a measure proportionate to the necessities of our own times. We have no lack of men, and we thank God that the men we have, and who are coming to the front, and who are entering into our labours, are men of greater ability and of suitability for the demands of this age than we are ourselves. Everything around us is cheering, provided that we all yearn to be baptized with the spirit of our Lord, with the spirit of His apostles, with the spirit of our own early forefathers, and, let me add, with the spirit of our own immediate fathers in the ranks of Independent Nonconformity. If our work for our Master in our mother tongue is to be curtailed, and a moiety of it given to another language, let it be done as unto the Lord: not grudgingly, but cheerfully, for He loveth a cheerful giver. But in the transition-although some of our national religious eccentricities in speech and in outward modes of religious emotional expression may have to be reluctantly surrendered-I trust, however difficult it may seem to be, that the fire, and the zeal, and the life ascribed to our nation in the service of our Redeemer may not be lost. I beseech you, my brethren in the ministry (and I need the exhortation fully as much as you do), to endeavour to set an example to your flocks, of zeal for the extension of the kingdom of Christ. And I beseech you, brethren, who are aided by this society, to see to it that its aid is not suffered to paralyze the energies of your people, by inducing them to ask for help when they themselves do next to nothing, but rather that outside helpers may be instruments in God's hand to bring out your strength. Although I have said nothing about the place of prayer in and with our work, the omission will not be put down to a faint sense of its priceless value, or to forgetfulness of it. My few and feeble words have been about workwork personal and united-work involving the essential accompaniment of giving our money to the treasury of our Lord. "God helps them who help themselves." That is not in the written Bible, but it is in the unwritten Bible of the conscience and the heart. Working and praying go together in our ethics and in our religion. And the Lord be with us all. JOHN LEWIS.

TENBY.

Suggestions for Science Parables.

All material Nature is but a parable of spiritual realities.

"Two worlds are our's, 'tis only sin

Forbids us to descry,

The mystic Earth and Heaven within,
Clear as the sea or sky."

FRUITS AND AUTUMNAL DAYS.

FLOWERS AND FRUITS.-" Afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect" (Isaiah xviii. 5). "Last in the order of preparation for the fruit comes the glow and the grace of the flower. When this makes its appearance, it is the aurora of the plant's fecundity.

Therefore the queenly and incomparable hues; therefore the odours that seem breath inherited from Eden; therefore the forms and outlines before which the mathematician is still a child. We might be sure that some great event was near at hand, did experience not assure us that fruit would follow all this outlay, since grandeur of announcement in nature is always prophetic of something opulent to follow." Illustrations in the moral world abound, e.g., the aged Simeon, Paul.

FRUIT-BEARING THE END OF LIFE." Maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater" (Isaiah lv. 10). "The fruit of the plant is the portion to the development of which all activities have been dedicated. The root, the leaf, the flower, have all wrought to the furtherance of this grand intention." Isaiah says of Israel (Ezekiel xvii. 8), "It was planted in a good soil by great waters, that it might bear fruit, that it might be a goodly vine."

FRUITAGE AND DISCIPLINE." He shall cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks" (Isaiah xviii. 5). "It is not dying that is dreadful, or to be looked on with dismay, but dying without having

lived,-i.e., without having lived to some good purpose. Plants under cultivation are often reluctant to produce blossoms. Year after year they unfold abundance of green leaves, and as 'foliage plants' command our admiration; but we are never gratified with the sight of a flower. The plan generally adopted with such plants is to starve them in some way; checking the exuberance of growth, alarming them, as it were, with the fear of being destroyed, when they forthwith make efforts to produce flowers, so that they may have at least a representative of their race." The great Teacher taught, "Every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit" (John xv. 2). Chastening "yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby" (Hebrews xii. 11).

FRUIT SEED-BEARING. "The tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind" (Genesis i. 12). "Inside the fruit is the seed. This is the last grand and crowning effort of the plant's existence, for in the seed lies wrapped the future one. Perhaps a mere speck, yet capable of unfolding by degrees and absorbing from the earth and the atmosphere that marvellous sustenance which, invisible to our eyes, shall yet be wrought into wood and sap, and built into great boughs and branches, till a living pillar is erected that shall withstand the shock of ages." In the Scriptures we read, "His seed remaineth in him" (1 John iii. 9), "for none of us liveth or dieth to himself" (Romans xiv. 7).

