health and vigour may prevail, it is not the fault of the good Physician-that the remedy is freely offered to us individually, whilst the acceptance of it rests with ourselves. In this sense, therefore, the cure may be said to be in our own hands. It is not upon our seeking in this direction or in that, for help, but upon the extent to which we are accepting the remedy individually, upon the degree in which we are obeying the manifestations of the Spirit, depending on Christ as our Saviour, and maintaining communion with our heavenly Father, that our collective vitality or deadness, our strength or our weakness must always depend.

It is indeed true that the acceptance of the remedy unavoidably entails a certain amount of mortification and self-denial, realizing the truth of our Saviour's words, "Whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple." It involves not only a wholesome restriction on the indulgence of man's natural impulses, but also the risk of contumely and derision, both from those who make no pretensions to religion, and also from superficial professors. The diversity of aim and of motive cannot fail to produce a want of common interest and of sympathy with such-hence more or less of isolation as to intimate companionship is, in the present state of the world, the unavoidable lot of the true follower of Christ. He will be liable to be misunderstood and ridiculed by those who are unconverted. The graphic language of the "Wisdom of Solomon" will aptly describe the feeling of many towards him. "He is not for our turn and is clean contrary to our doings; for his life is not like other men's his ways are of another fashion."

There is in us all an innate repugnance thus to be esteemed as fools for Christ's sake, and to endure reproach as humble followers of a crucified Redeemer;

and in the present day, when outward ease and comfort prevail to an extent which peculiarly indisposes us for such a path of mortification, it seems needful that we should set a double guard in this direction.

On the other hand let us also remember that the degree of suffering and mortification we may have to endure will be very much in inverse proportion to the extent to which we surrender ourselves to the will of our heavenly Father. When the Christian, through having made the full surrender, has so realized a Saviour's love as that it has become his chief delight to do his will, he can heartily subscribe to the truth" that the yoke of Christ is easy and his burden light-that the ways of wisdom are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. This peace is the legacy of the Saviour to his faithful disciples-a legacy never to be cancelled, and which far more than compensates for whatever of trial or reproach we may have to suffer for his name. May we then never be ashamed to let it be plainly and unmistakably seen that we belong to that little but blessed company of true believers, of whom, without sectarian limitation, Jesus said, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world."

ISAAC ROBSON.

CONCERNING GROVE'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION.

A DIALOGUE.

Arthur. Well, my dear Hugh, how are you? What a long time it is since we met, and what a quantity of things we have to talk over together!

Hugh. I am quite well and ready for the fray, for I know your conversation means argument.

Arthur. Am I so combative? There have been plenty of events, ranging from Sadowa to Washington, in which I should like to hear your opinion without combating it.

Hugh. Well, then, time enough for them hereafter. Just now, if you don't want an argument, I do; or at least, an explanation of a very obscure passage the writings of a modern English author.

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Arthur. Pray, who is it to whom I am expected to play the scholiast?

Hugh. Yourself. Your last letter to me was written just after the British Association Meeting, and in that letter you said: "I see you have been present at Nottingham, and no doubt heard President Grove's address. I wonder whether you enjoyed it. To me, with all its undoubted ability, it was the most depressing piece of reading that I have come across for a long time." What you mean by this I can't imagine. I found the inaugural address decidedly the most interesting feature of the whole meeting. I don't say that I was kindled by it to quite the same degree of enthusiasm as Professor Phillips' artisan friend, who wanted to "carry the canopy" over the President whenever he took his walks abroad; and I may have thought that once or twice even our scien

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tific Homer was nodding. But, take the address as a whole, what a magnificent production it is! Over what a wide field of science does it range, yet with what beautiful clearness is every object focussed! It seemed to me to have nearly all the merits of those annual surveys of science which used to be fashionable with our Presidents, without their one great drawback-the variety of heterogeneous details with which the attention and memory used to be alike wearied. Here all the pearls were strung on one thread, "The Law of Continuity;" and hence it was a comparatively easy task both to apprehend and to retain them. The whole effect of the address was most ennobling and (forgive me the word) "suggestive ;" and, unless you were somnambulist at the time of writing your letter, I can't imagine what induced you to call it depressing.

Arthur. Well, that was certainly the effect which the reading of it produced on my mind. But I may have attached too much importance to a chance expression here and there, and failed to understand the general bearing and purport of the address. A reader is always in danger of making this sort of mistake. You, more fortunate, heard it: tell me what were the chief impressions which you received from it?

Hugh. I think the address was one long and masterly commentary on the old text of the schoolmen, "Natura non facit saltum." In the infancy of our knowledge we used to suppose that there were impassable chasms, terrible hiatus, separating one part of Nature's domain from another-planets from fixed stars, secondary strata from tertiary, animal life from vegetable, and so on. Now, we see for the most part, and infer for the remainder, that everything in Nature shades off by imperceptible gradations into something else; hard, well-defined boundary

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lines, like the coloured portions of a map, don't exist in Nature; and, however convenient genera and species may be, as an aid to the memory, we must be careful not to attribute to them any real and substantial existence. In astronomy we find planetary bodies varying in size from Jupiter to a cannon ball, filling up the space occupied by our solar system. geology we have every reason to believe that there has been a ceaseless but gradual change of type from the first organic being (whatever that was) down to the animals and plants of our present world; and that this change has been caused, not suddenly or by fresh creative acts, but by the same plastic forces, the same natural selection and struggle for existence, which are quietly operating around us now. In existing organic life we see a part-infinitely small, it is true of this same mighty curve of change. There is really no impassable chasm between the highest created organism and the lowest; and every year is bringing to our knowledge new varieties to help, as it were, to fill up the yet empty interplanetary spaces in the physiological system. Well, let us recognize this gradual development as the law of Nature; let us avoid attributing to her those impassable gulfs and chasms which are only lacuna caused by our own ignorance; above all, let us get rid of the lazy habit of explaining everything that seems puzzling in the past and present constitution of the universe by some special interposition of Omnipotence, " centres of creation," "introduction of new species," "destruction of all previously existing organisms," and so forth. All these hypotheses of violent interruptions to the order of Nature he denounced under the general name of "cataclysms." Beware of these, said he; keep fast hold of the great principle of continuity, and who shall say how much more we may not expect to know than we have yet known? His last sentence was so