment of many of those things which are most desired by the mass of men. Take, for instance, the case of a soldier volunteering to serve his country in the field, and a contractor remaining at home to secure wealth out of army supplies, or a speculator gaining a fortune by betting on the event of a battle or a campaign. The soldier, after great hardships, perishes in battle, or of disease, or in a prison, leaving his wife and little ones to the cold pity of the pension laws; the contractor or speculator amasses a great fortune, lives at home at ease, and perhaps becomes what is called an "influential member of society." Which of these two did his duty you need not be told. But if there is no future for us, the contractor and speculator were evidently the wisest men--the poor soldier who gave his life freely out of a sense of duty to his country was but a purblind fool. If we are only animals, with no hope of existence beyond this life of the body, it is not to be denied that those of us are the wisest and most "practical" who take care to get the most for ourselves out of this brief

existence, and seize such share as by superior cunning or strength we can grab of that which to us may seem most desirable. There can be, in that case, no question of moral right and wrong, or of duty, but only a question of taste or preference.

But, you may properly ask: Is, then, the poor soldier required to accept all the deprivation and · suffering, the untimely death, and the knowledge that he leaves his family helpless-all this with no present satisfaction, and with only the hope, or belief it may be, that in the future life, about which he really knows nothing, he will have some kind of reward he does not know what?

No; he has also a satisfaction in this life, and the greatest which, on the whole, man's life affords. He has the joyful consciousness of doing his duty.

The sense of duty done is the brave man's solace in failure or misfortune. He has done what he could: the rest he leaves with God. The cause he believed just has broken down; the plans he had formed have failed; the good he intended has been brought to naught before his eyes; he sees injustice prevail, and wrong triumphant; but he has done his duty; and, oppressed, in poverty, in disgrace, in sorrow, not for himself but for others, or for the cause he believes right and sacred, he is still serene, for he says, "The end I leave with God;" and he trusts

that in the future life he will see that all this failure and suffering had some good meaning which now he cannot penetrate. Holding this faith, life is still important and full of meaning to him, where otherwise extinction would be welcome; and he feels and knows that what concerned him was only to do his duty, and leave the result to God.

Your lives will have been thin and profitless if, before you come to middle-age you have not, more than once or twice, had occasion to seek this consolation, this only real solace for failure in some enterprise or effort where, not your own aggrandizement, but the benefit of others, was your aim.

And observe that it is because there is a God, because there is a future life, because this present life is not all we have to look for, that this cheer is ready for your soul, to maintain its sweetness and serenity. Leave out God, as the all-wise disposer of events, and the failure of your efforts and plans is final defeat for you, and you would soon be persuaded that the service of your fellow-men, the least grateful of tasks, was but childish folly, and that unselfish devotion to disagreeable duties was the vagary of a distempered mind.

It needs all the impulse which can be got from a permeating belief in God and the eternal life to give men patience, unselfishness, endurance in the

performance of disagreeable duties, persistence in irksome, and with men of great natural powers almost unendurable self-restraint, and contentment and moderation among men of lower powers and less force. Animated by a right faith in God, the man says, "I will do my duty, let what will happen." He leaves the result to God.

It was in this sense that St. Augustine wrote that we "ought to cultivate a willingness to be damned "

-a readiness to leave mere results to the Great Judge and disposer of all. It is because the practice of self-denial and the performance of duty leads us we cannot know whither in this life, but compels us to a course founded on other and higher considerations than our present welfare, or comfort, or success, that we say the chief inducements to this higher and Christian life are not the pleasure or indulgence of the body, the attainment of "success," or the gratification of those desires and passions which we need the body to fulfil.

VI.

FAITH AND SCIENCE.

SEVERAL reasons have combined to cause the recent rapid spread of unbelief in the Christian world.

The great and wonderful advances in scientific discovery made within this century have persuaded many unscientific minds that there is now no longer any further need for God; which is as though a school-boy, having examined the steam-chest, boiler, piston-rod and valves of a locomotive - engine, and satisfied himself that they all work harmoniously together, and with a quite striking adaptation of all the parts to a common purpose, should thereupon decide that there were undoubtedly no machinists or engineers. Though what we know bears but an infinitesimal proportion to the sum of knowledge, we are constantly ascertaining more and more concerning the machinery of the universe; but surely that is no valid reason why we should doubt that this marvellous and complicated and harmoniously working machine had a maker?

The rigorous methods necessary for the accurate