"But life is in our hands," she said: "In our own hands for gain or loss: Shall not the Sevenfold Sacred Fire Suffice to purge our dross?

"Too short a century of dreams,

One day of work sufficient length : Why should not you, why should not I

Attain heroic strength?

"Our life is given us as a blank;

Ourselves must make it blest or
curst:

Who dooms me I shall only be
The second, not the first?

"Learn from old Homer, if you will, Such wisdom as his Books have said:

In one the acts of Ajax shine,
In one of Diomed.

"Honoured all heroes whose high deeds

Thro' life till death enlarge their

"To me our days seem pleasant days, Our home a haven of pure content; Forgive me if I said too much,

So much more than I meant. "Homer, tho' greater than his gods, With rough-hewn virtues was suf ficed

And rough-hewn men: but what are such

To us who learn of Christ!" The much-moved pathos of her voice, Her almost tearful eyes, her cheek Grown pale, confessed the strength of love

Which only made her speak:

For mild she was, of few soft words,
Most gentle, easy to be led,
Content to listen when I spoke
And reverence what I said;

I elder sister by six years;

Not half so glad, or wise, or good:
Her words rebuked my secret self

And shamed me where I stood
She never guessed her words reproved
A silent envy nursed within,
A selfish, souring discontent

Pride-born, the devil's sin.

I smiled, half bitter, half in jest:
"The wisest man of all the wise
Left for his summary of life

'Vanity of vanities.'

"Beneath the sun there's nothing new: Men flow, men ebb, mankind flows

on :

If I am wearied of my life,
Why so was Solomon.

"Vanity of vanities he preached

Of all he found, of all he sought: Vanity of vanities, the gist

Of all the words he taught. "This in the wisdom of the world,

In Homer's page, in all, we find : As the sea is not filled, so yearns Man's universal mind.

"This Homer felt, who gave his men

With glory but a transient state : His very Jove could not reverse Irrevocable fate.

"Uncertain all their lot save thisWho wins must lose, who lives must die:

All trodden out into the dark

Alike, all vanity.”

She scarcely answered when I paused, But rather to herself said: "One Is here," low-voiced and loving, "Yea, Greater than Solomon."

So both were silent, she and I :

She laid her work aside, and went Into the garden-walks, like spring, All gracious with content,

A little graver than her wont,

Because her words had fretted me ; Not warbling quite her merriest tune Bird-like from tree to tree.

I chose a book to read and dream :

Yet all the while with furtive eyes Marked how she made her choice of flowers

A husband honourable, brave,

Is her main wealth in all the world: And next to him one like herself,

One daughter golden-curled;

Fair image of her own fair youth,
As beautiful and as serene,
With almost such another love

As her own love has been.
Yet, tho' of world-wide charity,
And in her home most tender dove,
Her treasure and her heart are stored
In the home-land of love:
She thrives, God's blessed husbandry ;
She like a vine is full of fruit;
Her passion-flower climbs up toward
heaven

Tho' earth still binds its root. I sit and watch my sister's face:

How little altered since the hours When she, a kind, light-hearted girl, Gathered her garden flowers;

Her song just mellowed by regret

For having teased me with her talk; Then all-forgetful as she heard

One step upon the walk.

While I? I sat alone and watched
My lot in life, to live alone,
In mine own world of interests,

Much felt but little shown.
Not to be first: how hard to learn
That lifelong lesson of the past;
Line graven on line and stroke on
stroke;

But, thank God, learned at last.. So now in patience I possess My soul year after tedious year, Content to take the lowest place,

The place assigned me here. Yet sometimes, when I feel my strength Most weak, and life most burden

THE great case of the "Essays and Reviews has at last reached its termination, and no matter of equal importance has been decided by an English court of justice for a great length of years. The charges against Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson were scotched before Dr. Lushington; they have been fairly killed by the Committee of Council, and, notwithstanding the tone taken by the greater part of the public press, the gravity of this step cannot be overrated.

