hope in God to bear me through. If the heavens above me are brass, there remains only a blackness of darkness for ever. Having this name, I hold a thread in the labyrinth; I have songs for the fearful and lonely place; peace in the midst of trouble; cheer for the time of difficulty: strength for the demand of duty; blessing, blessing always. Seek the Lord, and his strength: seek his face evermore." "I AM hath sent me unto you," was the message put into the mouth of Moses. And there is a fulness in the "I AM" which is beyond all power of expression. It is the blank cheque, to use an expression I have somewhere met, which God gives to all who love His name. My reader, may we use it, writing over against the name our wants! He stands pledged to honour it. I am "Jireh," the Provider; I am "Tsidkenu," the Righteousness; I am "Shalom," the Peace; I am "Nissi," the Banner. What more do we need?

II.

The Soul.

" What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"-ST. MATT. xvi. 26.

HAT do we mean by the soul? I could fill, not this paper only, but many papers,

with the answers which have been given

to this question-with the various theories which have been held as to what the soul is, and where it is, and what is its relation to the body. Some of them would astonish, some would interest, some would amuse my readers. I shall not discuss whether we have one soul or, as great authorities of past times maintained, several souls. A celebrated physician reduced the number to three: a soul in the liver, a soul in the heart, and a soul in the brain. Nor shall I discuss whether the seat of the soul is the heart or the brain; whether the ligament by which the brain is kept in its place is the bond that connects mind with matter; or whether the nerves are to be regarded as the canals of soul life and

action. Nor, once more, shall I discuss whether the soul is an inhabitant of the body, or a mere function of the body, living whilst the body lives, and dying when the body dies. By-and-by I shall have something to say on the last of these points. But I am content to let all this questioning and arguing about the nature and whereabouts of the soul alone. For the most part it is a mere "darkening of counsel by words without knowledge." It is enough for us to be assured that there is a something in men and of men which is called soul, and that this something has been recognized in nearly all philosophies and in all religions of which any one ever heard, so that we may declare the idea of it to be an inborn or natural idea. All that I am able to conclude or to suppose as to this something is as follows:-It is that in and of myself which thinks, feels, wills, which can conceive right and wrong, which has a consciousness of God. You may distinguish between soul and spirit, as is done in the Bible; and the distinction is of great importance in understanding such a passage as, “The natural man,”

strictly the soulal man, he in whom the powers and capacities of the spirit are practically dead, all whose discernment is through the soul,-" receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them,

because they are spiritually discerned." As those who are without the requisite organ cannot hear, so they who are without the receptive spirit cannot discern spiritual truth. You may dissect the notion of soul, and call one part of it intellect, another part feeling, another part imagination, another part conscience, and so forth. soul as equivalent to "the inner man," the self that is in the whole body, although its most special instrument is the brain. A French philosopher cried, "I think, therefore I am." He might also have cried, "I am, therefore I think." The thinking is the sign and proof of a being which is more than a mere combination of atoms. You may call it, if you choose, " thinking matter;" but the thinking, with all which that implies, the various faculty, force, power for which it stands, this is my real self, and this self is the soul.

But now I shall regard the

The first use of the word in the Bible is in the narrative of the creation of man; and this earliest notice is the evidence of the soul's inestimable value. In the seventh verse of the second chapter of the Book of Genesis, we read that "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Now, reflect on what this verse teaches.

The stuff, the matter, of which man was made was dust. The making of this organism of ours out of dust, as the potter makes the vessel out of the clay, was the formation of man, the act in which the form was given. But the form having been made, what of the life? Behold that done which was not

done to any other creature-something more than creation-inspiration. The Lord breathed through the nostrils the breath of lives (for the word is plural). It was more than one life: it was life physical, life rational, life moral; the lives henceforth to be in him were breathed immediately from the Lord God, and thus man became a living soul. You see that he became this in consequence, not of a mere matter-making, but of the direct breathing of the Eternal. He became a person breathed through and through with a being not of the dust ; the outer man was inspired by an inner man: Adam, the mere red animal so far as the form out of the dust was concerned; Adam, the son of God, in virtue of the inspiration—a living soul from the living God.

I accept this statement as the symbol of a wondrous nobility. In this scripture concerning man's origin I hear a voice which anticipates the testimony of the Incarnate Word long long centuries afterwards, "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul"—his self?