The essence of religion is submission to the will of God, and that grave tranquillity of mind which follows upon deeper self-renunciation, the solemn silence of soul which succeeds acquiescence in the bitterest episodes of life, the chastened cheerfulness which survives the strain and strife of years, is a real, although not perhaps seeming, gain upon the first sparkling experiences of our devout

life.

Moreover Jol continued his parable,

and said, O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when Flis candle shined upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle; when the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were about me; when I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil...... Then I said, I shall die in my ne st, and I shall multiply my days as the sand. My root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all night upon my branch. My glory was fresh in me, and my bow was renewed in my hand.'

But all this time that the patriarch was grieving over a vanished epoch of felicity and glory, he was realizing truer and loftier views of God and a deeper and purer righteousness, the best aspects of the man were being refined, the unworthy elements were being purged away, and the sufferer was entering upon a nobler joyfulness than he had ever known before -the glee of childhood was passing into manhood's serene reason, the summer brook that ran with thin music through the reeds was passing into the infinite power of ocean, which reflects all the face of heaven and whose voice is the music of the world.

May it not be thus with ourselves? The fire, the flush, the rapture of past days has ceased with the past, but something more precious has taken the place of these excitements, valuable as they were in the particular stages of development to

which they belong. A quiet assurance, a sweet confidence in God which no vicissitude can disturb, a rest in Christ, deep, constant and sure, a submissiveness of spirit to the will of God, which is in itself unknown peace-these are ours, instead of the colouring, the efflorescence, the ecstasy of the days of our youth; and seeing this to be so, we cannot justly declare the former days to be better than these. A garden in spring is a thing of glory for poet and painter-to a superficial eye far more glorious than in autumn hueand yet it is when the blossoms are all shed, when the summer birds are flown, when the butterfly, gayest masker in the carnival,' has passed with the painted leaves amid which he sported, it is then that the husbandman's eye brightens to behold the precious fruits in red and gold on the bending branch. Has it been thus with our religious life? Can we honestly think this before God? Have we a comfortable assurance that the gay blossom has become the mellowed cluster? If so, time has given us more, far more, than it has taken away, and it is a mistake to harass the soul with pictures of the past.

6

'I am not so holy as I once was,' is another note of self-depreciation with which we are unhappily familiar, and with which, perhaps, we are sometimes disposed to sympathize. When we first realized forgiveness, we felt that there was no condemnation'; the Spirit of God seemed to hallow our whole nature; our heart was cleansed and strangely glowed; our garments were always white and our heads lacked no ointment. But it is not so now. We have not done all we meant to do, not been all we meant to be, and have a consciousness of imperfection more vivid than ever. With the lapse of years we have grown more dissatisfied with ourselves; and this

more acute sense of worldliness leads us to the conclusion that we have lost the rarer purity of other days. Once more we admit that this may be the case. There may be a very real depreciation in our life; we may have allowed our raiment to be soiled by the world and the flesh. But may not this growing sense of imperfection be a sign of the perfecting of our spirit? It may be that we are not less pure than formerly, only the Spirit of God has been opening our eyes, refining our taste, heightening our sensibility, and faults once latent are now discovered, and secret sins once overlooked are now keenly felt and bitterly deplored: the clearer vision detects deformities, the finer ear discords, the purer taste admixtures which were once unsuspected.

The consciousness of evil may increase in us because evil has been gaining upon us, or because our sympathy with righteousness is all the more intense. We shall never feel the power and terror of sin more than in the moment in which we are purged from it for ever; moral deformity will never give us a more poignant pain than when we have the least of it; moral discord will never occasion us a more profound pang than in that faint, final jar which precedes the full music of a harmonized life; and the parting taint of the moral malady will cause us a deeper humiliation and sorrow than we could possibly know when the health of our spirit was almost desperate. It is not the most imperfect Christian who feels imperfection most, but the Christian who is most nearly perfect. As Dante addresses one of his grandest characters:

'O noble conscience and without a stain, How sharp asting is trivial fault to thee!' It is possible to be growing in moral strength and grace, in everything that constitutes perfection of character and life, when appearances

are decidedly to the contrary. Watch the sculptor and note how many of his strokes seem to mar the image on which he works, rendering the marble more unshapely than it seemed the moment before, and yet in the end a glorious statue rises under his hand; so the blows of God, bringing us into glorious grace, often seem as if they were marring what little symmetry belonged to us, often as if knocking us out of shape altogether. Yet under illusions of backwardation the supreme Artist perfects that which concerneth us. Putting us back He is putting us forward; the roughening ordeal is really part of the polishing; the half-grace is shattered that some ornament of finished beauty may take its place; some special excellence becomes less conspicuous that all other perfections may attain just development and proportion; we are humbled on one of our strong points that the faults of our excellences' may be corrected; the shining gold is thrown into the pot and for a moment dimmed with fume, that it may be indeed the gold of God shining brighter still; and the severe trial of our temper, courage, patience, which has seemed to mar our character, has only destroyed for awhile the superficial and conventional propriety, that our superiority might become deep as the soul.

