its fanatical career. The track at first, as far as the eye can reach, has the level air-line of rectitude; but presently it sinks into a downward grade, winds through a thousand expedients, and forks in a thousand directions. A Jehu is the engineer, and a demon feeds the flames. Onward and downward, then, jumping and jerking upon the new and rough road, the maddened train is flying. Wisdom, the conductor, is hurled into a chasm; every brakeman of conscience is dashed from his station; violence snaps asunder every coupling of honour and good faith; the train is no longer a fraternity of interests, but schism reigns throughout, and each is a sectarian car by itself. Still the natural laws of momentum and gravity urge them all on with increasing speed, down the declivity of their degenerating career. At the many curves and forks of the road, the train divides, each interest taking a different track. Far down and far away upon the broad plain of our daily practical life, these tracks ever cross ånd recross each other. Here the cars of rival interests and sectarian schools daily rush together and dash each other in pieces. Thus the visionary experiment, which looked so grand in its speculation, now strews the whole land with its ruins, while the huge scheme which started the movement still dashes giddily ahead on the far horizon, till it leaps into the gulf of oblivion.

But though the wrecks of a dozen, a hundred, a thousand such experiments be strown over the land, yet out of each new wreck do the people crawl forth, brush the blood and dust out of their eyes, lift up their heads, and shout "onward!" Then mending their shattered bones and broken fortunes, and gathering up their scattered resources of body and soul, they march off again to the ever cheerful, ever hopeful strain, "try, try again!" Deathless are the longings of our nature, undying its hopes, determined its resolution, and its resources without end. Hence the achievement of that unknown good and felicity which it craves can no more be abandoned than life itself. And the fact that all this wealth of noble energy is misdirected and wasted on the false and perishable, is matter rather of sorrow than of satire.

The fact that for our people the lamp of experience and the sunlight of history burn and blaze in vain-the fact that they

fail to see and approve what is excellent, comes not hence from the deafness of their ears, or the blindness of their eyes; but simply from this, that the solid and enduring is not developed into that practical, visible, tangible form, whereby alone it can prove and authenticate its existence in the world. "Invisibility" may satisfy the ideal, theorizing genius of Europe, but never the practical good sense of our American mind. It is this legitimate, clever quality itself, satisfied with nothing short of living proof and experiment, which is imposed upon and led astray. "By their fruits ye shall know them." The fruit is the true, unmistakable demonstration. Let, then, the Church and the Gospel prove and authenticate themselves by their works, and it will suffice the people. That the Church does nothing is by no means affirmed; but this, that her work is not at all commensurate with the earnestness of the times. For every other work neither men nor treasure are spared; but the Church is a despised Lazarus, dependent on the morsels extorted by "special appeals."

The Incarnation was not an intangible phantom. GOD was not only united with the invisible soul, mind, and spirit of man, but also manifested in his actual flesh. So also the Church is not only the life and spirit, but also the very body of CHRIST. The life of JESUS, to exist at all in the world, must be manifested in our mortal bodies. The hidden ones must be revealed, or the world can never believe that they exist. The spiritual and invisible brotherhood must externalize and embody itself in a visible and temporal brotherhood. The grace and truth. of the Gospel must have its definite, tangible, and systematic organization, or it can have neither lever nor stand-point for moving the world. Moreover, the spirit of life in CHRIST JESUS is a thing of law and order-of regular systematic action, and the enemy of all haphazard and random movement. Faith and charity can live only on the daily bread-the regular habit of well-doing. The notion that grace, because it is free in its incomings, indwellings, and outgoings, is therefore without law, and only spasmodic in its action, is all perversion. The Gospel is a tropical tree, perpetually covered with leaf, and bloom, and fruit in every stage of growth-and with ripened fruit daily dropping. Again: the free-will offering, though genuine only

when a matter of glad choice, is none the less a matter of stern duty. The imperative above us, and the potential within us— the law which commands, and the "ability" which obeys, are by GoD self-joined together in eternal wedlock, and may never be lawfully put asunder. They are the parental and coördinate factors of all habitual and healthful action in the Church.

