copyists who have taken this or that single feature of his character, and have made themselves a caricature likeness of him. One set of men has been devoted to physical science, and has grubbed head downwards in it, absorbed, self-confident, and then has looked up and said, "We have searched everywhere, and we have not found God, therefore there is no God." Another set has plunged into metaphysical subtleties, brain-problems and puzzles, and then, dazed and half-crazed, has cried, "There is nothing true, there is nothing real; all is delusion. and a lie."* Another set of men, and a much larger one, has gone headlong after mere animalism, greedy self-indulgence, living as if they had neither soul nor mental powers, till they have been almost transformed into the likeness of brutes, without hopes or aspirations, or power or desire to raise themselves from the earth. And as they grovel there, they sneer at all that is higher and better and nobler and more spiritual than they are. There are yet many more who, in their own little paltry peddling way, have made Solomon's mistake. They are very unlike Solomon in every other respect; they have but little wisdom and no greatness; they possess but a small share of life's good things; but they are like Solomon in trying to live and be happy without God. If he failed, what wonder that they fail? what wonder that they

"There is scarcely a controversy in modern theology to which you may not find copious allusions in the text of the Vedas, or the Sutras of its commentators."-Archer Butler.

become sceptical, sour, cynical, and lose faith in God and man.

"Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole man.' Life with duty to God left out is imperfect life, unsatisfying to the human soul. The whole man must have relations with God, as well as with the world, his fellow-men, and himself. Here is the key to explain the cause of so many wasted lives, so many disappointed men, so many dark autumns of life, which are autumns only in want of sunshine, not in fruitfulness and glad harvest-tide.

Men fancy that they may waste their lives, serving the world, the flesh, and the devil all the best of their days, and then at last be none the worse for it, happy at last, and secure of heaven. Let Solomon's example dispel this contemptible delusion. Read his last words in Ecclesiastes and see what he found the nett result of his life, what harvest his autumn brought him-remorse, despair, these were the companions of his latter days.

Sometimes men have the grace of repentance after a godless, animal life; more often they have it not; they have not even the desire for it; they go to death and judgment hopeless, hard, indifferent; their day of grace past, without a word of confession of sin, without fear of condemnation, without even the feeling that they are guilty, grievous sinners whose only chance is the prodigal's agonizing sobs at his father's feet.

Those who have wandered far must return, if

God gives them the grace, by the one bitter road of repentance: there is no other way; and many there are who never seek it, never find it.

"Fear God." Men do not fear Him; they take liberties with Him; they treat Him as they would treat some weak, foolish man, with whom they may do as they like, and who will never say or do anything. And yet it is written, "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”

The wise and godly soul will follow a higher and better example than that of Solomon. "A greater than Solomon " has taught it how to live and how to die. Life has its pleasures and good things for mind and body, but we must not expect too much from it; we must not rest in it, or sit down and make our home here. All labour without God is but lost labour. The Christian soul is "neither fond of life, nor weary of it;" it takes life as it comes, with its bitters and its sweets, and looks on to the new heaven and the new earth, the kingdom of righteousness and peace, the heavenly Jerusalem; there is its home.

F

CHAPTER IX.

THE SOUL AND THE BODY.

"I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection.”— 1 CORINTHIANS ix. 27.

"It is great-nay, the greatest-wisdom to be contentedly ignorant of some things."-ST. AUGUSTINE.

"It is restraint which characterizes the higher creature, and betters the lower creature; and from the ministering of the archangel to the labour of the insect,-from the poising of the planets to the gravitation of a grain of dust,—the power and glory of all creatures, and all matter, consist in their obedience, not in their freedom. The sun has no liberty-a dead leaf has much. The dust of which you are formed has no liberty. The liberty will come with its corruption."-J. RUSKIN.

"How much, dear body, then I owed
To thee of commune with my God!
How much of light-shut out by sin-
Thou didst upon the soul let in!
And, fallen and ruined as thou art,
Of all that purifies the heart
How much thou didst to me impart !

Thy leadings tend but to fulfil
The purpose of God's holy will,
Life to continue and renew
By laws to His intention true,

From the babe's lips instinctive prest
First fondly to its mother's breast,
On throughout all that wondrous plan
That makes the mystery of man!"

DR. MONSELL.

"I AM fearfully and wonderfully made;" such was David's conviction even in his day; how much more may we feel this to whom the mysteries of nature have been so largely opened by the magnificent advance and discoveries of science! Body, soul, and spirit,-the Trinity of our being is as truly beyond our powers of comprehension as the Trinity of our worship.* We know a great deal more than we can understand. The philosopher who can foretell the return of comets, and the occurrence of eclipses years beforehand, cannot tell what will happen to him on the morrow, or explain how he sees or hears or thinks or exists. Our bodies are not ourselves; we have discovered the ingredients of which they are composed; we find that they are, as the Bible tells us, "of the earth, earthy." Some have taught that all matter, and therefore the body itself, is altogether evil; some have gone to the other extreme, and denying the existence of anything else, have bidden us "eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

Now, the revelation of Jesus Christ teaches. another creed with respect to our bodies. It does not deny the mortality of the body, but it

"Who can tell all the windings, turnings, depths, and dark corners of the mind of man? Forty years' wanderings would not explore it."-Dr. Forbes Winslow.