a wondrous power if compressed. It is the same with the mind of man. Distraction is feebleness-concentration is force. If the student's attention be divided, he will fail to understand thoroughly, and to remember permanently, the subject of study; but if he chain down his thoughts to the matter in hand, and resolve to confine himself to the one question till he have mastered it, he will discover that the power of abstraction becomes daily more attainable, and thinking on delicate and difficult subjects less laborious. Buxton once wrote "The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between men-between the feeble and the powerful, the great and the insignificant—is energy, invincible determination-a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory! That quality will do anything that can be done in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities, will make a two-legged creature a man without it." Particularly true in relation to the spiritual is that which we have just advanced. It is by giving the heart, without any reservation, to Christ,-by devoting to Him every power and passion,-that we are to grow strong in the Lord. It is thus we are to leave the state of infancy in grace, and rise to the stature of men. It is thus we are to face, without fear, all our spiritual foes, and rise at last to a position of immortal dignity in the realms of blessedness. As with matter and mind, so with the soul,-by concentration we acquire strength. Thus, also, we ensure success in our labours for Christ. A man of elevated mind and decided will, who stood like a giant mountain among the masses, was once asked, "How is it that you do so much?" He replied, 'Why, I do but one thing at a time, and try to finish it once for all." What reasonable man places confidence in the curative power of certain quack medicines advertised to remove all diseases? Who reposes faith in a man professing to be a universal genius? We have known some men who, instead of aspiring to proficiency in one calling, and raising themselves socially thereby, diffused their energies over many engagements. They strove to combine some learned profession with business; threw themselves into political movements; filled civic offices; occupied a foremost place in social efforts; indulged in speculation; served in the directory of public companies; in the worse sense, they became all things to all men, and the result was, that they very quickly gained an unenviable notoriety in the Gazette. Such a consequence we expected, and, though not a prophet nor the son of aprophet, yet we might have foretold it. For who has not heard the old adage: "He who can do anything is fit for nothing?" On the other hand, we have witnessed the triumphant effects of concentrated energy again and again. We have seen youths bred in squalid wretchedness, encompassed by poverty and pain, exposed to varied trials and temptations, denied ordinary comforts, and made to endure the vil example and open opposition of home, adopt a definite purpose, resolve to attain the end desired, and march forth toward it with successful tread. They have surmounted all hindrances, have outstripped the men who were lapped in luxury and favoured with creature influence, and have become in time the leaders of the people. The banner they bore up the Alpine heights, the shield they carried into the life-battle, was inscribed with the Pauline motto"This one thing I do.” It is manifest, then, how we should think and act in relation to things spiritual. The Redeemer strikingly asserts, "No man can serve two masters;" "One is your Master, even Christ;" "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Repeatedly do the Scriptures describe religion as "the one thing needful." The service of Christ must take the first place in our thoughts. Like Joseph's sheaf, all else must stand around religious duty as handmaids, and make obeisance to it. Jesus must occupy the regal seat in our hearts, and every purpose and pursuit sit at His feet. Is it surprising that we so frequently fail in our conflicts with the Arch-tempter? Is it any marvel that, like Bunyan's Pilgrim, we are sometimes under the dominion of Giant Despair, and bound hand and foot in Doubting Castle? No wonder that we shrink from bearing the cross for Jesus, and are dumb when we should speak His praise; that we have toiled all night, as fishers of men, and caught nothing; that we have piped and mourned to the children sitting in the world's market-place, and they neither danced nor lamented! We have discharged our momentous duty in a half-hearted manner. The ruling purpose of the soul has not been to know Christ-to exhibit Christ-to honour Christ. We have sung with sweet and fervent voice :— "Let all my powers within me join In work and worship so divine;" and commenced, at once, with a divided spirit. God be merciful unto us! A minister of the Gospel once wrote: "I am but one, but I am one. I cannot do much, but I can do something, and all I can do I ought to do, and by God's grace will do." Can you, reader, endorse those words? However sensible of your insufficiency, can you say, "But I am one?" Let us rest assured that, if we desire success in matters pertaining to God and His Church, the heart must be a unity. A block of granite hurled against a fortification would effect what ten times its weight of sand could not. An unbroken line of soldiers, fighting as one man, will achieve a victory, when ten times their number separately engaged in warfare will be discomfited. It must not be forgotten, that this concentration of the soul will yield happiness. The heart of man is constantly searching for some object in which the affections may centralize, and by which the entire faculties may be called to combined action. The cry of the soul is :: "Give me but Something whereunto I may bind myself; Hostility, disunion, conflict, dissatisfaction, and restlessness prevail in the breast, to the exclusion of solid comfort. The spirit is like a ship, carried about with every tide, until anchored to the immovable rock; or like a rod of steel oscillating with every movement, until brought under the influence of magnetic attraction; or like an infant separated from its parent, uncomforted till it be nestled in the mother's bosom, and made sensible of her soft, warm, winning caresses. But when the man can bow his knee, and cry in all sincerity, "O Lord our God, other lords beside Thee have had dominion over us; but by Thee only will we make mention of thy name!"-when he can affirm with the Psalmist, "O God, my heart is fixed!"