As in art, so in nature, we find progress under apparent retrogression; growth under seeming decay; development under evident degeneration. Similar phenomena reappear in the life of the soul, and we may easily misconstrue the symptoms of our deeper life. The bright hues of the caterpillar fade so soon as it begins to undergo its grand transformation, and the soul must be constantly parting with some lesser loveliness that it may realize the deeper, fuller, everlasting beauty. True, sincere, loyal, but downcast children of God, it was not better with you in

former days for under the acuter sense of limitation and failure you have been growing into a wisdom, a refinement, a humility, which is altogether beyond the light laughter and sweet innocence of your religious childhood.

'I do not love God as I once did,' is another sorrowful confession of the soul. How glowing was that first love! Your whole soul went out after the Beloved! You knew your heart full of the pure affection, the bursting joy! But it is not so

now.

The temperature of your soul seems to have fallen, and your love to your God and Saviour does not glow as in those memorable hours when first it was kindled by the spirit of burning.' Once again, it may be so. The Church at Ephesus had 'left' its 'first love,' and we may not cherish the same fervid affection for God which once filled and purified our heart. But may we not misconceive the love we bear to God? Our more dispassionate affection may be equally genuine and positively stronger. Take an illustration of the same passion in another manifestation. In the newly-affianced pair what demonstrations of affection! what poetry! what vows of fidelity are made! what gifts exchanged! But see the selfsame couple whitened with years. No more passionate demonstrations. Why? Because their love is less? No, but because their love is deeper far than that of all honeymoons. It is so still, because it is so profound; it is unspoken, because it is unspeakable. If no more gifts are exchanged, it is because the gift of the heart is mutually known to be complete and everlasting. Somewhat is it thus with our relation to God. Our love to God may not be so gushing, so florid in expression as it once was, but in this it only bears the sober hue of all ripened things.

The test of love is sacrifice. We

love those for whose sake we are prepared to suffer. Will our love to God to-day bear this test? Would we for His sake endure hardship, death? Are we ready, day by day, to bear our cross-to suffer any reproach or tribulation so that we may be Christ's disciples? Are we sure of ourselves here? Do we deny ourselves for Christ's sake? and are we willing to be anything, to do anything, in the spirit of loyalty to Him? Whatever abatement of feeling we may deplore, are we conscious of readiness to suffer extreme tribulations for our Saviour and His kingdom?

We

The test of love is obedience. love those to whom we pay ungrudging service. If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love.....Ye are My friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.' Here, once more, are we sure of ourselves? We have not wickedly departed from our God. Is it the supreme purpose of our heart to bring our life into entire harmony with the will of God? We are not stirred as of old, we struggle not with the same vehement and irrepressible emotion, we do not soar and sing as when we first found wings; but we do love the law and keep with some faithfulness the statutes and commandments of God. Let us listen, then, to the Master: 'He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to Him...... ...He that loveth Me not, keepeth not My sayings.'

Do we

The test of love is confidence. We love those whom we trust. not feel, then, that God has our confidence so thoroughly that even if He 'slay' us, yet will we 'trust in Him'? With all our misgivings about a

colder heart, we yet exult: 'I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Surely such a love, 'strong as death' and which many waters cannot quench,' is not less worthy than that 'first love' over which you linger so fondly. Red-hot religion' has its place and value, but white-hot religion, the silent, intense force which acts without sparks, smoke or noise, is a Diviner thing. Is it thus with our love to God? Has that passion simply changed from red to white? Has the sentiment become a principle, the ecstasy a habit, the passion a law? If so, the former days were not better than these.