The tone which it is fashionable to take upon the subject-the tone of the Times, which in this instance is oddly enough at one with the Record and the Guardian-is, that the defendants escaped "by the skin of their teeth,”-an expression, by the way, which is also to be found in the observations of that important organ, the Morning Post-that they have won a merely legal victory, that the significant abstinence of the Court from expressing any opinion on the merits of the "Essays and Reviews," and the dissent of the two Archbishops from the judgment on the subject of the Scriptures give the moral victory to the prosecutors; that, in short, a verdict of not proven has been returned, and that the defendants ought to make a good use of their escape by taking care not to repeat their offence. In short, the general tone of the press is, "Not guilty, but do it not again." The writer in the Times, indeed, goes a little further than this. He tells us that the fact remains that the defendants have established their right to criticise the Bible freely, but this is rather by the way. The prominent part of the article is the rebuke to the prisoners who have had such a fortunate escape, and the exhortation to them not to presume upon their good luck for the future. All this may be soothing and satisfactory to people who, above all things, hate to have cherished

convictions disturbed, and who, whatever may be their own faith, have no belief at all that the great bulk of mankind will ever have their creed based on reasonable conviction. It is the natural language of those who are orthodox from idleness, or who affect orthodoxy because they are hopelessly sceptical.

To people who really believe that there is any truth in religion at all, and that that truth is to be discovered in the same way as truth on other subjects, namely, by free and patient inquiry, the judgments in question will bear altogether a different aspect. In the first place they will observe, that the tone of lecture and grave rebuke which is adopted towards the defendants is altogether out of place. If there had been any question of fact in the case, if the defendants had been acquitted because there was a difficulty in proving publication, or because there might be a doubt as to the precise meaning of their expressions (and this, no doubt, was the case as to one of the charges, and especially as to one of the defendants, Dr. Williams), there might have been some propriety in the language used, but with respect to the really important part of the charges it is simply childish to speak in this way. Mr. Wilson clearly dissented from the widely spread belief that every word in the Bible is true in fact and sound in morals. He spoke of "the dark crust of human error" which surrounded the "bright centre of spiritual truth." He also expressly denied his belief in the eternity of future punishments, in the common meaning of the word eternal. The question before the Court was whether or not this was legal-in both cases the Court held broadly that it was. The material part of the judgment is comprised in a very few lines, but they are lines which form the Magna Charta of honest inquiry in

the Church. "The question is, whether "in them" (i. e. the 6th and 20th of the Thirty-nine Articles, the Ordination Service, and the Nicene Creed) "the Church has affirmed that " every part "of every book of Scripture was written "under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and is the word of God?"

"Certainly this doctrine is not in"volved in the statement of the 5th "Article, that Holy Scripture containeth "all things necessary to salvation. But " inasmuch as it doth so " (i. e. inasmuch as Holy Scripture does contain all things necessary to salvation)" from the revela"tions of the Holy Spirit, the Bible "may well be denominated Holy,' and "said to be the Word of God,' 'God's "Word written,' or 'Holy Writ,' terms "which cannot be affirmed to be clearly predicated of every statement and re"presentation contained in every part "of the Old and New Testament.

This is the net result of the whole controversy relating to the Bible. It has established beyond the possibility of doubt that, as far as legal penalties go, the clergy are fully at liberty to criticise every part of the Bible, and to inquire into not merely the truth of, but the morality of any part which may to them appear doubtful. The legality of what have often been stigmatized as rationalistic views of the Bible is now legally established. The right of clergymen holding these views to a place in the Church of England stands on the same footing as the right of the opponents and maintainers of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. The judgment on the "Essays and Reviews" completes the work which was begun by the judgment on Mr. Gorham and the Bishop of Exeter.

It is easy enough for the Times and other journals to depreciate the importance of such an event. Radically sceptical minds may feel a pleasure in asking whether anybody will care to

follow out such speculations as those of the "Essays and Reviews," or of Dr. Colenso, after the excitement of doing an illegal act has been removed; but the cynical and blasé view of the matter is in reality absurdly shallow. It springs from ignorance or forgetfulness of the fact that the religious faculties form a part of human nature, and one of its most important and most deeply-seated parts; that these faculties never can, or will, or ought, to be satisfied until they have been brought into harmony with the other faculties, and especially with those of the intellect; and that this cannot be until it has been ascertained by the application of appropriate methods what is the truth respecting the object of these faculties, or what, if truth is not obtainable, is the most probable view. Depreciate the seven Essayists, still this fact remains, and will remain, that the bulk of the people of England have always been accustomed to believe that the Bible is all equally true; that these writers have attracted their attention to arguments of the most pointed kind, but not generally known to ordinary people till very lately, to prove that this is a vulgar error; that the public are anxious and uneasy on the subject, and are rapidly becoming more anxious and more uneasy, and that that anxiety and uneasiness will not and cannot and ought not to be set at rest until the whole truth is fairly stated, and the matter discussed to the very bottom.

