strengthened thy faith. As for the wind, a man would be as unable to walk upon a smooth sea as a rough one without My special aid, but with such aid he would be able to encounter the fiercest wind that ever blew. Thou hadst, then, abundant grounds for thy faith, but no grounds whatever for thy fears and doubts." This case of Peter's presents a lively illustration of the condition of many Christian believers in every age. Little faith is more frequent than great faith. Faith mixed with doubting is more common than faith strong, clear, and established. But the question is, What is implied by this expression "little faith"? There are very few persons who are altogether unbelievers, and probably none who will read these lines can be classed as such, but yet, it by no means follows that all are possessed of even little faith. There are thousands who have been instructed from infancy in the facts and doctrines of Christianity, and who are accustomed to regard these facts as real, and those doctrines as true, and yet who remain altogether destitute of true faith, the faith which brings salvation to the soul. raising the tempest by the agitation of the passions in the breast. But Peter cried to the Saviour, and the tempted believer must do the same. At the throne of grace there is "mercy and grace to help in time of need." And the rebuke administered to Peter on this occasion applies with twofold power to the Christian doubting in matters pertaining to his spiritual welfare. "O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt ?" "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" Wherefore, then, didst thou doubt? "If God be for us, who can be against us?" "Sweet truth, and casy to repeat; True faith, in its smallest degrees and its feeblest The temptations to doubting are as various in their operations, belongs to the heart as well as to the character, as the diversities in the constitution of intellect, and it is practical, and not merely specu- mind and the outward condition of individual belative, in its working. The true, though weak lievers. The enemy of souls knows well how to believer, receives the Word of God as containing suit his attacks to their circumstances, and he plies those truths in which his own eternal interests are his weapons with unfailing precision, smiting between bound up, and he trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ as the joints of the harness. He knows the value and having, by his death upon the cross, made an atone-efficacy of faith, and he knows the mischief of doubtment for his sins, and as interceding for him by his presence at the right hand of God the Father. Peter, in his little faith, cried earnestly to the Saviour, and everyone who has faith, even though it be little faith, does the same. True faith, whether it be little or great, is that which unites the sinner to the Saviour. Peter's walking on the water was altogether supernatural. The great law of gravitation, so fixed and universal in its operation, was here suspended by Him who rules over the powers of nature, and thus it was that l'eter was enabled to perform this remarkable act. And it is as impossible for one of the fallen children of Adam to set about leading a life of holiness of his own natural strength and ability, as it would have been for Peter to have walked unaided on the waves of the sea of Galilee. Yet the act of walking on the sea was as really Peter's as walking on the ground is a man's own act. So in the Christian life, in the service of God, the bringing forth of the fruits of the Spirit, the action is the believer's own, while the power and grace both to will and to do are supplied from on high. Peter's success in walking on the sea was according to his faith. When his eye was fixed on Jesus, he walked firmly upon the water. When it was turned to the storm, then he wavered. "When he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid," and at once began to sink. So in spiritual things. The rule is, According to your faith be it unto you." "And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." "Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward," reward, albeit, of grace and not of debt. Peter's faith was tried in the storm. So, in crossing the sea of life, the believer's faith is tried by the waves of this troublesome world, and by the prince of the power of the air blowing with his winds, and ing, and, accordingly, he makes it his constant aim And have we not scriptural warrant for praying to Him for increase of faith? "The disciples said unto the Lord, Increase our faith," and the father of the young demoniac said, "Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief." Oh! how encouraging are these precedents to the weak and trembling believer! As Bunyan beautifully says, "Christ will bow his head to thy stammering prayer, and be afflicted in all thy afflic tions." Who despiseth the day of small