of thirty-three years of experience in the Christian life: "The Sun of Righteousness never sets, but shines forever on the soul turned toward it in the attitude of faith and obedience. Perfect trust brings perfect peace to the believing soul." This is true in every case. Just in proportion as true religion fills the heart, the mind is contented and the spirit finds repose. One writer says that the soul filled with Christ understands the enigmas of life. "Looking with the inner eye, hearing with the inner ear, the soul is awakened, sanctified, saved. Its hunger is satisfied. Personal purity here, and the everlasting rest of eternity become its possession. Oh, that men were not satisfied to dwell in darkness?" What wings are to a bird, oil to wheels, or a loadstone to a needle, such is Christ to the soul of the believer; he gives speed to his devotion, activity to his obedience, and draws him nearer and nearer to God. We know there is sham religion, and a devotion that resembles the blaze of straw; but that which is spiritual is like the fire on the Jewish altar-kindled from above, and which never went out. It is a stream fed by a living fountain; not a sudden torrent, however wide and impetuous at any one time, produced by the melting of the snow or a sudden thunder storm. It is a strong, deep, abiding current, flowing with increasing power and blessing on earth, and issuing in an ocean of rapture in heaven.

There is much misapprehension as to the purpose of religion. Some appear to think that its express mission is to make all men think alike, and so, because there are different sects in religion, and a variety of views in each sect, they ask in triumph, “What has become of your religion?" Christianity was never intended to repress thought, or to cast all minds into the same intellectual mould; or even to compel all thinkers to walk in the same mental foot-path. Charles IV., after his abdication, amused himself in his retirement at St. Juste, by attempting to make a number of watches go exactly together. Being constantly foiled in his attempt, he exclaimed, "What a fool have I been to neglect my own concerns, and to waste my whole life in a vain attempt to make all men think alike on matters of religion, when I cannot even make a few watches keep time together." As we have shown, religion is for the heart. It happily quickens the intellectual nature and

tends to perfect the physical, but its chief design is to develop the spiritual and beget in mankind a feeling of submission to the will of God. "Our highest happiness," says Bickersteth, "is to have our will entirely conformed to the divine will, to submit our will to his, and to say, without reserve, 'Thy will be done."" "This is the whole of religion," says Hyde, "to make God's will our own, by complete submission to his providences, and by entire obedience to his precepts. All duty is to God and is due to him. We become the children of God's grace, like Christ and so like God, when we do even the humblest duties, and bear the hardest trials, because it is God's will. All faith in Christ resolves itself into doing right."

And then, there are people who appear to think that religion is intended chiefly to make people dissatisfied with the present life, and to alienate them wholly from temporal pursuits and pleasures. Probably the old monastic orders, and the praises in certain quarters, of convent life, are largely responsible for this impression. It is, at all events, wholly incorrect. Christians are not to leave the world until their work is done, nor to cease enjoying it, in the truest sense, until better joys are theirs. Christianity, says Bishop Porteus, forbids no necessary occupations, no reasonable indulgencies, no innocent relaxations. It allows us to use the world, provided we do not abuse it. It does not spread before us a delicious banquet, and then come with a "touch not, taste not, handle not." All it requires is, that our liberty degenerate not into licentiousness, our amusements into dissipation, our industry into incessant toil, our carefulness into extreme anxiety and endless solicitude. So far from forbidding us to engage in business, it expressly commands us not to be slothful in it, and to labor with our hands for the things that be needful; it enjoins every one to abide in the calling wherein he is called, and to perform all the duties of it. It even stigmatizes those that provide not for their own, and calls them worse than infidels. While enjoining us to be temperate in all things, and to let our moderation be known, it implies that, within these bounds, we may enjoy all the reasonable conveniences and comforts of the present life.

CHRISTIANITY AND MORALITY.

