tain that grand completion of the Lord's Prayer, we ought, in our estimation, not to lay it aside. The same may be said of the doubtful portion of the last chapter of Mark, from verses 9 to 19, and part of the eighth of John.

The alteration of the song of the angels (Luke ii. 14) is not at all likely to commend itself to general adoption. Those magnificent words, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men," have been so impressed upon the hearts of all Englishspeaking people, and are so beautiful in themselves, that any change would be accepted with difficulty unless very strong reasons could be given for the alteration. But when we are informed that some ancient authorities have the rendering one way and some another, we cannot avoid the conclusion that in such a case as that the best course is to let the well-known words alone, and not readily adopt words so very extraneous as "peace among men, in whom He is well pleased."

The Revision in no case brings any more correct renderings that would weaken the force of the testimony to the sole and supreme Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. In some instances it materially strengthens it. In John xiv. 14, instead of "If ye shall ask any thing in My name, I will do it," we have in the Revision, as from the most ancient authorities, "If ye shall ask ME any thing in My name, that will I do," showing thus that the prayer must be addressed to the Lord, as well as be in His name, or in His Spirit.

In 2 Peter i. 1 we have "the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" changed to "the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ."

In the numerous instances in the Epistles in which the phrase GOD IN Christ occurs in the Authorized Version, they stand clearly out in the Revision; and in the one case in which there is a great error in this respect it is corrected, but scarcely as fully as it ought to have been. We refer to Eph. iv. 32. The common version contains the notable one case in which "for Christ's sake" occurs, "forgiving one another as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you," which one mischievous error has been so magnified by a false theology that the great majority of prayers are tainted with it. In the Revision we have "forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you.”

The word also ought to follow "even as," and come before God, as it is in the Greek, "kathos kai ho Theos en Kristo," "as also God in Christ hath forgiven you," and then all would be complete and perfect, and we should get without the one instance of the unscriptural phrase "for Christ's sake," which is not only a gross and palpable mistransla

tion, but a gratuitous foisting into the epistle of a blank contradiction to the Divine words of our heavenly Father Himself, "I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins" (Isa. xliii. 25).

In conclusion, we must express our regret that we cannot yield a more unqualified approbation of the labour of the Revisers given with persevering energy for eleven years. We are sorry they have been in so many cases too timid to rise above the element of erroneous thought in which old systems have enveloped them. The work they have. begun, however, will be continued and completed by others, and redound in good time, according to the abused but noble maxim of the Jesuits, to the Greater Glory of God.

OUGHT WE TO USE OUR REASON?

THERE is a charming little legend, which has always been a favourite one with Oriental poets, and in the "Mystic Rose-Garden," a work on the doctrines of the Persian Sufis, the story of the diver and the pearls is given in a striking and unusually clear shape. And as it has a certain relevancy to the question we have raised, "Ought we to use our reason?" we will transcribe the legend in full. But before we do this, however, we will give a short account of the poem of the "Rose-Garden," from which it is taken.

The Gulshan-i Ráz was written in verse by Sad ud din Mamud of Shabistari in A.H. 717 (A.D. 1317), and has recently been translated in a very able manner by Mr. E. H. Whinfield; and it contains, as we said before, an explanation of the doctrines of the Sufis.

Sufeyism might, we think, be called spiritualized Mahomedanism. It is most commonly found in the East, and is founded on a desire to escape from the mere external rites and formalities of religion. The Sufi puts a spiritual interpretation upon the words of the Kuran, and all their writings have some hidden meaning known only to the initiated.

The songs of Hafiz, for example, although they only seem to tell of love and wine, are to them types of spiritual joys and raptures; and as the author of the "Rose-Garden" says

"The spiritual world is infinite,

How can finite words attain to it?

How can the mysteries beheld in ecstatic vision
Be interpreted by spoken words?

When mystics treat of these mysteries
They interpret them by types."

It is strange what bright glimpses of the truth Sufeyism sometimes catches through its veil of fantastic interpretation; and although it cannot be said to be without a dark as well as a fair side, it still makes an advance in the right direction. The Sufi might be called a Pantheist in his endeavours to discover the spiritual life hidden under the material life, and in his close connection of the one with the other. "All things are spiritual in their sect, all is mystery within mystery;" and in Mr. Whinfield's words :

"Many of the Catholic definitions of 'Mystical Theology' would do for descriptions of Sufeyism. The ruling ideas in both systems are very similar, if not absolutely identical. . . . Both systems may be characterized as religions of the heart as opposed to formalism and ritualism. Both exalt the inner light' at the expense of the outward ordinance and voice of the Church."

Sufeyism opens up a very wide and attractive field of thought, but it would be impossible to do it justice without a fuller knowledge of the subject than we possess; and we have not indeed pretended to do more than make the source from which we have taken the story of the "Pearls" known.

We will now give the story itself, and show in what way we make it applicable to the question of the use or neglect of our rational and reasoning powers.

