revealed things to include the whole body of truth contained in the Bible. There is much food for the mind to be gathered from other sources. Provided our search after general knowledge be so conducted as not to interfere with our attention to the practical demands of life, and the solemn claims of the Scripture, it is both warrantable and laudable. This book, however, has the most imperative hold of us. It is our choicest treasure. Nay, more, it is our rule and guide and standard of appeal, the authority to which we bow in matters of faith and religious action. It belongs to us. Though this word belong appears in italics, as being no part of the original, it is a proper supply to cover the abruptness of the expression. Things belonging to us are valued and husbanded to our use and benefit. If we are negligent about what is ours, we are liable to be told that we have something which we are not using to the best advantage. It is but friendly to admonish one another to the diligent use of the Scriptures.

Things revealed-of such a character as we would not have known but for the timely disclosure of them by one who was able to open them to us. It is the prerogative of God to reveal. He has opened his word to us, and if we put ourselves into right attitude, he will open our understandings and hearts to receive it. things revealed belong to us

The

For perusal.-This is the obvious use of books and documents. They are made to be read, and they claim attention according to their nature and value. Once reading suffices for some. Numbers are born to die and pass soon out of memory. Others live a few generations, and some, the births of genius and superior minds, survive for centuries and make interest for themselves, and keep alive the memory of their authors. "But the word of the Lord endureth for ever." It speaks to successive generations, and with an authority that commands attention. Its lines are the richest our eyes ever trace. Its words are the noblest our lips ever utter. Its verities are worthy of the deepest thought. It challenges our heart and conscience like nothing else. It is not a vain thing, for it is your life. This book should be frequently in hand, for it is our road-book. Those dishonour it who consult it less than daily. To make it merely a Sabbath-manual betokens a sad want of appetite. In former times men made a feast of God's word, and came to it as to a well-spread board. "I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food;" Job xxiii. 12. "Thy words were found and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart;" Jer. xv. 16. come to table with a willingness. Why are so many Christians lean, but because they live so little upon the word? Gazettes and serials, novelettes and daily papers, many of them hurtful, the best of them light, usurp attention so as to crush this book into a

We

corner, and make it wait till Sabbath. The noble Bereans did the right thing. "They searched the Scriptures daily." The things which are revealed belong to us

To engage and exercise our faith.-"We walk by faith, not by sight. The limitations imposed on us as finite creatures bind us to believe much. We cannot help ourselves. Provided we take

care not to be cheated with error and falsehood, we need not deplore the necessities of faith. It is a blessing that we have the privilege of believing and the comfort that springs from it. When we were children we believed largely, our condition necessitating us to live by faith in those about us. On the whole it was good for us, although our confidence was occasionally abused. In more advanced life there is still a demand on our faith, our privilege of examining and questioning its ground and warrant being somewhat enlarged. Viewed in relation to the long life that is to come, our present probationary existence is but a childhood, and by no means of disproportionate length. A respectable volume of ancient rolls and documents accumulating with the growth of time, has fallen into our hands, bearing on them the strong imprint of truth, which even simple minds can perceive and appreciate. Persons of small capacity and large believing propensity to compensate, have the privilege of resting in the declarations of this book, which gives them evidence for their "precious faith" equal to their power of apprehension. Others of more pretension to intellectual penetration have the evidence more fully open in the measure of their higher ability. None are bidden to believe without examination. The sacred books do not frown upon, but invite and court investigation. There is no compulsion practised on our faith other than what comes by the large array of evidence set forth, submission to which is no degradation to us but our dignity rather, and leaves our liberty unimpaired. No faith is asked but such as the open volume will fully warrant. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God;" Rom. x. 17. The revealed things "are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name;" John xx. 31. The things revealed

are ours-

For practical direction.-"That we may do all the words of this law." After the question how a man can be justified or saved, we know of none equal in importance to this-how shall a man order his conduct so as to be well-pleasing to God? This is answered both in a summary way and in particular detail. Comprehensive principles are laid down to guide us. Then, lest we should have doubts on some items of conduct, particulars are given to a considerable extent. Is not this proper and becoming? Should a book be divinely inspired, as this claims to be, just to

gratify curiosity, to please our fancy, to interest our literary taste, or to teach physical science? Nay, rather it should deal with the momentous questions of our origin and end, and how we may do right and attain happiness. One of the sacred writers expresses well the purpose of the whole volume. "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path;" Ps. cxix 105. It is not to fill the head with strange notions, but to direct the movements of the feet; not to unravel the mysteries of the universe, but to shed light upon the road, that we may not stumble nor stray. The revealed things are ours,

For transmission to posterity.-They belong to us, but we are not the sole heritors. They belong also "to our children for ever," that is, to our children, and unto our "children's children," and to a thousand generations. The truth is a grand inheritance. Our property that survives us in houses and lands, or ships and shares, passes to our children after us in distributed portions. The truth may be conveyed to each one entire, or, at least, as much as each one has mind-room to receive. Our estates will belong to them when we are gone. Sacred things belong to them now while we are yet living with them. The precepts of Scripture are to guide both them and us. The promises pertain to both. "The promise is to you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." Acts ii. 39. Heads of families have a duty to perform which cannot be devolved upon teachers, paid or unpaid, secular or religious. "The father to the children shall make known thy truth."

