ABRAHAM THE FRIEND OF GOD.

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VISIT to Italy is the aim of every artist. Ordinary travellers crowd its palaces, churches, and galleries, to gratify a common curiosity, or enjoy the pleasures their treasures yield to every cultivated mind. Artists seek that beautiful land for a higher purpose. To them it is what our schools and universities are to the student of languages or of science; and they regard a visit to Italy as such an important, if not essential, part of their education, that I have known a sculptor, on emerging from the straitened circumstances through which he had risen to fame, leave home, wife, and children to go there, and enjoy in mature years the benefits which the poverty of his youth denied him. By a long,

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careful, and ardent study of their works, the artist hopes, and not without good reason, to catch the spirit of the great masters. Thus he seeks to refine his taste; to form a high standard of excellence; and to acquire an eye and hand whereby to approach if not equal, to equal if not surpass, the triumphs of ancient art. The children of this world, as our Lord says, are wise in their generation. With a care to excel, which, in obeying the apostolic injunction, "covet the best gifts," the children of light would do well to imitate, see how the sculptor surrounds himself, even in his studio, with copies of the most famous statues! He fills his mind with images of the sublime and beautiful; and provides objects for his eye, wheresoever it turns, adapted to kindle his ambition and improve his taste.

Man is so constituted that, even unconsciously, without either intending or attempting it, he imitates what he is familiar with. We speak, for instance, with the peculiar accent of our native district, and- -a matter of much more consequence -learn almost certainly to copy in our lives the manners and morals of our ordinary associates.

According to vulgar belief, the chameleon becomes red, blue, or green, with the ground it lies on; and, probably with the view of protecting them from their enemies, fishes certainly do take the colour of the water they live in, whether it be clear or muddy. Man is endowed with a property akin to this. To that, so pregnant with good or evil, as much as to the pleasure people feel in associating with those of tastes similar to their own, we owe the well-known saying, “Tell me your company, and I will tell you your character." Hence the wisdom of David's practice, "I am the companion of all them that fear thee." Hence also, on the other hand, it happens, to quote a Scripture adage, that "Evil communications corrupt good manners."

This property, though many, especially of the young, owe their ruin to it, is not necessarily, like the poisoned garment bestowed on Hercules, a fatal gift. It was given by our Maker for good purposes. It may be turned, though nothing can supply the place of Divine grace and a change of heart, to the holiest ends. For as the artist who repairs to Rome, or Florence, to fill his eye with the works of the great masters imbibes somewhat

of their genius, and learns thereby to excel in sculpture, architecture, or painting, the Christian will derive a similar advantage from studying those excellent models of piety and virtue which are found in the biographies of the Bible. Here is a gallery of admirable paintings. Here the student of holy and heavenly arts finds it as profitable as pleasant to pass hours of devout meditation. "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." But no part of it more so than the lives of the grand saints of old. While I was musing, says one of them, the fire burned; and it is not in the nature of things for a Christian man to sit down to his Bible, and turn to the history of its saints, and hold communion with them, without imbibing somewhat of their spirit. As he muses on their virtues and piety, he will feel in holy desires the fires that glowed in their bosoms kindling and burning in his own.

No doubt God's people possess a perfect model in Jesus Christ. He is at once a Propitiation for our sins, and a Pattern for our lives. His is indeed

the only life that presents such a faultless model—