Christianity requires and includes morality. Christ came not to make void the law, but to fulfill it. He inculcated the highest moral principles, and set a practical example of the purest life. As far as morality can go, Christianity joins hands with it, bidding it God-speed. But there comes a point when morality can go no farther, can do no more, and then the heart looks up for something stronger. "All these (commandments) have I kept from my youth up," said the young moralist of the New Testament; "what lack I yet?" It is the consciousness of spiritual lack that makes men seek in the religion of Christ that which completes character and satisfies the heart. Morality is simply what the law requires; it is right-doing in relation to our fellow-men. Christianity is what God requires above and beyond the civil statute. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart;" this is the first and greatest commandment, and this is piety. "Morality is to love what a candle is to the sun. A man wishes to explore a great house in the night. He takes a candle, and, scraping a match, sets fire to it; and with this flickering light, which is so feeble that his own steps almost put it out, and which only serves to dispel the darkness for a short distance before him while it closes in just behind him, opening and shutting almost at the same moment with this light he gropes about his dwelling; and, since it does little beside rendering the darkness more apparent, he makes his explorations with difficulty. But let him wait till the sun appears in the morning, and pours down its rays so that each crack and crevice of the building is suffused with the light of day, which flows in at every open door and unbarred window, and then he will need no candle, and can walk without obstruction through the darkest passages, and all will be revealed to him. For a man to take his own reason and his own conscious virtues, and attempt to live according to them, is like a man attempting to enlighten his way through his dwelling in the night with a lamp; but for a man to live in the conscious presence of God, and to look to him for guidance, is as if a man found his way through his

dwelling at midday, when it is illuminated in every part by the glorious light of the sun."

Christianity incites to pure morality. "The doctrines of revealed religion, the tremendous sanctions of future rewards and punishments, the clear revelation of the holy will of God respecting human duty in all relations and conditions of life, are the only sufficient supports of a pure morality. If you take away these doctrines and make universal the opinion that there is no God and no future life, you destroy at one blow the most powerful incentives to right conduct. Bad men will then do as they please, defying man's laws, knowing that if they escape the punishments of time, they have nothing to fear from the oblivion of eternity."

Christianity produces the purest morality. "It is the blessedness of the salvation by grace that in its true workings, and through the influences wrought upon the soul by it, it produces character—the purest, noblest, grandest character. It makes impure men pure, it makes selfish men self-denying. In its highest fruitfulness it works in character whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report. It makes such men as Henry Martyn and Hedley Vicars and Robert McCheyne. It created an Augustine, a Calvin, a John Knox and John Howard. In these men, salvation by grace began a good work, which was continued unto the day of redemption."

For a thoroughly scientific explanation of the difference between morality and spirituality, we refer to the writings of that eminent Scotch educator, Henry Drummond, F. R. S. E.; F.G.S. "What,” he asks, "is the essential difference between the Christian and the not-a-Christian, between spiritual beauty and moral beauty? It is the distinction between the organic and the inorganic. Moral beauty is the product of the natural man, spiritual beauty of the spiritual man. And these two, according to the law of Biogenesis, are separated from one another by the deepest line known to science. This law is at once the foundation of Biology and of Spiritual religion, and the whole fabric of Christianity falls into confusion if we attempt to ignore it. The law of Biogenesis, in fact, is to be regarded as the equivalent in biology of the first law of motion

in physics: Every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, except in so far as it is compelled by forces to change that state. The first law of biology is: That which is mineral is mineral; that which is flesh is flesh; that which is spirit is spirit. The mineral remains in the inorganic world until it is seized upon by a something called life outside the inorganic world; the natural man remains the natural man, until a spiritual life from without the natural life seizes upon him, regenerates him, changes him into a spiritual man. The peril of the illustration from the law of motion will not be felt, at least by those who appreciate the distinction between physics and biology, between energy and life. The change of state here is not as in physics a mere change of direction, the affections directed to a new object, the will into a new channel. The change involves all this, but is something deeper. It is a change of nature, a regeneration, a passing from death unto life. Hence, relatively to this higher life, the natural life is no longer life, but death, and the natural man from the standpoint of Christianity is dead. Whatever assent the mind may give to this proposition, however much it has been overlooked in the past, however it compares with casual observation, it is certain that the Founder of the Christian religion intended this to be the keystone of Christianity. In the proposition—That which is flesh is flesh, and that which is spirit is spirit, Christ formulates the first law of biological religion, and lays the basis for a final classification. He divides men into two classes, the living and the not-living. And Paul afterward carries out the classification consistently, making his entire system depend on it, and throughout arranging men, on the one hand as veʊpatizós-spiritual, and on the other as çuytzós-carnal, in terms of Christ's distinction.

"Suppose now it be granted for a moment that the character of the not-a-Christian is as beautiful as that of the Christian. This is simply to say that the crystal is as beautiful as the organism. One is quite entitled to hold this; but what he is not entitled to hold is that both in the same sense are living. He that hath the Son hath Life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not Life. And in the face of this law, no other conclusion is possible than that which is flesh remains flesh. No matter how great the devel