We have two points to watch. The first is, not to meddle with secret things; the second is, not to neglect things revealed. To attempt to be wise above what is written is a waste of energy. To be wise up to what is written, is a laudable ambition. We do not say that any one ever reaches so lofty a point, though it is a lawful aim. If we have not capacity, or leisure, or length of life, to enable us to fill up the outlines of the whole orb of revealed truth, it is our comfort to know what avails for salvation and good living.

As eager as we are to grasp the truth with our minds, so careful let us be to conform our walk to it. Knowledge is in order to obedience. "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." And godly practice assists the mind to a clearer apprehension. "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine."

G. T.

375

ATOMIC.

THE little that we are, sufficiently accounts for the little that we know. "Little ones," indeed, we are; and do we not live in the relatively infinite universe of an absolutely infinite God! Then, before we begin that jumping to conclusions of doubt and denial respecting the things of Faith, which, once set agoing, never stops till it lands in the abyss of universal scepticism, let us first enter for a space into the closet of our common sense, and, having shut to the door, let us earnestly set to work to compare the minima of faculty within us, with the maximum of things without us, and try to realize the great point, that every perplexing doctrine of theology, no less than every defiant aspect and insoluble phase of speculative thought in general, takes its rise in the one master problem of the relation of the finite to the Infinite. Having done this, and remembering the profoundly wise remark of Bishop Berkeley, that "the objections made to faith are by no means an effect of knowledge, but proceed rather from an ignorance of what knowledge is," let us "jump" if we dare!dare (I mean) submit to be "sported by philosophy," and to sacrifice the principles of sound reason and rational belief, upon the dark altar of vain speculation and an "unknown God."

GENIUS reaps its own fields; talent gleans in the fields of others. Genius speaks from its own impressions; talent makes others' impressions its own before it speaks. What is genius? Simply largeness of mental power, particular or general.

To deny the doctrine of miracles is to give up the principles of historical evidence, no less than to ignore the Divine or supernatural origination of things. Rationalism simply assumes the impossibility of miracles, and there is an end. In the first form of Strauss's celebrated “Leben Jesu," the astute writer relies upon the Mythical principle exclusively, as explanatory of the whole miraculous element of the Gospel histories. But, when this Hegelian Idealist, being fallible, had changed his speculative views (he died a Materialist and a Darwinian), he virtually repudiated the adequacy of Mythicism to account for the said miracleelement. In the second and last form of his famous book, he falls back upon a principle which he scouted at before, namely, that of conscious deliberate tendency or design in the Gospel historians to exaggerate, falsify, invent, and bring God directly on the scene, where only the natural laws did or could operate. In plain terms, the Evangelists are liars, and the Gospel mainly a tissue of falsehoods! Now, this "chopping and changing" is a very significant and suggestive fact, and should be strictly attended to in estimating the proper value of the negatory forces brought to bear,

by this Teutonic Goliath, on the truth as it is in Jesus and His disciples. Verily, those dii majores of Unbelief, no less than the minores, wield an arm of flesh, and smell unpleasantly strong of Vanity! "Genius opens earth-not heaven." And, in Strauss, it opens earth, and finds "Goethe and music as the sole God and

consolation!

"He that once hath missed the right way,

The further he doth go the further he doth stray."

The lengths to which speculative and Atheistic error may be carried is something appalling to contemplate. Strauss himself went far enough in all conscience; but there was an "ultima Thule," into whose Cimmerian darkness he never yet pilotted his frail barque. Though he consented to the idea of a world without God and without hope, he still clung to the idea of a world full of reason and order. L'ordre c'est Dieu was his ultimate principle, as it was Hume's before him. But some recent developments of materialistic philosophy are marked by the most extreme and revolting pessimism. Nothing is to be seen in the Universe but unreason and disorder. Man is an egregious mistake, and human life the gravest of misfortunes and calamities. The circle of creation, from centre to circumference, is radically wrong. A hearty contempt of things in general is wisdom, and a leap into the dark, by means of suicide, higbly to be commended. In fact, the force of nature could not further go," than some men have actually and avowedly gone, in the broad way that leadeth to universal unbelief and absolute despair. The great Maëlstrom of Negation seems to be one of the most active and 'forceful phenomena in the world at present. "When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith in the earth?" From the follies and miseries of a Godless and Christless speculatism, good Lord deliver us!

IN Christian belief, Facts are the macadamized line of way, Reason the guide, and Faith the torch which she carries in her hand. Hope is the beckoner onwards, and Experience the licensed victualler; whilst righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, are the pabulum supplied along the journey. The union of these things constitute the life and strength of personal Christianity.

MIRACLE may be the effect of higher law; but, who brings that law down to bear upon the lower sphere? Miracle must imply God in immediate action; and, relatively to us, miracle is simply miracle. The term "law" in the case is so far from removing God from the sequence, that it brings Him directly into it.

CHRIST shows us what God is, and what man ought to be. In