As then the Lord JESUS was GOD manifested in our very flesh; and as His body was prepared by Him for this express purpose, namely, to be the physical agency of His entire work; even so must the Church, to be His body, also have its physical organization—its visible and definite corporation, systematically constructed and officially appointed throughout. Next, as in the personal ministry of CHRIST, the miracle on the body was the forerunner of that in the soul-as the perpetual outflowing of virtue from His body, in streams of aid and comfort to suffering humanity, drew vast multitudes to the richer fountain of His words of grace and truth; even so must it be with the Church. Her works must be the living demonstration that she is a teacher sent from GOD. These must be the "signs" which shall command the faith and confidence of the people in the salvation which she brings. The promise of the life that now is, must prove that she has the promise of that which is to come. When thus her works pioneer the way and clear the ground, then will the seeds of life which she sows, at once take root, spring up, and bud and blossom as the rose. But the Church already has a body? True; and an official ministry of the Word and Sacraments; but no official ministry of works. The hands and feet of a practical Deaconate are as yet undeveloped. This agency, first of all, did the Great Shepherd and Bishop ordain and send forth, that by their works they might prepare the way for the coming of the SAVIOUR himself. Let then this department of the ministry-these official organs of the Church's work, bé developed into full strength and beauty; and this practical fact itself, more potently than any argumentation, will bring out the Church's visibility, as a temporal brotherhood and family, and thus demonstrate to the world the might and majesty of her inner life. And this brotherhood of Divine appointment, thoroughly organized and marshalled into service, will soon take the place of all other brotherhoods, societies,

and committees, in the beneficent works, moral reforms, and entire social culture of the land.

The age is onward, and nothing can arrest it. You may plant the red signal flag of danger at every curve along the way, reverse every engine, and down with the breaks upon every mad wheel of passion: yet such is the momentum of the times that all will be in vain, and crash after crash inevitable. The Church alone has the remedy. She alone has the internal life and spirit of all true onward and upward movement. Her external machinery is firm and well-tried as far as it goes. It has, moreover, the approval of eighteen centuries and a half. Yet is it sadly insufficient for the emergencies of the day.

Even the Lord JESUS said, "I must work the works of Him that sent me." So likewise a necessity is laid upon the Church, nay, woe is unto her, if she do not fill up in her body what is left behind of the works and sufferings of CHRIST. She is God's workmanship, building, husbandry, created, bodily revealed, and physically organized, for the very purpose of good works. The kingdom of heaven is not indeed this mere organization, sustained with meat and drink. But then that peace and joy in the HOLY GHOST, which is the craving and crying desire of the world, must stand revealed in flesh and blood, or the world can never come to the knowledge and possession of it. There can be no faith in phantoms. The tangible body and felt action must be the demonstration of the unseen spirit and power within. GOD the FATHER, the SON, and the HOLY GHOST, are by and in their works revealed, and thus made the objects of faith. The reason, then, that the world has so little faith in the, Church, is because she is still so much an unpractical abstraction. Let the Church by her works be revealed to the world, and this itself will command the world's faith in her, as the earthly vessel and reservoir of that life and spirit, that grace and truth, that peace and joy in the HOLY GHOST, which alone can meet the earnest cravings of mankind.

In her Deaconate the Church has an unbounded store of material. Let this be converted into its proper machinery, as that "rolling stock" of the Church, which is no human invention, but the very creation of Divine Wisdom. Then let the wealth of the Church be so regarded and held, as it is in fact, her tem

poral capital, the material trust and talent which she is to occupy," the moneyed investment and agency whereby she is to achieve the conquest of the world. This done, the Church, completed externally after a heavenly pattern, and filled with a heavenly life, will stand before the world, not as a shadowy speculation-an untried and doubtful experiment, but as that divine agency and mighty motive-power, living and real, which alone can draw after it the long united train of the world's history, freighted with all our interests, temporal and eternalthe only power which can carry us, soul and body, not only onward, but assuredly heavenward, to the immortal and blessed perfection of our being. Let the world but see this, and in glad satisfaction the universal shout will soon go up, WE HAVE FOUND THE SALVATION OF GOD.

MACAULAY AND LORD BACON.

FEW writers of our day, perhaps none, have done so much to form the popular estimate of certain historical characters and events, as Macaulay. His Essays and History of England have had an immense circulation both at home and abroad; enough to enrich the author with an ample fortune, besides adding largely to the strength of divers publishing-houses. It is not to be denied that his qualities of thought and style are well adapted to produce such a result. His study and reading are varied and extensive, his memory is singularly capacious and retentive, his readiness and availability of mind such that he can bring all his resources into action at any time, and on any subject. And then, he is never dull; never, that is, except to an eye too sober with thought to relish such a mastery in all sorts of intellectual fire-works. Most minds like to be stimulated; some minds prefer to be fed. What with his unflagging brilliancy, his unfaltering self-confidence, his untiring rhetorical agility, Macaulay stimulates the reader's mind much faster than he feeds it. All together his pages abound in the elements of popular attraction and exhilaration. And not the least cause of his vast popularity may be, the. leading people