prescribed to himself any governing rule of conduct.

Thus, when a conversation took place in his hearing between two members of the House of Commons, who seemed intent each to strengthen himself and to encourage his friend in a course of active opposition to a measure which they denounced as a mischievous and foolish innovation

-an attempt to legislate for other men where they ought to be left free each to follow the convictions of his own mind, and when all present agreed in characterizing that measure as an unwarrantable interference with the earnings of one class, the profit of others, the harmless recreations of many more; on what ground could Philander dissent from them? Personally, he was not concerned; patriotically, he desired the good of his country; benevolently, the happiness of his fellow-creatures; and habitually he adopted the sentiments of his daily associates, where no moral principle appeared to be endangered by them.

But there are two sides to every question; and many hours had not elapsed before he found his opinion canvassed, and his support solicited in the matter of petitioning in favour of this very proceeding. Disinclined to debate a point where he

felt no interest, he evaded the appeal by laughingly citing the aphorism on which he had been counselled to commence his public life, and remarking that he was unable to render any reason for attaching his name to such documents. Then you have probably never sought for one,' was the reply. Admitted: and it would puzzle me to discover where to begin such a search.'

'Sir,' resumed the inquirer, a thoughtful man whose age nearly doubled his own, 'there are few subjects better worth investigating than this. I heard you speak of a projected excursion, for health and amusement only. What say you to adding utility to these primary motives, and so shaping your course as to render it a journey in quest of a reason for keeping holy the seventh day?'

Your idea is a novel one: but "though reasons," to borrow a phrase from Falstaff, were plenty as blackberries," I could scarcely expect to find them growing on the hedges, ready to be plucked as I rode by.'

Possibly you might glean a more plentiful crop than you anticipate. you anticipate. Mark me, Sir: the gist of this question, sooner or later to be solved, lies here God was pleased to deliver a law to one particular people, spoken by His own mouth,

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graven with His own finger, confirmed by signs and wonders of such terrific grandeur that even they who lived in the hourly contemplation of miraculous manifestations, were unable to endure the overpowering majesty of the transaction. You and I, at our respective baptisms, entered into a covenant to receive that law as a rule of life to the end of our days; but we were then infants, incapable of judging or acting for ourselves and now that we are perpetually called upon either to ratify or to disclaim the part that we then performed by proxy, and while in our outward profession we certainly do ratify it; inasmuch as we should regard it as a dereliction of duty to omit the introduction of our own children into the bonds of the same solemn obligation, does it not behove us to have our minds so far grounded and settled on this point as to preclude the grave charge of being found to palter with the acknowledged laws of our Creator?

In part, I admit the force of your argument; but this question arises, whether a law which as we all know, was given to the people of Israel, forming a part of the peculiar dispensation under which they were placed, retains its obligatory power under the milder reign of what some call the gospel grace; so as to involve in a necessary

obedience those who never belonged to the nation of Israel. You will not contend that any such commandment existed previous to the giving of the Mosaic law?'

This, my dear see resolved, in

'Pardon me, I do contend for it as having been in force from the creation of the world; as constituting, in fact, a primal law of nature itself, clearly deducible from what we see around, from what we experience within us. Sir, is the point that I desire to your case as it has been in my own, by sober, dispassionate investigation. I know you to be one who reverences the Bible as the revealed will of God; and who would not set in array against it the presumptuous oppositions of science; falsely so called, in that it would falsify the declarations of Him who cannot lie. I would give you, as a starting point, that comprehensive declaration, Genesis ii. 2, 3. "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." Leaving you to trace throughout the brief, the exceeding brief record of the Patriarchial dispensation occasional indications of its observance, by

the division of time into weeks; with an especial note on the undeniable testimony afforded in the incident of the sixth day's double portion, and the seventh day's total cessation of the falling manna; I will then direct you to the fourth commandment as a divine explanation of, and commentary upon, an established law of the Creator: and placing wholly apart those peculiar enactments which clearly appertained to Israel alone, I would commend you to the interesting, the important occupation of collecting and arranging such testimony as would force itself upon you, in confirmation of the revealed axiom, that all animal nature calls for a seventh day's respite from bodily toil : all intellectual nature for a similar suspension of the world's distracting care: all spiritual nature for a stated season of consecrated leisure, and public, no less than private communion with God. Here I take my leave.'

'No; you have awakened a new train of thought which I should like to pursue a little further, under your direction.'

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Pursue it but under the direction of your own reasoning powers, placed in teachable submission to the Book that I know you honour, and to the wisdom concerning which it is promised, that to him that asketh it shall be given, and