cessities, it is reasonable to conclude that to meet them He will not despise our poor, stammering language, nor disdain to use it as the vehicle of His mighty thought. It is incredible that the speech-maker should be Himself the Speechless, or that the author of multiplied vocables should be unable to articulate His holy will. Wise men of all ages, such as Socrates, have expressed the conviction that a direct Revelation is among the most probable and possible, as it is among the most indispensable, of heaven's gifts. If it is said that this reasoning will carry us to the unorthodox conclusion that His communications cannot be restricted to the contents of one volume, I can only answer, so be it. I shall even then be only repeating the sentiment ascribed to Zuinglius by the author of Heathen Religions, that "the Holy Ghost was not entirely excluded from the more worthy portion of the heathen world." But while I am prepared to accept the consequences of my argument, and to reverence the signs of God in any sacred book, there are adequate reasons for maintaining that the volume known among us as the Bible contains the completest, the most fully inspired, and the best authenticated revelation ever given to the race. All others are as stars in comparison with the sun, as the cold luster of the pole in comparison with the brilliancy of the tropics, as the opaque whiteness of the pearl in comparison with the transparent beauty of the diamond. Rousseau acknowledges its moral power; Goethe confesses its unparalleled spiritual excellence; Theodore Parker magnifies it as the purest fertilizing stream that ever flowed through our desert world; Huxley esteems it indispensable to sound ethical education, and Amberley extols it beyond any other work existing among men. From these considerations it is reasonable to conclude not only that Naturalism is untenable, but that He who "upholds all things by the word of His power," also has conferred on us a revelation to lighten our darkness, and that in its supreme and perfected form it is contained in the Holy Scriptures. Their light is needed in navigating the vague uncertainty called life; apart from their luster the universe is a dubious phantasmagoria, and aside from their spiritual vivifying warmth the world is as those hyperborean regions where winter is added to winter, where ice is piled on ice, where the sea is imprisoned in eternal repose, and where the congealed mass is swept by shivering winds. Without the Bible the soul remains doubt-riven, and "at best but a troubled guest upon an earth of gloom.' The study of nature imparts not moral strength, and the conquest of nature brings neither peace nor joy. Could we penetrate the innermost laboratory, hidden in the abysmal depths of the unseen, and witness chemical combinations résulting in suns, stars and constellations, and could we disengage ourselves from old ideas and satisfy ourselves that toiling time, laborious law and moiling matter are sufficient to account for the origin and order of all things that make up this marvelous universe, we would turn from the great discovery saddened and dispirited, like children who, seeking a father, have stumbled on his grave, and like children conscious of their orphan state we would cry out in sharp agony of despair, God! God! God! So unsubmergeable are our religious instincts, and so unquenchable our religious aspirations, that could we prove the unprovable assumptions of Naturalism we would revolt from the unwelcome demonstration, and in our wretchedness bewail the loss of confidence in that Book whose sublime revelations have filled our thoughts with Divine images and our lives with the consciousness of saintly fellowships. It is related of the great Plotinus that he sought in many directions for truth; that he communed with sci ences and philosophies, climbed the heights of speculation and fathomed the depths of reflection, but received from all no satisfactory reply. He approached the verge of skepticism, and was on the point of embracing the cheerless creed that there is nothing certain but uncertainty when he heard of a strange teacher in the city of Alexandria. A man had appeared among the cultured people of that city who, though of humble rank and a porter by trade, had undertaken to lecture on philosophy, and to him Plontinus came. The young skeptic, to whom nature had been tongueless, sat at the feet of the earnest thinker, Ammonius the carrier, and from his lips received the message that opened to his mind the realities of truth. Plotinus represents many young men to whom these words will come. They have read themselves into a chaos of doubt; and they are half persuaded that they have been abandoned by their Creator to the mocking Titans of error. Why seek further? Hear this, ye young: a greater teacher than Ammonius is here. He once lived among men in lowly form, and He yet lives in the immortal revelations of this Sacred Book. Like the inquiring Alexandrian, humble your intellect and learn of Jesus, who spake as never man spake; sit at His feet; permit the supernatural to supplement and complete the natural, and then you shall go forth enriched with truth,-knowing God, knowing self, knowing, also, how God and self touch each other and come into sacred commerce,- and then shall you be able to brighten the pathway of others with the reflection of that light which fills your soul with peace and joy. "God's voice, not Nature's,-night and noon The Dayspring He, whose days go on." PESSIMISM. "Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." Hebrews xii, 11. "Because the few with signal virtue crowned, The heights and pinnacles of human mind, Wish not thy soul less wise or less refined. True, that the clear delights that every day Cheer and distract the pilgrim are not theirs; Lord Houghton. AIN and anguish fill a large place in human life. PAIN Their harsh voices cannot be silenced, neither can the rattle of elegant carriages, nor rush and din of commerce, nor the clamor of ambitious, eloquent tongues, drown the solemn pathos of their discourse. Their baleful presence stealthily glides everywhere, and everywhere their shadow falls. They walk unopposed through the ranks of watchful guards, and deliver to kings their sad messages, and they pass unhindered into humble, peaceful homes, and speak the awful word that withers their beauty and blights their peace. No life can build them out, no foot can speed fast enough to elude them, no hand can strike vigorously enough to repel them, and no subtle skill can evade them, nor any bribe of affluence corrupt them. They are everywhere, they have all times; yea, they have all means at their disposal, for they can impart a scorpion's sting to our delights and poison-venom to our hopes. The house we build to shield us from the storm may but furnish fuel for the fire that shall consume our prosperity and rob us of our dear ones; the adornments which afford us harmless pleasure may but serve to supply a motive to the assassin's knife; the children we have reared with so much fondness, and on whose multiplying years we have looked with fond anticipation, may only prove a perennial affliction to our sanguine souls, and the high emprise, rich in promises, may be but the herald of death and desolation. So closely interwoven is suffering with all our movements, so strangely interblended with our felicity, so inseparable, apparently, from our gladdest and serenest hours, that every earnest soul has felt the truth of what Shelley wrote: "We look before and after, And pine for what is not, Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.” It ought not, therefore, to occasion us much surprise if many minds take on a despairing mood, and if many tongues adopt the language of despondency. So difficult is it for humanity at times to discern the silver lining in the cloud that overshadows, so hard is it to realize, under certain conditions, that the thick pillar which precedes us, as it did the Jews, is guiding to Canaan's promised land, that nothing is seen but the somber shadows of the savage wilderness through which our pathway lies. And when the shekinah hides the Christ of comfort from our longing eyes, it is hard, if not impossible, for us to recognize its |