idol of your soul, and then sing to me as you would sing to her.' Poor Mr. Wilson hesitated and blushed, in doubt how far, in his case, such a personification was altogether justifiable; at last he hesitatingly remonstrated with-'Ay, but, Mr. Dunn, sir, ye forget I'm a married man!' THE SCOTTISH LANGUAGE. A Scot in Canada, who generally spoke favourably of the country of his adoption, could not help making the following exception when he compared it with the land of his birth: 'But, oh, sir, there are nae linties in the wuds.' How touching are the words in his own dialect! The North American woods, although full of birds of beautiful plumage, have no singing birds. Dean Ramsay mentions this story mainly to show the picturesqueness and beauty of the old Scottish language; he would imply that linnet does not convey so much of simple beauty, and of pastoral ideas, as belong to the Scottish word lintie, and he says the same for Auld lang syne, and maintains it has no equivalent in English. THE SEMI-DETACHMENT. 'Good-bye, small house, good-bye, Tho' weak in roof and rafter, I will not tell a lie To him who cometh after : I could not meet a charge of guilt 'Yet thou art sweet tho' small, Yet art thou dear tho' crack'd; And lived superior to our fears 'Good-bye, old house, good-bye, I brought my bride to thee, In thee I taught to fly My little nestlings three, So cannot leave thee, my first nest, Without a sinking at my breast. 'We soar to other fields, To woods and pastures new, And if the prospect yields A happiness as true We scarce can be so brightly blest Elsewhere as here, thou ill-built nest! 'Begone! ye groundless fears, Be gloomier than the last? Because we take a loftier flight, Why should they not be still more bright? 6 Come, then, whate'er betide, Will love our seven-years' home. Philip Acton. PUBLIC WORSHIP. 'The religious sentiment of England is not what it was. In most churches the language of public worship is of a kind which can at most be appropriate to a very small fraction of those who use it. The customs of society draw within the church men of all grades of piety and of faith. The selfish, the frivolous, and the sceptical, the worldly, the indifferent, or at least men whose convictions are but half-formed, whose zeal is very languid, and whose religious thoughts are very few, form the bulk of every congregation, and they are taught to employ language expressing the very ecstasy of devotion. The words that pass mechanically from their lips convey in turn the fervour of a martyr, the self-abasement or the rapture of a saint, a passionate confidence in the reality of unseen things, a passionate longing to pass beyond the veil. The effect of this contrast between the habitual language of devotion, and the habitual dispositions of the devotees, between the energy of religious expression and the languor of religious conviction is, in some respects, extremely deleterious. The sense of truth is dulled, men come to regard it as a natural and scarcely censurable thing to attune their language on the highest of all subjects to a key wholly different from their general feelings and beliefs, and that which ought to be the truest of human occupations becomes in fact the most unreal and the most conventional.' William E. H. Lecky. Doubtless this is an unfortunate condition of things, but I do not see how the standard of worship could be lowered to meet the requirements of the majority of an average congregation. I think it will be agreed on all hands that absolute simplicity and veracity of mind are the prime conditions of all piety, but if liturgic and dogmatic teaching endanger these conditions, surely it is more from a too great dictation of doctrinal belief than from a too fervent cry of personal devotion. seems to me that to profess before God any doctrine which one doubts or rejects, is a definite act of falsehood; but an aspiration to join the flight of more saintly It natures that are leading the way, and to try to join in their ascent, by mingling one's voice with theirs, is, at the worst, a substitution of what we wish to feel, and hope to feel, for that which as yet we do not feel. Ought we to reduce the fervour of public worship till it sinks to the pitch of the average unawakened soul? Must we protect the people, in proportion as they are dull or indifferent, from contact with any spirit higher than their own? Surely not. In most of us there are two natures, a superficial, and a deeper nature. And experience every day proves that the one thing needful to awaken the deeper nature is the appeal of a profound, and I would add, an impassioned faith, a faith already familiar with its sorrows and its aspirations. LUTHER. Luther married Catherine Bora, a nun of good family, left homeless and poor; she was plain in person and mind. 'The first year of married life,' says Luther, 'is an odd business; at meals, where you used to be alone, you are yourself and somebody else; when you wake in the morning there are a pair of tails close to you on the pillow. My Katie used to sit with me when I was at work; she thought she ought |