make it out, such as it is. It is the toil, and the joy, and the victory in the search of truth; not the taking on trust, or learning by rote, not by heart, what other men count or call true; but the vital appropriation, the assimilation of truth to ourselves, and of ourselves to truth. All truth is of value, but one truth differs from another in weight and in brightness, in worth; and you need not me to tell you that spiritual and eternal truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, is the best. And don't think that your own hand has gotten you the victory, and that you had no unseen, and it may be unfelt and unacknowledged hand guiding you up the hill. Unless the Lord had been at and on your side, all your labour would have been in vain, and worse. No two things are more inscrutable or less uncertain than man's spontaneity and man's helplessness,-Freedom and Grace as the two poles. It is His doing that you are led to the right hill and the right road, for there are other Tintocks, with other kists, and other drops. Work out, therefore, your own knowledge with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do, and to know of His good pleasure. There is no explaining and there is no disbelieving this.

And now, before bidding you good-bye, did you ever think of the spiritual meaning of the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night, as connected with our knowledge and our ignorance, our light

and darkness, our gladness and our sorrow? The everyday use of this divine alternation to the wandering children of Israel, is plain enough. Darkness is best seen against light, and light against darkness; and its use in a deeper sense of keeping for ever before them the immediate presence of God in the midst of them, is not less plain; but I sometimes think, that we who also are still in the wilderness, and coming up from our Egypt and its fleshpots, and on our way let us hope, through God's grace, to the celestial Canaan, may draw from these old-world signs and wonders, that, in the mid-day of knowledge, with daylight all about us, there is, if one could but look for it, that perpetual pillar of cloud—that sacred darkness which haunts all human knowledge, often the most at its highest noon; that 'look that threatens the profane;' that something, and above all, that sense of Some One, that Holy One, who inhabits eternity and its praises, who makes darkness His secret place, His pavilion round about, darkness and thick clouds of the sky.

And again, that in the deepest, thickest night of doubt, of fear, of sorrow, of despair; that then, and all the most then-if we will but look in the right airt, and with the seeing eye and the understanding heart-there may be seen that Pillar of fire, of light and of heat, to guide and quicken and cheer; knowledge and love, that everlasting love which we know

to be the Lord's. And how much better off are we than the chosen people; their pillars were on earth, divine in their essence but subject doubtless to earthly perturbations and interferences; but our guiding light is in the heavens, towards which may we take earnest heed that we are journeying.

'Once on the raging seas I rode,

The storm was loud, the night was dark;
The ocean yawned, and rudely blowed
The wind that toss'd my foundering bark.

Deep horror then my vitals froze,
Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem,
When suddenly a star arose,

It was the Star of Bethlehem !

It was my guide, my light, my all,
It bade my dark foreboding cease;
And through the storm and danger's thrall
It led me to the port in peace.

Now safely moored, my perils o'er,
I'll sing first in night's diadem,
For ever and for evermore

The Star, the Star of Bethlehem !'

SIR E. LANDSEER'S PICTURE

THERE'S LIFE IN THE OLD DOG YET.'

ETC. ETC.