BRISTOL THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. T. BROUGHTON KNIGHT.

Selected Acorns from Stalwart Oaks.

"The smallest living acorn is fit to be the parent of oak-trees without end." -Carlyle.

THE CLAIMS OF HEAVEN AND OF EARTH. "The planets in the heavens have a two-fold motion-in their orbits and on their axes; the one motion not interfering, but carried on in perfect harmony with the other. So must it be that man's two-fold activities round the heavenly and the earthly centre, disturb not, nor jar with, each other."-Dr. Caird.

SEEKING EARTHLY THINGS." A Nebuchadnezzar curse that sends us to grass like oxen; whereas man's use and function is to be the witness of the glory of God, whatsoever enables us to fulfil this function is, in the pure and first sense of the word, useful to us."-Ruskin.

GRANDILOQUENT PREACHING.-" Gibbon's style is too uniform, he writes in the same flowing and pompous style on every subject. He is like Christie, the auctioneer, who says as much in praise of a ribbon as of a Raphael."-Professor Porson.

THE FACULTY of Memory.—"The ideas, as well as the children of our youth, often die before us, and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching, where although the brass, and the marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery is mouldered away."-John Locke.

THE PENALTY OF PROFLIGACY.

"How like a younger, or a prodigal,

The scarfed bark puts from her native bay,
Hugg'd and embraced by the strumpet-wind;
How like the prodigal doth she return,

With over-weather'd sides and ragged sails—

Lean, rent, and beggar'd by the strumpet-wind."-Shakespeare.

CHILDHOOD AND GOD.-"The smallest children are nearest to God, as the smallest planets are nearest the sun."-Jean Paul Richter.

ATHEISM AND LITERATURE.- Atheism, into whatsoever literary field it intrudes, brings with it the narrow, shallow, and degrading. No theme can reach its highest, or attain its apotheosis, till it reaches the feet of God. We laugh, therefore, at the idea that our Atheists can sneer religion from her throne. They may as easily sneer away the dews, the mountains, or the dawn."-J. V. Macbeth.

ATHEISM AND ELOQUENCE." There is no being eloquent for Atheism. In that exhausted receiver the mind cannot use its wings."-Archd. Hare. "To use force before people are fairly taught the truth, is to knock a ⚫ nail into a board without wimbling a hole in it, which then either not enters, or turns crooked, or splits the wood it pierceth."-Thomas Fuller. BRISTOL THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. T. BROUGHTON KNIGHT.

Reviews.

PAULINE CHARITY DISCOURSES. By Rev. JOSEPH CROSS, D.D., LLD London Higham, 27, Farringdon Street.

The grandest of all Psalms ever sung or composed is Paul's Psalm of love. It transcends, not only the highest sentiments of our Platos and Senecas, but all our Hebrew Psalmists. It is here developed with great freshness and force in twenty discourses. Our readers may form a tolerably correct conception of the spirit and style of this book by the concluding paragraph,—“ What is the sum of the matter? Among the fairest and noblest human qualities there is nothing comparable to Christian charity. Charity is the queen of the graces, the empress of the virtues, the brightest gem on the brow of Emmanuel's bride. The reign of charity was the bloom of the unblighted Eden; the loss of charity was the forfeiture of primæval blessedness; and the recovery of charity will be Paradise regained. We want good health and long life, and large success, and public esteem, and posthumous fame, and the graces of learning, and the treasures of science, and the adornments of genius, with prosperous government, liberal education, purity in politics, wise statesmanship in Congress, ardent patriotism among the people, and churches richly endowed with the manifold gifts of God; but the grand desideratum-the one thing needful, the basis of all well-being, our greatest wealth on earth, and our richest endowment in heaven-is what we have endeavoured in these serial discourses clearly to explain and effectually to enforce for your Christian edification. O, God, the Giver of all good things! grant us the grace of Thy holy Spirit, and enable us all, as disciples of Thy dear Son, faithfully to follow after charity!

'Still looking to that goal sublime

Whose light remote, but sure, we see,
Pilgrims of love whose way is time,
Whose home is in eternity.'"-Moore.

MODERN THEORIES IN PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. BY JOHN TULLOCH, D.D., LL.D. London: Blackwood and Sons.

"These Essays," says the Author, "have a common object, and I have thought them, therefore, worthy of being published together. The same principles, more or less, reappear in them all, and these principles seem to