things? Certainly He will not of whom it is said, "A bruised reed He will not break, and a smoking flax He will not quench." But the day of small things, though not to be despised, is to be improved. Life, in its feeblest developments, is better than death, but health and strength are far more to be desired than sickness and infirmity. Little faith is unspeakably better than no faith, but it is not an attainment to be satisfied with. "O thou of little faith!" This is not an encomium; it is a reproof-a mild and gentle reproof, but still a reproof. But how fearful is the condition of those who are living without even a "little faith" of vital or saving character! Oh, remember that they who neglect to cry to Jesus here for help and salvation, will most assuredly sink hereafter beneath the waves of perdition. Delay not, then, to flee for refuge, to lay hold of the hope set before you in the gospel. ETCHINGS FROM HISTORY, ILLUSTRATING THE PROVERBS OF SOLOMON BY MISS ALCOCK, AUTHOR OF "THE SOUTHERN CROSS," ETC. "A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished."-Prov. xxii. 3. "CONF ONFIDE, then, if it must be so," said William of Orange to his friend Count Egmont. They were parting sorrowfully: Orange on his way to exile, to wait for better times; Egmont choosing to remain and trust the faith of King Philip, and the favour of the terrible Duke of Alva. Together they had striven for the liberty of their country, through years of conflict and vicissitude. They were friends and true comrades. "My love for you has struck such deep root into my heart, that it can be lessened by no distance of time or place," were William's words to Egmont. Yet they differed widely in character and aim. Egmont, the child of impulse, generous and well-meaning, but vain and weak, had no settled principle to guide his footsteps; while Orange, with his powerful mind and honest true heart, faithfully followed the guidance of conscience, and his was the path of the just, shining more and more unto the perfect day. Vainly now had he urged Egmont to share his exile; vainly reminded him of the promises of Philip, so often broken; vainly urged the relentless nature of Alva; vainly spoken of the vengeance he was sent by his master to execute upon all friends of the people and enemies of the Inquisition. No; Egmont had received the most flattering assurances of favour both from His Catholic Majesty himself, and from the Duke of Alva. Could he be so base as to distrust his sovereign? Let Orange do as he pleased, he at least would remain. "Confide then, if it must be so," Orange said at last, as they parted with tears and embraces not unworthy of their manhood in that hour of supreme emotion. "But the King's clemency, in which you trust, will be your ruin. Would that I might be deceived, but I foresee too clearly that you are to be the bridge which the Spaniards will destroy as soon as they have passed over it to invade our country." Did Egmont recall those mournful words, when he bowed his stately head on the scaffold amidst a nation's tears, the victim of Philip's treachery and of his own too generous credulity?-while Orange, who foresaw the evil and hid himself, lived to deliver his country from a horrible tyranny, and to leave a name dear to Holland, to liberty, to Protestantism, to humanity, the honoured name of "Father William," the founder of the Dutch Republic. If the foresight which sees and avoids the evil is good even in temporal matters, how much more when eternal interests are at stake? THE DISCIPLINE OF SOLITUDE. it is not THAT good for man to be alone is an utterance of Divine wisdom that history and the general experience of humanity fully endorse. For a man permanently and entirely to separate himself from his fellow creatures and retire into solitude is to cut himself off from all those influences which nature demands for the purposes of growth and development, and which Providence has designed for his education and discipline. A state of solitude resorted to, as monks and hermits have resorted to it, is an unwholesome, because an unnatural, condition of life. It is a shirking of responsibility, an abandonment of the path of duty, a shameful and selfish retreat from the battlefield of life, and not infrequently has resulted in the degradation of the man to the level of the brute. The condition of the solitary recluse in cave or cloister has often proved to be the condition of the stagnant pool with its slime and filth and loathsome reptile life, breeding pestilence as it dwindles from day to day; whereas God designed it to be the rippling river, full of movement, ever progressing, and fraught with blessing and beauty and increase as it rolls on its widening course to the great ocean. Emphatically it is not good for man to be alone as the permanent condition of his life; but just as emphatically it may be affirmed that it is not good for a man to be ever in a crowd-to be