Genre Religion. Page - 5

of sense is but a small part of the pleasure he actually experiences.That pleasure, as a whole, is a highly complex thing, and rests mainlyon a basis that, by a little knowledge, could be annihilated in amoment. Tell the boy what the champagne really is, he has been praising;and the state of his mind and face will undergo a curioustransformation. Our sense of the worth of life is similar in itscomplexity to the boy's sense of the worth of his wine. Beliefs andassociations play exactly the same part in it. The beliefs in this lastcase may of course be truer. The question that I have to ask is, arethey? In some individual cases certainly, they have not been. MissHarriet Martineau, for instance, judging life from her own experience ofit, was quite persuaded that it was a most solemn and satisfactorything, and she has told the world as much, in no hesitating manner. Buta part at least of the solemn satisfaction she felt in it was due to agrotesque over-estimate of her own social and intellectual importance.Here, then, was a worth in life, real enough to the person who found it,but which a little knowledge of the world would have at once taken awayfrom her. Does the general reverence with which life is at presentregarded rest in any degree upon any similar misconception? And if so,to what extent does it? Will it fall to pieces before the breath of alarger knowledge? or has it that firm foundation in fact that willenable it to survive in spite of all enlightenment, and perhaps even toincrease in consequence of it?

Such is the outline of the question I propose to deal with.

g with these propositions the description of creation in that treatise, one may indeed see that what is called divine providence is government by the Lord's divine love and wisdom. In that treatise, however, creation was the subject, and not the preservation of the state of things after creation--yet this is the Lord's government. We now treat of this, therefore, and in the present chapter, of the preservation of the union of divine love and wisdom or of divine good and truth in what was created, which will be done in the following order:

i. The universe, with each and all things in it, was created from divine love by divine wisdom. ii Divine love and wisdom proceed as one from the Lord. iii. This one is in some image in every created thing. iv. It is of the divine providence that every created thing, as a whole and in part, should be such a one, and if it is not, should become such a one. v. Good of love is good only so far as it is united to truth of wisdom, and truth of wisdom truth only so far as i

all the parts of thewatch to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to beevidence that the watch was specially contrived to that end; on theground, that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such aneffect as a watch which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligenceadapting the means directly to that end.

Suppose, however, that any one had been able to show that the watch hadnot been made directly by any person, but that it was the result ofthe modification of another watch which kept time but poorly; and thatthis again had proceeded from a structure which could hardly be calleda watch at all--seeing that it had no figures on the dial and the handswere rudimentary; and that going back and back in time we came at lastto a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the wholefabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all thesechanges had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to varyindefinitely; and secondly, from something in

r with nine inconveniences and mischiefs that attend those churches where unity and peace is wanting.

IV. And, lastly, I shall give you twelve directions and motives for the obtaining of it.

1. As touching the sense of the text, when ye are counselled to keep the unity of the Spirit, we are not to understand the Spirit of God, as personally so considered; because the Spirit of God, in that sense, is not capable of being divided, and so there would be no need for us to endeavour to keep the unity of it.

By the unity of the spirit then, we are to understand that unity of mind which the Spirit of God calls for, and requires Christians to endeavour after; hence it is that we are exhorted, by one spirit, with one mind, to strive together for the faith of the gospel; Phil. i. 27.

But farther, the apostle in these words alludes to the state and composition of a natural body, and doth thereby inform us, that the mystical body of Christ holds an analogy with the natural body of man: as, 1.

g by With trampling feet of horse and men: Empire on empire like the tide Flooded the world and ebbed again;

A thousand banners caught the sun, And cities smoked along the plain, And laden down with silk and gold And heaped up pillage groaned the wain.

Kemp.