'I do not make the rapid progress I once did,' is another familiar regret. Once we had the pleasing sense of swift and perpetual progress. Each day we went from strength to strength, each night knew our 'moving tent A day's march nearer home.' But we have not that sense of progress now, and this fact is to us, perhaps, a great grief. And our grief may be well founded; for those who did run well' are sometimes 'hindered' and fall into slowest pace. Yet impatience with our rate of progress is capable of another construction. You see the sun rise: in a few moments it has left the horizon, and you marvel at its rapid march of light; yet every moment it seems to move more slowly, and soon it is only by oblique signs that you know it moves at all. So the moon bounds into the sky, but as it swims into the blue depths its motion seems lost, and one might think it standing still, as in the valley of Ajalon.' Having no longer the earth-line for gauge, the appearance of progress is lost. It is somewhat with our spiritual career

Our

as with the orbs of heaven. first experiences of the Christian life are in such direct and striking contradistinction to our earthly life that our sense of progress is most vivid and delightful; but as we climb heaven, get nearer God, traverse the infinite depths of love and righteousness sown with all the stars of light, the sense of progress may well not be so definite as when we had just left the world behind.

And in considering our rate of progress, we must not forget that the sense of progress is regulated by the desire for progress. With no special

anxiety to reach the termination of our journey, an ordinary rate of progress is satisfactory; but when intensely anxious to reach a given goal, the swiftest express train seems slow. And may it not be that our impatience with our moral advancement is the result of stronger aspirations and more passionate desire? Once we measured our progress with the world we had left behind, and the feeling was deeply gratifying; now we rather think of the glorious goal to which we move, and, charmed with the vision of perfected holiness, infinite blessedness, everlasting life, we have rather the sense of distance, and fret ourselves that so much glory and gladness are yet beyond our reach. But as the sun in the firmament, as 'the moon walking in brightness' are moving with equal swiftness near the horizon or in the heights, so really is the sincere soul, with its varying moods, hastening on its path to its entire perfecting and infinite satisfaction.

The consciously disloyal soul may justly mourn departed blessedness, and wisely enquire concerning past days. The old joy, love, hope and attendant growth of spirit have suffered sad impairment. You remember, with inexpressive pathos, those auspicious seasons when, with a new-born love, you prayed and sang,

Go

and all the world looked beautiful in the light of heaven. And One above, Whose love has been wounded, has yet not forgotten those days: and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after Me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.' Thank God your case is not irremediable! Speaking of the lost, the poet affirms:

'There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery';

but such hopeless grief is not yours. All lost experiences of delight may be recovered and heightened. Repent, and do the first works,' and the spring-tide of the past shall dawn again with the singing-birds and the flowers; the robes so spotted shall be washed whiter than snow; the smoking flax of your diminished love shall revive a living flame; and, casting 'aside every weight,' you shall run 'the race that is set before' you.

The sincere lamenting disciple may be comforted. Through per

plexities and tribulations Heaven is carrying on its work in our hearts, and ever and anon it is suddenly revealed to us how much we have gained in the power of godliness.

God moves in a mysterious way' in the education of His children, and postponements are accelerations, humiliations ennoblements, eclipses illuminations, our seeming undoing is our making, when we feel the chief of sinners we are closest to Christ, when we think ourselves going down in the deep we are straightway at the shore. Forgetting those things which are behind,' let us reach forth' to grander promises. In comparing the present with the past, we may make many mistakes; in self-introspection we may easily err, for great is the mystery of spirit-growth; but look up to the grand Example, look forward to the grand prize, and you shall renew your youth like the eagle, reaching the highest flights of life. The flashing diamond was fashioned in the dark rock; the crimsoned flower was painted in the closed bud; and through perplexing episodes of thought and feeling do we arrive at immortal perfection.

WE have before us a remarkable volume. The author, Mrs. Houstoun, an Englishwoman, already known to the reading public by her Voyage to Texas, with her husband-referred to in the present work as the Captain' -settled upon a large unreclaimed estate, amidst bogs and moors, scarcely reached by roads, extending over about ninety square miles of country, and situate in the extreme West of Ireland. A residence there of twenty years gave her rare opportunities of

*Twenty Years in the Wild West; or, London: John Murray.

becoming acquainted with her subject, and she brings to her task abilities and accomplishments of a very superior order. Apart from the interest which this book cannot fail to have at this moment, when Irish affairs are engaging so much attention, it has the charm of being admirably written. The style is cultured, sprightly and fresh; the descriptions of the aborigines and the native clairgy' are true to the life; and we are ever and anon delighted Life in Connaught. By Mrs. Houstoun.