put not the cross to which he was nailed, and the shame of which he despised. Do it honour. Lift it up. Regard the pulpit, from which you are privileged to discourse about Jesus, as associated with more honour than ever gathered around the throne of all the Cæsars. And, further, be not content to preach his death, in any merely subordinate sense-his death, either as heroic, exemplary, or martyrological. Give it its grand feature; preach it as ATONING. Then you make it special, you lift it higher than any other death, upon whatever object it may have been expended; you leave it, tenderly attractive by its awful isolation, yielding its own halo of glory. You do this, because, in harmony with God's word, you really cannot do otherwise. There is no other death with which it can be associated. Companionship is out of the question, as it involves an infinite deterioration. He trod the wine-press alone. None can die as Jesus died. Having these views, let there be no mistake as to the supreme purport of your ministry. Herald your resolve.

"In the cross of Christ I'll glory,

Towering o'er the wrecks of time;
All that's great in sacred story

Gathers round its head sublime."

This was the course taken by the early advocates of our holy religion-taken too in an age riper than any by which it had been preceded. From Egypt and Assyria, Greece and Rome had not failed to borrow, as is now very evident, artistic and other treasures; yet then, in that era of art and refinement of prided status and scholastic attainment, the Cross and it alone was the rallying cry; it was the secret of their inspiration, as it was the symbol of their faith. Brethren, we cannot improve upon Apostolic precedent-we cannot either add to or alter the old story; and who is he who would if he could? In these stirring times, and amid these hallowed scenes, the cross is transferred to you-the cross, beneath the earnest exhibition of which old Rome, with its altars, sacrifices, priests, and temples, quailed. Take it! it is, as of old, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Stand by it. Fail with it you cannot. "By this sign we conquer." From your lips there must flow no measured plaudits-no stinted eulogy. On Jesu's head, as you move on in your profession, place the crown, and at His feet spread the palm-branch.

"All hail the power of Jesu's name!"

"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing."

As Methodist Preachers, you will be expected to state distinctly and with moderate frequency, the doctrine of the DIRECT WITNESS

OF THE SPIRIT. Upon this subject, there is no small diversity of opinion. There are those who affirm that it is not the privilege of any to know that their sins are forgiven-that their sins may be forgiven without their knowing it; and that they must await the hour of their decease, as the period when the grave discovery will be made. Others are of opinion that God may, and probably has, granted the witness of the Spirit in special cases, and to extraordinary persons, but that it is not the privilege of believers in general. Others affirm that we may have the indirect, but we cannot have the direct, witness of the Spirit; that we may, from a candid analysis of our dispositions and aims, and a careful comparison of the same with the statements of the word of God, rightfully conclude that we are the children of God. Others teach that, to the evidence furnished by our own consciousnessthe witness of our own spirit-there is the immediate, the direct communication of the fact by the Holy Ghost, that, to the Christians at Rome, Paul wrote thus, "Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba Father, the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." (Rom. viii. 15, 16.) And to the Christians at Galatia, he also wrote thus, "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba Father." (Gal. iv. 6.)

And, along with the witness of the Spirit, there is the doctrine of perfect love, or entire sanctification; to it heed should be taken, lest, in its distinctness and force, it should escape from our pulpits altogether, Methodistic though they be. Its clear and comprehensive discussion, sustained by beautiful behaviour, a blameless life, cannot fail to produce the most salutary results. If this blessing were enjoyed more, it would be preached oftener. There is no doubt about that; and with its general possession, and frequent exposition and enforcement, the interests of the Church would be most extensively promoted. If we would have the solemn heart-searchings, and the arrestive awakenings for which Methodism in its earnest and early years was distinguished; then we must, ourselves, as ministers, take higher ground-we must live nearer to God-we must, in the exercise of a vigorous and implicit faith, await the higher life-the diviner mood-the amplitude of heavenly influence-the fulness of God.

See, therefore, brethren, that ye compass the whole range of theology-pastoral and polemic, doctrinal and experimental. Leave no point undefended-no truth unannounced. Take heed unto the doctrine. Declare the whole counsel of God.

(To be continued.)

Intuitionalism versus the Senses.

AN use of the logical faculty hitherto unrecognised, and a "higher philosophy" than any hitherto patent, must be forthcoming, in order to convince most men, that the senses do not, in their due place, exercise a jurisdiction, and that a large one, in forming and controlling their belief. In behalf of "Intuitionalists," we can answer for nothing. But to the majority of mankind, the sensational faculties, as an essentially component part of our nature, are justly valid, in numerous important cases, as an authority from which, in the nature of things, there can be no appeal. Within their own limits their evidence is final, determines the question at issue, and is held by common sense and by a healthy philosophy alike inviolable. Thus our Lord Himself, Deity in the flesh, makes this His last appeal. "Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me; or else believe Me for the very works' sake—dià rà ěpya ȧvrá.” To say here that the senses only testify to the facts, or works-the interpretation must be left to other faculties, especially to our "religious consciousness,"-is simply an ignoratio elenchi. In testifying to the facts, and as evidence for the certainty of the "works," the senses as the last appeal evidently vouch for all which those very works, often indeed no more in themselves than simple signs, were professedly wrought to support. Without the accompanying word and doctrine they stand, of course, for nothing. But taking these into the account (reason, intuition, the "religious consciousness supervening), the "works" as seen," and "heard," and "handled," are virtually the very foundation of any truly Christian belief whatever. "Ye are witnesses of these things," could only be said to those who had been with Him "from the beginning."

