some idleness, or of gloomy restraint. Let it be a day of love, of cheerfulness, of familiar intercourse with children. Let their little

hearts be led to rejoice in Him who made them. Turn their attention to observe His goodness in the works of creation and providence. Make them sensible of the benignity which decreed a day of rest to those inferior animals which are so useful to man, and by every means in your power, endeavour to set apart for the service of God, those trains of thought connected with the emotions of delight and gratitude."

Judex honestum pretulit utili,

Mrs. E. Hamilton on Education.

Expediency.

Rejecit alto dona nocentium,

Vultu, et per obstantes catervas

Explicuit sua victor arma.

Horace, of
Lollius.

Schools.

Adam Smith had the prophetic spirit to say, Sunday speaking of Sunday Schools, then in their infancy: "No plan has promised to effect a change of manners with equal ease and simplicity, since the days of the Apostles."

Lord Mahon.

In this life of ours we not unfrequently per- Doubts. ceive rival truths, which seem incompatible and incapable of being harmonized, the evidence of which independently nevertheless seems so satisfactory, that the mind oscillates and cannot withhold its assent from each. Let us take an example. A soul educated in Holy Scripture will have learned the idea

At

that God is nigh, that the eye of His everwatchful, special Providence is over each one, and that He listens to the outpourings of the praying spirit. Let such a soul attain to a knowledge of the existence of general laws, of their absolute invariability, and at once it doubts whether God will alter His laws, whether prayer can be of any avail, whether there can be such a thing as special Providence. "Nature," it has been said, "acts with fearful uniformity; stern as fate, absolute as tyranny, merciless as death, too vast to praise, too inexplicable to worship, too inexorable to propitiate; it has no ear for prayer, no heart for sympathy, no arm to save." such a thought the soul shudders; must it give up the faith of its childhood, must it drift from the anchor-ground of religion? It reexamines the evidence on which each class of truth rests. It sees substantial ground to believe Revelation, and substantial ground to believe the doctrines of miracle and special Providence, which both enter into the very ground idea of a Revelation, and are interwoven with its texture from first to last. It cannot therefore disbelieve these. It examines on the other hand the evidence of science, and sees that the proof of the generality of Nature's laws cannot be doubted; and hence the inference arises, is it impossible that each may be true in its own sphere, and each credible,

though no mode of reconciling them be apparent? . . . . If truths be seen which appear to be rival, and yet respectively rest on solid proof, the mind must and ought to hold and act upon each, and to suspend its judgment in reference to the discrepancy until fresh light may spring up.

Farrar, D.D. (Oxon.)

Doubts.

"When I thought to know this, it was too Religious painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God."-Psalm lxxiii. 16, 17. It is usually thought that the Bible takes no notice of doubters and of doubts. The New Testament exhibits at most the doubts of a John the Baptist and Thomas; but the Old Testament is not so silent concerning Jewish scepticism. The books of Job and two of the Psalms, the 37th and the 73rd, are devoted to the expression of doubt concerning the moral government of God, and to its solution; while the book of Ecclesiastes is the outpouring of a heart-sick, self- tormenting spirit. The Psalmist describes the history of his own scepticism. The sight of the prosperity of the wicked, the suffering of good men, the victory of evil in the world, in spite of God's promise to mete out to men the due recompense for their deeds, filled him with deep doubts as to the righteousness and faithfulness of God:Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency;" "When

66

I thought to know this, it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God." In that sacred spot of the sanctuary, with the thoughts lifted into a far higher sphere, rising above the material into the spiritual, the Psalmist was led to feel, not merely as the earlier Psalmist, that the moral character of God's government asserts itself, in that prosperity comes to an end as sudden as terrible, but also and especially that the true reward is internal and not external, that the good possess God as their portion, the stay and satisfaction of their hearts for the present, and their hope and portion for the future. The solution is, that the Psalmist went into the sanctuary, and there saw the subject from a higher, a spiritual point of view, wherein the paradox he had received was not solved, but cancelled; the difficulty not answered, but its presence removed; the doubt dispersed, as a frost melts before the sun. Evil is victorious, he still feels, but it is only if measured by the eye of sense; piety is truly victorious if viewed by the eye of faith. Thus in part the Psalmist sees his puzzle solved; but in part he is led so fully to appreciate another and higher truth, and one which bears personally upon his own soul, viz. the presence of God, and goodness as the true and lasting reward of goodness and good men, that even if the former doubt remains in its strength, its in

fluence to lead him away from righteousness

is gone.

I never saw thee, Ethel, but I gaze

On the sun picture of thy childish face,
And prophet-like forecast the woman's grace,
To form thy dower in the coming days.
Then silently within my spirit prays,

To Him who laid of olden time His hand
Upon the little ones in Holy Land,
That He will ever guard thy earthly ways;
That He who thus upon thy way hath smiled,
And made thee beautiful, will keep thee good,
Through thine advancing years of woman-
hood,

In all thy journey through this often wild

And wicked world; and when that world is past

Make thee as now thou art, His own at lastAn angel bright in Heaven, as now on Earth a

child.

The understanding and conscience seem to bear the same respect to God which crystal does to the light. Its shining is not so much from any essential brightness existing in itself, as it is from the porousness of its body, rendering it fit to receive and transmit the rays of light. Now let any thing of foulness sully that glass, and so much of its brightness is presently gone, because so much of the light is thereby hindered from entering into it. In

Farrar, D.D. (Oxon.)

Ethel's Picture.

Moral Blindness.