Mr. Whinfield's translation runs as follows:

"I have heard that in the month Nysan

The pearl-oysters rise to the surface of the sea of Uman.
From the lowest depths of the sea they come up,
And rest on the surface with opened mouths.
The mist is lifted up from the sea,

And descends in rain at command of the Truth.

There fall some drops into each shell's mouth,

And each mouth is shut as by a thousand bonds.

Then each shell descends into the depths with full heart,
And each drop of rain becomes a pearl.

The diver goes down to the depths of the sea,
And thence brings up the glittering pearls.

The shore is your body, the sea is being,

The mist grace, the rain knowledge of the names,
The diver of this mighty sea is human reason,

Who holds a hundred pearls wrapped in his cloth."

If these lines are read carefully, much that is interesting will be discovered, and perhaps the meaning we attach to them will not appear far-fetched.

The rising of the oysters to the top of the water to receive the drops of rain, the divinely transfigured mist, their return to the depths of the sea "with full heart," the formation of the pearls, and their discovery by the diver, make up an allegory that has more in it than would be seen at first. The shore, runs the interpretation, is your body, the sea being, the diver is human reason. Out of your

being, the sea, rises a mist of grace, or, as it might be rendered, natural goodness, and this vague goodness or grace is converted by God into knowledge of the names, that is, a higher form of goodness, and, in one word, is made into a definite shape. And this glorified good falls again into the heart open to receive it, and in process of time, and unconsciously, "the best thought, like the most perfect digestion, is done unconsciously," becomes a precious, wonderful pearl.

And these pearls of goodness and holiness, lying hidden in the depths of the being, are discovered at length by the diver, or human reason, are taken up by him, the shells, the letter hiding the spirit, broken away, and the royal pearls seen in all their splendour.

The pearls would remain hidden eternally, and their beauty and value be useless, if it was not for the diver!

This is the point that struck us; for certainly goodness would be of little value if it was not seen to be good, and made ours, by the reason or understanding. Reason, the reason that enables us to discover and understand good, cannot possibly be done away with. It is our Divine birthright, our highest and most enduring attribute. The present age is sometimes said to be an age of doubt and unbelief; that everything is questioned and weighed and reasoned about until nothing remains to be venerated! And no doubt there is a certain amount of truth in all this. But we also say that if this restless, questioning, overturning spirit is ever stopped in its course, it will not be done by filling ears with cotton wool and covering eyes with bandages. It is useless for the Ritualists to preach on the value and necessity of good works so long as they attempt also to bring men's minds into a state of blind credulity and bigotry. We may admire and respect them for their charity, zeal, and industry, but at the same time we protest against their endeavours to keep men in spiritual darkness and mental swaddling-bands.

Attempts to blind or deafen men can never be successful. And instead of throwing reason aside as something inconvenient and unnecessary, it should rather be directed into fuller, wider, more spiritual channels, sent to fish in the depths! If religion is something that cannot be questioned, surely it must have but a frail foundation;

and the men who command unquestioning faith in the Church and the voices of the Church are hoist in their own petard; they show their weakness in the very means they take to add to their strength. Men cannot always be treated as children; religion must appeal to their reason, their intellectual nature, as well as to their heart and senses, or it can never have a really firm hold upon them. They will not be made to bow for ever beneath a doorway that is cut too low for them to stand upright. Nor can they be expected to follow even a well-trodden, well-fenced track without knowing where it leads. In one word, reason and rationality, the divinest prerogatives of man, cannot be taken from him or done away with.

Reason is essential to liberty and freewill. Without reason the will would be but blind impulse, and would not have the power to reject or receive. Every action of our lives is directed and controlled, and therefore in a certain sense governed and ruled, by this faculty. When we clothe a thought in words, or embody a desire in action, we have to determine to do so, and, to speak figuratively, open or shut a door. Our liberty is perfect, we are placed in equilibrium between heaven and hell; and we can either look up, and receive the Divine Wisdom and Love flowing from heaven; or downwards, and receive the burning sorrow and sinfulness coming from hell. We can also close our understanding against the light of Truth, but open it at the same time to suck in mystery and falsehood and whatever may be forced upon our darkness.

"A man," says Swedenborg, "cannot be reformed in a state of bodily sickness, because reason then is not in a free state; for the state of the mind depends upon that of the body. When the body is sick, the mind also is sick, if from no other cause than its being removed from the world; for a mind removed from the world thinks indeed of God, but not from God, for it is not in the liberty of reason." And if to be reformed we must be in a state of liberty, surely when our noble faculty of reason is constrained and restricted our liberty is as imperfect as when our body in its weakness interferes with the true action of our thoughts and conscience. And our chances of reformation must be lessened even to a greater degree.

If we are forbidden to use our reason in connection with religion, the truths that are then forced upon us, even if they are great and holy truths, cannot do us any real good. They are but the seeds that fell upon stony ground, our souls are unresponsive, and they lie useless upon the surface of our closed, dulled understanding. We must be able to distinguish between right and wrong our selves, or we have fallen into a very strange and blind condition.