To those who care to be honest and consistent in their own eyes; to those who have to educate children, and to take the responsibility of putting the Bible into their hands, with instructions as to its character; to those who feel that there is a vital connexion between morality and theology, and that a false theology cannot lead to a true morality; to those who attach deep importance to prayer, public and private, and cannot bear to go before their God with a lie in their mouths; to every one, in a word, to whom religion is a matter of solid and awful importance- and of such persons the great bulk of the

nation is composed-it is, and ought to be, an awful and even a horrible thing to love darkness rather than light, to turn away from truth because it disturbs cherished convictions, and to disown obligations to those who, in fact, have been their teachers, by the paltry assertion that all that was to be said on the subject was known to others long before, or by the false assertion that they knew it themselves. The bulk of the English nation will say to this contemptuous minority, "If you really knew all this, which we very much doubt, the more shame to you for never telling us. It is new to us, if it is old to you; and, however you may make light of the importance of truth, or of the possibility of attaining it, we feel that we must know how these matters stand, if our religion is to be of any practical use at all."

To persons of this mind the judg ment of the Privy Council ought to be a great relief. The plain common sense of the matter, which has also been declared by the highest authority to be the law, is, that at the time when the Articles were settled these questions had not arisen, and were therefore not decided by those who framed the Articles. If they had framed an Article on the question in their then state of knowledge, no doubt they would have affirmed the truth of the whole Bible equally. Probably with our lights they would have done no such thing, at all events; most happily for every one who cares either for truth or for the maintenance of the Church of England, they did nothing of the kind. The legal effects of this are now decided, but the public at large will say with reason, We look more to the moral than to the legal aspect of the case; and is a clergyman morally justified in criticising, with this degree of freedom, what has hitherto been held to be beyond the reach of criticism, and what all the principal dignitaries of the Church still view in that light?

The answer is, that not only is he morally justified in doing so, but he is under the strongest moral obligation to do so, according to his lights and oppor

tunities. No one who has anything like a competent acquaintance with the history and tenets of the Church of England can fail to know that great difference of opinion has been tolerated amongst the clergy ever since its first establishment. Lutherans and Calvinists; men who differed from Rome principally on points of Church government; men who differed from Socinians only by a line not very easily traceable; Hooker and Cartwright; Laud, Chillingworth, and Baxter; Beve ridge and Tillotson; Samuel Clarke, Hoadly, Waterland, Middleton, and Warburton; Venn, Wesley, Herbert Marsh, and Horsley; Dr. Pusey, Dr. Stanley, and Dr. M'Neile, are, or have been, ministers of the Church of England. It is not unfrequently said that these and other eminent divines differed only on secondary points, and that in essentials they were agreed; but this is a complete delusion. They agreed in the practical inference that the form of worship in the Common Prayer-book was one which ought to be used, and each would probably have said in general terms that he believed in a certain set of doctrines; but, when they came to explain their views, and state more particularly the sense which they attached to the doctrines, it would be found that each man had an entirely different view of his own, and that the systems formed by putting together their dif ferent opinions differed in important particulars, and still more in the propor tion between the parts and in the general

effect and result of the whole.

Can any two systems relating to the same subject matter differ more widely than the Calvinistic and semiRomanist doctrines ? They differ in their views of God, in their views of man, and in their views of the relation between God and man; and these three subjects make up collectively the whole of religion. So, too, the creed of such men as Bishop Tillotson, Warburton, and Paley (who differed widely amongst themselves), differs irreconcilably both from the High Church and the Low Church theology. In short, the phraseology and the doc