* * *

#The Priestly Lie#

When the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt of lightning, he fell down upon his face in terror. He had no conception of natural forces, of laws of electricity; he saw this event as the act of an individual intelligence. To-day we read about fairies and demons, dryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and Thor and Vulcan, Freie and Flora and Ceres, and we think of all these as pretty fancies, play-products of the mind; losing sight of the fact that they were originally meant with entire seriousness--that not merely did ancient man believe in them, but was forced to believe in them, because the mind must have an explanation of things that happen, and an individual intelligence was the only

his need of head covering, and he seemed unconscious of, or else indifferent to, the hot glare of the summer sky which was hardly tempered by the long shadow of the floating cloud. At some moments he was absorbed in reading,--at others in writing. Close within his reach was a small note-book in which from time to time he jotted down certain numerals and made rapid calculations, frowning impatiently as though the very act of writing was too slow for the speed of his thought. There was a wonderful silence everywhere,--a silence such as can hardly be comprehended by anyone who has never visited wide-spreading country, over-canopied by large stretches of open sky, and barricaded from the further world by mountain ranges which are like huge walls built by a race of Titans. The dwellers in such regions are few--there is no traffic save the coming and going of occasional pack-mules across the hill tracks--no sign of modern civilisation. Among such deep and solemn solitudes the sight of a living human being is strang

hings holy that were therein contained, and especially, the priest and clerk most happy, and without doubt, greatly blessed, because they were the servants, as I then thought, of God, and were principal in the holy temple, to do His work therein.

17. This conceit grew so strong in a little time upon my spirit, that had I but seen a priest (though never so sordid and debauched in his life), I should find my spirit fall under him, reverence him, and knit unto him; yea, I thought, for the love I did bear unto them (supposing them the ministers of God), I could have laid down at their feet, and have been trampled upon by them; their name, their garb, and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me.

18. After I had been thus for some considerable time, another thought came in my mind; and that was, whether we were of the Israelites or no? For finding in the scripture that they were once the peculiar people of God, thought I, if I were one of this race, my soul must needs be happy. Now again, I found within

to-day, it leads an historical life, striding onward in thepath of progress without stay or interruption. Deprived of politicalindependence, it nevertheless continues to fill a place in the worldof thought as a distinctly marked spiritual individuality, as one ofthe most active and intelligent forces. How, then, are we todenominate this omnipresent people, which, from the first moment ofits historical existence up to our days, a period of thirty-fivehundred years, has been developing continuously. In view of thisMethuselah among the nations, whose life is co-extensive with thewhole of history, how are we to dispose of the inevitable barriersbetween "the most ancient" and "the ancient," between "the ancient"and "the modern" nations--the fateful barriers which form themilestones on the path of the historical peoples, and which the Jewishpeople has more than once overstepped?

A definition of the Jewish people must needs correspond to theaggregate of the concepts expressed by the three group-name

ice not in whathe has been taught to believe; not in this Church's doctrine or in that;not in this issue, or in that issue; but "in the Truth." He will acceptonly what is real; he will strive to get at facts; he will search forTruth with a humble and unbiassed mind, and cherish whatever he finds atany sacrifice. The Greatest Thing in the World.

March 1st. "Consider the lilies of the field how they grow." Christ madethe lilies and He made me--both on the same broad principle. Bothtogether, man and flower . . .; but as men are dull at studyingthemselves. He points to this companion-phenomenon to teach us how tolive a free and natural life, a life which God will unfold for us,without our anxiety, as He unfolds the flower. Natural Law, Growth, p.123.

March 2d. Our efforts after Christian growth seem only a succession offailures, and, instead of rising into the beauty of holiness, our life isa daily heart-break and humiliation. Natural Law, Growth, p. 125.

March 3d. The lilies grow, Christ sa

mits this question because he does not consider that it has any more bearing upon the essentials of religion, than have the theories we may hold about the relation of God and the moral law to the starry universe. The latter is a question for the theologian, the former for the psychologist. Whether we are mortal or immortaea of this book very roughly, these two antagonistic typical conceptions of God may be best contrasted by speaking of one of them as God-as-Nature or the Creator, and of the other as God-as-Christ or the Redeemer. One is the great Outward God; the other is the Inmost God. The first idea was perhaps developed most highly and completely in the God of Spinoza. It is a conception of God tending to pantheism, to an idea of a comprehensive God as ruling with justice rather than affection, to a conception of aloofness and awestriking worshipfulness. The second idea, which is opposed to this idea of an absolute God, is the God of the human heart. The writer would suggest that the great outline of the