Nor is Christianity alone here concerned. This studious depreciation of sensational testimony to an interruption of the laws of nature, in support of the Divine Revelation, leads by a very short process to universal scepticism. Natural laws and powers in their ultimate form, and in their ordinary operation, are just as important as those upon which, in the sphere of active intelligence, the "higher philosophy" affects to bestow its exclusive attention. The one without the other is practically nothing; and we may ask, further, in what sense, worth alluding to, material phenomena, whether in their ultimate causes, or their import in practical life, can be maintained to be of lower value than the phenomena of mind? All verbal quibbling apart, do they not equally contribute to all that we know, or even can know, of life and happiness?

This matter will again, for the thousandth time, bear looking into. The chemist, for instance, who should find that oxygen and hydrogen, if found in, or taken to, the planet Jupiter, and combined in certain well-known proportions, should there yield to the electric spark, not water, but quicksilver; the astronomer who should detect, in any region of the material universe, the known laws of motion to have undergone a specific change; the metaphysician who should discover

that, the unit for the measurement of gravity, force, time, or extension, being once assumed by the Creator, there are rationals, the deluded work of His hands, to whom two and two of such units do not truly and practically make four, but appear to be five; each such inquirer would have his confidence in the stability of natural laws justly shaken; and natural theology, morals, nay, Christianity itself (so far as founded on an exception which is of force, only as the rule is of force) are at once overthrown without remedy. Yet to what do we appeal for "certitude" as to material phenomena, but to our senses? And who shall say how far our ideas or conceptions of uniformity, stability, order, unity, harmony, universality, as derived from the course of natural laws in the outward world (the knowledge of which is mediated for us directly and exclusively by the sensa tional faculties), are not essential to the very conceptions we form of moral law itself, and do not contribute largely to the very foundation of the sanctions by which it is enforced?

For glimpses of what is here implied, we need not repair to the blind man, who thinks" scarlet to be like the sound of a trumpet," and whose dreams, mediated by touch, present nothing corresponding to vision; or to such as, having been born perfectly deaf, are therefore mutes; or to other unfortunates in whom the soul within stands in imperfect rapport to the world of signs without. In almost every act and event of life, we find somewhat done for us, or in us, by the sensational faculties, which but for their proper and direct activity would necessarily never be done at all. When, for instance, the first specimen of the hippopotamus, seen in this country, was added, some years ago, to the collection in the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park, an elaborate and scientific description of the stranger was given in the public papers, from the pen of Professor Owen. Colour, texture, general appearance-every part of the curiosity, from the tip of its nose to its tail, was figured in a verbal description as complete as language and science could make it. Which of us, however, though aided by analogy, logic, intuition, or aught else, actually gathered from that admirable description so good an idea of the thing as we gained in a moment from a cut in the "Illustrated News;" or better still, as we instantly acquired from inspecting the creature itself, rolling about in its tank? The bodily eye here at once served to dispel the mist which, in spite of every effort to the contrary, envelopes to the eye of the mind every verbal account of natural objects, however accurate it may be. Order, congruity, propriety, unity, take the place of vague conceptions-physical vision does for us in an instant what intuitive gazing upon abstractions can never do. So with a landscape, the tints of a flower, a piece of music; they must be "mediated" by the senses-must be seen, heard, in order to our having perfect knowledge of what they really are.

With how little reason the evidence of the senses is slighted by the new philosophy in determining the great problem of life, a hundred similar examples would show. If the logical or intuitional consciousness is confessedly that alone which measures, with one and

the same unit of gravity, the force with which a leaf in Autumn drops gently to the ground, and that which is implied in the complicated revolutions of mutually dependent masses of matter, widely scattered through the heavens-shows the fall of a leaf and the motions of a planet to be equally an expression of the same general "law" -yet the senses alone give the data whence our knowledge of this "law" is derived. All depends on their honesty. And for the Intuitionalist here to step in and say, Your senses can, after all, only testify to barren facts, the interpretation must be left to other faculties," is, we repeat, only to play upon words. For the interpretation must vary as the data-unless reason and intuition themselves are false; and only as in their place an expression of, and as corresponding with, absolute truth (for there is a moral cause for even physical laws being both positively and relatively such as they are), can sensational data lead the mind to truthful results, whether in the "higher philosophy" or in the practical conduct of life.

In fine, the Platonic dogma, as of late revived, that the outward world can yield us nothing beyond opinions; that, strictly speaking, truth must derive its final sanctions from an independent inward source, is not only arrayed against an historical Christianity, singled out with eagerness as its chief antagonist, but tends, as the doubtful results of modern speculation abundantly show, to overthrow the foundation of certitude in us for anything whatever. Let "philosophy," however, do as it may, is it even honest for Christian teachers so to wield their arguments against materialism, as that a poor man shall be taught to read the history of Moses, of Elijah, of our Lord, in a maze of mistrust as to the veracity of the Divine Word altogether?

If these things are not so, let the Intuitionalist show us on what ground it is to be concluded that the intuitional eye, or ear, or touch is a more faithful medium of truth than the physical senses, when directed to their proper objects? In their normal state, in their own sphere, let it be shown that one source of truth is more trustworthy, or even more copious, than the other. The stereoscope, for instance, has shown us, after ages of subtile disputation, that the notion of solidity may be the direct result of physical vision. Does the intuition that things are solid bring this "representative knowledge" before the philosopher, a jot more clearly than is done by the bodily eye for the bumpkin who sees, he knows not how, plane surfaces transformed into the plumpness and "outness" of solid figures?-Frankland.

Heroism in Humble Life; or, "Honest Silas Cold," the Reclaimed Sailor.

ANOTHER death among his fellow-labourers, recorded by Wesley during these times, was that of Silas Told, a name that may appropriately be associated with that of John Nelson, A very notable