always in a turmoil of activity and effort, to be never alone with his own heart and the great Spirit of God. Just as emphatically it may be asserted that all human experience and the history of all great lives, so far as these histories have thrown any light on the point, go to prove the immense advantage, if not the absolute necessity, of an occasional retirement from the world, a withdrawal into silence and solitude and self-communion alone. Even among the world's heroes there have been many who seem to have acquired their impulse and impetus in loneliness and silence; not necessarily withdrawing from society for any length of time, their circumstances often forbade that, but in such silence and solitude as they found practicable. "I and my bosom must debate awhile," says Shakespeare's King Henry V. on the eve of Agincourt, "And then I would no other company." And thus it has been with many a hero who felt the need of nerving his heart for action. That terrible warrior, the Sultan Bajazet, who for fourteen. years kept all Europe and a great part of Asia in a state of anxiety and alarm, and who did so much for the institution of the Turkish power in both continents, would sit silent and alone for days, and then come forth, and with a swiftness and impetuosity that gained for him the surname of "the lightning," would swoop down upon the enemy, victorious everywhere. We have a Julius Cæsar retiring by night into the seclusion of his tent, to review and record the events of the day; a Brutus found in studious solitude on the eve of the battle of Pharsalia; an Alexander frequently retiring for reflection and reading; a Napoleon Buonaparte, of whom his biographers say that as a boy his favourite way of spending a holiday was to take a small brass cannon, and retire by himself to a lonely summerhouse among the rocks on the sea-shore near Ajaccio. As a boy he was naturally given to solitude, and as a youth he was reserved and proud, had few friends, and lived much by himself with his books and maps, "a poor, solitary alien," as one of his biographers expresses it. It was in the retirement of Sans Souci that Frederick the Great was wont to shape his plans, "disclosing," says Carlyle, "the inborn proclivity he had to retirement, to study and reflection, as the chosen element of human life." And it is said to have been in the silence and solitude of a lofty mountain that he first conceived the idea of conquering Silesia. Men of every shade of character and famous for every kind of achievement have at some time or other in their careers felt the kindling power of solitude. It was in the woods and wilds of Somersetshire that Alfred the Great had to be disciplined and schooled for that noble career which was to save his country and hand down his name honoured and revered to all time; and it was in the gloom and seclusion of a cave at Mecca that Mohammed pondered that daring imposture the birth of which marked an era in history. It was in the retirement of a subterranean study, we are told, and on the lonely sea-shore, that Demosthenes became the greatest orator of ancient times; and it was in the solitude of summer fields at Daylesford that Warren Hastings dreamed of famous deeds of honour and of wealth that should one day buy back his ancestral estate. Virgil and Horace, Rousseau and Voltaire, Plato and Pliny, Aristotle, Leibnitz, Mendelssohn, Turner, Montesquieu, Descartes, Adam Smith, and a host of others as well known, have either testified to the value of solitude as a source of power, or have practically expressed their appreciation of it by their personal example. Indeed, it would be almost safe to affirm, though we have not always positive evidence on the point, that no man has ever risen to the full height of his power, has ever conceived great designs, accomplished great purposes, or attained great influence, either for good or evil, without having kindled his spirit and nerved his arm in loneliness and silence. THE DISCIPLINE OF SOLITUDE. This is true of the world's great men; it is emphatically true of the servants of God. It was under the star-lit skies of Mamre that Abraham acquired that confidence in the wisdom and goodness of God through which he was afterwards known as the father of the faithful. It was from a desert life that Moses was called forth to wrest a nation from slavery, and to lead that nation forth and guide and rule them. It was from mountain caves and forest deeps that Elijah every now and again came mysteriously forth, clad round about with a spiritual power, in the presence of which kings trembled and at whose behest fire fell from heaven. It was in the solitude of the Isle of Patmos that the venerable apostle had opened up to him the Apocalyptic visions; it was from the wilderness that John the Baptist came forth to preach and to die. And it is lawful to refer to the precepts and to the example of the Divine master. It was to the