—then the lawless emotions are allayed, conscience approves the object of choice, the powers of the soul coalesce and operate in concord, and peace serenely broods within the consecrated temple. Depending no more on earthly circumstances or surroundings for joy,-having within inexhaustible resources—a wellspring of perennial bliss,-the heart will smile at all the changes in life's panorama of dissolving views. It will be able to look from the conflicts and crushing cares of earth, to Him who manages these mean affairs, and find an abiding fulness in Him, that shall beget hope develop faith, and enkindle gladness. The Father of mercies keeps that man in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Him. All things, within and without, become the germs of gratification. Intellectual pleasures assume a fairer garb; social comforts exhibit brighter charms; home delights are intensified; the pleasures of the senses are under heavenly control, and may be enjoyed with a tranquil conscience. No source of happiness, unforbidden to all, is sealed to the lover of Jesus. He may enjoy God in everything, and enjoy everything in God. Is the reader of this paper a Christian, thirsting for spiritual strength, success in hallowed toil, or happiness amid the vicissitudes of life! Then let him henceforth make the dominant purpose of his heart this,to love, live to, and labour for Christ, and he shall speedily realize his desires. Or, is the reader one who has never yielded his heart to Jesus, but says, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him?" Then let him draw near to the throne of exhaustless grace; let him feel for the Crucified One, with the prophet's words ringing in his ears: "Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart." Peckham Rye. VOL. XLIII. Pressense's Journey in the Holy Land.* ON the 1st of March, 1864, M. de Pressensé left France, with three companions, for a visit to the Holy Land, with the important object of qualifying himself for the completion of a work on the Life of Jesus, in which he is now engaged, and the publication of which we trust to hail ere long. He has given us, however, in the meantime, as the immediate result of his travels, a little book of a lighter character, but one which will be read by many with much interest and gratification. It consists mainly of his diary during the three months of his absence, and it enables us, in a sense, to make the journey in his company. It is written in a fresh and spirited manner-graphic descriptions being interspersed with earnest spiritual reflections, such as the sacred scenes which he visited were so eminently adapted to call forth. There is no pretence of discovery, or even of minute examination. He does but give us sketches-drawings in outline of the principal places through which he passed-with the impressions which they made on his own mind, and which the very description of them should, in a measure, awaken in the minds of his readers. We will hear his own words concerning the nature and results of the expedition :-"I have not made the most insignificant scientific discovery-at the very most I have but verified those of my predecessors-but this land of the Gospel has given me new intuitions of the glorious past; it has seemed to me that that past existed anew, and that on the soil which I was treading He who fills our past, our present, our eternity, lived now as in ancient days, in all the reality of His divine humanity,-disengaging Himself alike from the chilling fogs of metaphysics and from the golden mists of legend, and revealing Himself to me, so as He was seen by St. Peter and St. John, by Mary of Bethany, and by the woman who touched His garment, or the sinner who wept at His feet. I have travelled, not in space only, but also in time-that is to say, in history. Never for an instant have I been able to separate the places which I explored from the memories which they awakened within me, and which gave them their chief interest in my eyes." These remarks are taken from M. de Pressense's preface, but they are fully carried out in the narrative of daily journeyings and daily impressions, written at the very time of their occurrence. We can only now extract a few passages from this diary, and the first shall regard the arrival at Jerusalem :-"The gloom of the landscape increased as we neared the city. A true rampart of desolation surrounds it. It is nothing but a hilly and stony desert. Suddenly the Mount of Olives broke on "Le Pays de l'Évangile. Notes d'un Voyage en Orient." Par EDMOND de PRESSENSÉ. (Not yet translated into English.) our view; then the holy city itself. What is felt at such a moment as this others have well expressed. I can in no way describe it. This hour, so long expected, so ardently desired, the crown of so many other hours, answering to all that is most sublime in life, comes upon one like an unlooked-for event. These, then, are the hills that we have so often imagined. This is the spot where Heaven has stooped to earth; where the Son of God has struggled, suffered, conquered. What can we say? We can only adore and bless Him who has given us this great day in our short sad life!" On the Thursday before Easter the author was still in Jerusalem. "On that day," he says, "I preached in the Arabian chapel before some fifty auditors. I felt it to be a very great privilege to speak 'the wonderful works of God' in my own tongue in this holy city. I am the first French pastor who has visited it and preached." He next describes the Garden of Gethsemane :-"Now shut in by vulgar walls, yet preserving a grave and solemn beauty, thanks to some old olive-trees that extend over it their sombre branches. The slopes that lead from the Mount of Olives to Kedron are covered with Jewish tombs. Amid the uniformity of this field of death three principal monuments may be distinguished, two of which contain chambers cut in the rock, and approached through columned porches. These are said to be the tombs of St. James and of Zacharias. The third monument tradition calls the sepulchre of Absalom." There is a graphic description of a visit to the Jews' quarter of the city, "where they come every Friday to weep at the foot of the wall over their lost glory. The scene is truly pathetic, though it is of course enacted with much of formalism. The long-robed Jews kiss those walls which they hold so sacred, and read in a voice mingled with groans the sublime Lamentations of Jeremiah. The women, dressed in white, shed tears over the inspired pages. A beautiful and poetic liturgy has been composed for this national mourning." On Good Friday M. de Pressensé visited the Chapel of Calvary, in which, at the hour commemorative of the Saviour's death, the Gospel is preached in seven different languages. "The German discourse," he says, "from Dr. Hannberger, an eminent priest of the school of Döllinger, was full of spirituality and earnestness. I would not have suppressed a single word of it; it went straight to my heart. I cannot speak equally well of the French sermon, which was as poor in substance as in style, including the necessary tirade against the new 'Life of Jesus,' and the coolness with which the orator asserted that his testimony was of incomparable value, coming as he did from a highly civilized country such as France." To the sermons followed the representation of the Passion, "the accessories of which were striking and picturesque, but the representation itself revolting to the taste as to the heart, lacking even the theatrical effect intended, and constitut ing |