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injuring something of its exceeding tenderness and beauty. We really dare not do more than point out that the main subject is Submission to the Will of God; and the blessing that springs therefrom, the blessing of following in the Footsteps of the Saviour. For thus it is that the Saints and Martyrs have followed the Lamb, and won their Crowns, in virgin purity

'Nor deem who to that bliss aspire

Must win their way through flood and fire;
The writhings of a wounded heart

Are fiercer than a foeman's dart.

Oft in Life's stillest shade reclining,
In desolation unrepining,
Without a hope on earth to find
A mirror in an answering mind,

Meek souls there are, who little dream
Their daily strife an Angel's theme;
Or that the rod they take so calm

Shall prove in Heaven a Martyr's palm.'

And not only does this path of perfection lie through unnoticed suffering, but it may be likewise through pleasant paths of joy. Of the happy and blessed it is added—

'if on high their thoughts are set,
Nor in the stream the source forget;
If prompt to quit the bliss they know,
Following the Lamb where'er He go;
By purest pleasures unbeguiled,
To idolize or wife or child—

Such wedded souls our God shall own
As faultless virgins round His Throne.'

So in every path of life we can find the Footsteps of the Saviour; His Cross is the standard in all our conflicts. The point is not what kind of outward circumstances are ours, but whether we seek our own will, or bend to the Will of God. In accepting that Will, whether in grief or joy, is alone perfect Rest!

THURSDAY BEFORE EASTER.

< THE Man of Loves' is the translation through the Septuagint of the words, that in our version, are a man greatly beloved.' The name by which the angel called the Prophet Daniel, whose prayer, with the prophetic answer thereto, forms the First Lesson for this day.

He prayed for the holy mountain of the Temple as it lay in ruins, and Judah in captivity, and his prayer was effectual. Would that we could pray with the same might of love for our own Israel, now sunk as low as Daniel's, though outwardly as fair and prosperous as Sion at greatest height of grandeur.

The Church indeed goes on extending:

'Tis true, nor winter stays thy growth,
Nor torrid summer's sickly smile;
The flashing billows of the south

Break not upon so lone an isle,
But thou, rich vine, art grafted there,
The fruit of death or life doth bear,
Yielding a surer witness every day

To thine Almighty Author and His steadfast sway.'

But though the vine of the Church hath thus 'stretched out her boughs unto the sea,' too often there are 'grapes of gall' around her healthiest shoot, the wild grapes of evil deeds; and the heralds of God themselves are sometimes hirelings. For the world corrupts that of which it dares not (or durst not when this poem was written) openly cast off and disavow. 'Pride and high-souled Reason' had not then come to open war with the Faith, whatever they have done now.

The question follows, What are we to do if we see far and wide that men own themselves Christians, yet are not the better for it? Have we not still our faith to seek? No indeed! What we have to do is to kneel on in devotion to Him Who heareth the prayer, and to 'strive to keep the lingering flame in our own breast alive.'

On Daniel himself the future lowered heavily. His visions of the time to come were of a time of trouble unequalled-of suffering and persecution of the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not of the little horn casting down stars from heaven-of holy ones falling down, with none to help them-of the stream of fire issuing from before the Ancient of Days; and the assurance, which he alone of all the saints of old received in his lifetime, that he should stand in his lot at the end of the days,' was assuredly needed to sustain his heart through the visions of judgement that he beheld.

So then, to us in these latter times, the only balance for the fearful glimpses we get of the course of this world, is attention to secure our own salvation; that, like Daniel,

'So when th' Archangel's word is spoken,

And Death's deep trance for ever broken,

In mercy thou mayest feel the Heavenly Hand,
And in thy lot unharmed before the Saviour stand.

No one can turn to the poems of this Maundy Thursday, without remembering that it was on that day that the thinker of these thoughts, for the last time on earth, prayed for the holy mountain of his God;' above all, for her unity; and that among the last words of unconsciousness that fell from his lips, were some concerning white flowers for

the upper room.' And here, in the Lyra, his heart is in that upper He is looking for a place for his babes; and he paraphrases those directions to the two disciples as the reply. Find the Water

room.

bearer; be led by him within the chosen city; find there the narrow gate, and seek the chamber,

The way

'Where the great Lord in royal state

Shall eat the Bread of His desire.'

lies up a difficult stair, through sorrow and repentance.

'The handmaid Penance hath been there,
And swept and garnished all the place.'

This must be the heart into which the Lord will enter and hold His
Feast of Grace; here that we may feast with Him at the Marriage
Supper of the Lamb.

So spake He; and we obediently sought the bearer of the pitcher of water; our babes were there bathed, and are led onward up the stair of the training of the Church, often glancing back to the healing fountain that sprang from His Side; till we bring them to the chancel arch, there bid them kneel for the Seal of the Spirit on their brows, examine and prepare themselves, and then draw nigh to the Feast in faith.

Of old, the Church (like the Greek Church now) brought her babes at once from the Font to the Altar, and accepted them as communicants from the first. Now, a mournful instinct' withholds her, as if the tainting influence of the world made her fear to lead them on high at once, lest the greater privilege should make a fall the deeper.

Therefore, with his own humility and obedience, the poet acquiesces in the judgement of his Mother, and draws the consolation, that the longing for what is delayed, may enhance the earnestness and purity of 'Faith's virgin sigh.'

(To be continued.)

CONVENT OF THE ANNUNCIATION, MENTONE.

AVE MARIA, maiden rapt and kneeling!
Was it a mountain nest, like this I see,

Thy home in Galilee?

Whither as holy thoughts with stars came stealing, .
Thine Angel stood behind Heaven's curtain-haze,
In act to raise.

Those hills-with grape and olive rose they tinted?
Shook Hebron's terebinths in evening breeze
To balmy airs like these?

Were such earth's latest hues that o'er thee glinted,
Lily of Eden's ruined bowers, or e'er

Heaven opened fair?

O hallowed moment fraught with endless blessing!
No tongue may breathe save thine, what thee befell;
The angel Gabriel

Sole of his peers might stoop thine ear addressing,—
Sole herald thou, hailed among women blest,'

6

Mayst tell the rest.

Surely no earthly transports-gleams 'mid sorrow-
Were thine, what time in song thy soul ran o'er :
The ages evermore

No Hannah's jubilee but thine may borrow,
Since on thy knees into a world forlorn
The Christ was born!

Born Very Man-O priceless Jewel treasured,
Mother, in casket of thy reverent love!

Might spirits downward move

From light, sure thine the darkening steep had measured,
As Moses once, to purge and disenthral

Blind votaries all.

Ave Maria, in God's bliss abiding!

The sword that pierced thee had been keener now—
Keener than when thy brow

Drooped at the Cross, but that His Hand is hiding
Each despite in thy name by mortals done
To Him, thy Son.

Kiss we His feet, not thine: no human feeling
But finds true echo in His human heart;
No pain or fevered start,

Or wrestler's cry; but lo! His Form appealing,
'Was ever grief'-so pleads each Wound Divine-
'A grief like Mine?'

J. M.

THE BIBLE,

AS ILLUSTRATED BY MODERN SCIENCE AND TRAVEL.

BY THE REV. H. B. TRISTRAM, F. R. S.

THE subject is defined for me to be, 'The Bible, as Illustrated by Modern Science and Travel.'

To illustration, then, I confine myself. Proof or demonstration is not within my scope. The instances I propose to adduce are in no degree

VOL. 9.

16

PART 51.

to be regarded as logical proofs, but as contributions to exegesis. To a sceptical mind they will probably carry no weight. Believing minds, regarding them from another point of view, will accept them as strong corroborations. We trust we are not unprepared with proof, but this is not the place for it. Call not illustration weak because it does not go so far as proof. As for those who have an impression that the discoveries of science militate against Scripture; accumulated illustration may lead critics of this tone to perceive that the more the topographical and historical framework of the sacred volume is explored, and the more natural science is studied, the more closely they will be found parallel to revelation. In other words, Scripture will be found abreast of the science of the day, though not expressed in scientific technicality.

There is a sense in which theology can never advance. Dogma, Minerva-like, is complete at once from its enunciation, and no resolution of physical mysteries, no speculations of psychology, can add to or Giminish aught from dogmatic truth. But it is otherwise with criticism, which must advance with the growth of human knowledge, and which dedicates the choicest and the freshest fruits of human research to the embellishment of the casket of truth. She does not take each achievement of science, and measuring it by some fixed standard of her own, accept or reject it, as it harmonizes with her own preconceptions. Still less does she adopt each result of research, or of accepted speculation, and make of it a new standard by which a plastic revelation is to be shaped; but, leaving physical and philological subjects in the hands of their own professors, she hesitates not to concentrate and apply The reflections of their light so as to reveal some delicate moulding therto unperceived in the framework of revelation, or to bring out o clearer relief some tracery hitherto left in shade. I may here duce the words of a great master of physical science:-'If we bear mind that it is a common object of religion and science to understand e infancy of its existence; that the laws of mind are not yet relegated the teachers of physical science, and that the laws of matter are not ithin the religious teacher's province, they may then work together in harmony, and with good will. But if they would thus work in harmony, both parties must beware how they fence with that most dangerous of all weapons, Natural Theology, a science falsely so called, when, not ontent with trustfully accepting truths hostile to any presumptuous tandard it may set up, it seeks to weigh the infinite in the balance f the finite, and shifts its ground to meet the requirements of every new ct that science establishes, and every old error that science exposes. hus pursued, natural theology is, to the scientific man, a delusion; and > the religious man a snare, leading too often to a disordered intellect nd to atheism.'

Referring first to the Bible as illustrated by modern science, our houghts recur to the vexed question of the cosmogony. This is not ›nfined to a single chapter of Genesis alone. If Scripture be Scripture's

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