lonely sea-shore and the wilderness, and to Gethsemane by night that our Redeemer himself withdrew in the more strenuous passes of that strange spiritual struggle which came to a triumphant close on Calvary. "Cold mountains and the midnight air Witnessed the fervour of His prayer." From those days to these solitude and silence have ever been important factors in the spiritual education of all the truly great and good. It was only after a life-time largely made up of banishment into exile and rigorous confinement that the fearless and fiery John Knox threw himself into the great work of the Reformation in Scotland. For months before actually embarking on that perilous and arduous enterprise, we find him wandering day by day in solitary meditation on the sea-shore at Dieppe. He faltered and doubted and hesitated, and in solitude he knit his soul together, and shook a kingdom from end to end. It was, as every one knows, in Bedford gaol that Bunyan wrote his immortal allegory, and from which he emerged in far greater power for usefulness than when he went in. "It was in the Bastille that I first became acquainted with myself," is the testimony of the brilliant Madame de Staël, a woman who began life an ardent admirer of Rousseau and his principles, and breathed her last calling on the name of the Saviour, in whom she had long learnt to trust. It was from a dreary desert in Syria, whither he had withdrawn from persecution, that the learned Jerome came forth with a fervid eloquence and a burning enthusiasm that stirred and aroused the civilised world; and it was from solitary retirement that St. Francis Assisi came before Pope Innocent III. with his project for a new order-a project which infused centuries of renewed vitality to a church fast settling down in corruption and death. It was in solitude, again, that Baxter found it easiest to lay bare his soul to the quickening power of the Spirit of God. "I am more and more pleased with a solitary life," he wrote towards the close of his career; "and though in the way of self-denial I could submit to the most public life for the service of God when He requireth it, and would not be unprofitable that I might be private, yet I must confess it is much more pleasing to myself to be retired from the world, and to have very little to do with men, and to converse with God and conscience and good books." Dr. Bates writes of him: "He lived above 59 the sensible world, and in solitude and silence conversed with God." Even those whose lives, from their intense activity, seem scarcely to have afforded any scope for meditation in solitude have nevertheless probably been much indebted to it if all the facts of their lives were made known. Who would think of solitary retirement as, next to prayer, the great source of John Wesley's spiritual power and enthusiasm? But John Wesley often spent ten hours a day shut up by himself in his travelling-carriage. Whitefield's travels, again, "were prodigious," says his biographer, “ when the roads and conveyances of his times are considered. Fourteen times did he visit Scotland. Seven times did he cross the Atlantic backward and forward. Twice he went over to Ireland. As to England and Wales, he traversed every county in them, from the Isle of Wight to Berwick-on-Tweed, and from the Land's End to the North Foreland." A short period in stillness and loneliness has been for many and many a man a refreshment of the soul, a gathering up of the faculties and an accumulation of power. In the vast system of subterranean channels. running under the streets of London there are here and there appliances for damming up the water, which, arrested in its hurried, impetuous rush, silently accumulates and gathers itself together till presently the channel is opened and the vast body of it goes thundering and surging on its way, clearing everything before it. So it has often seemed to be with men of spiritual power. But solitude has often exerted an influence of quite another kind, though it may be an influence of no less importance in the order of an all-wise Providence. Who has not often pondered over that striking incident in the career of Martin Luther when he was spirited away and immured in the fortress of the Wartburg? From the brilliant theatre of Worms the bold and dauntless reformer was returning unscathed and virtually triumphant "He might well have been," as D'Aubigné says, " on the brink of an abyss into which a little giddiness would have sufficed to precipitate him." "Some of the earliest actors in this reformation," says this writer, "both in Germany and Switzerland, made shipwreck of themselves by running on the rocks of spiritual pride and fanaticism. Now Luther was a man very subject to the weaknesses of our nature, and he was unable to shun the dangers entirely. Meanwhile the hand of God rescued him from them for a time, by suddenly removing him from intoxicating ovations, and by casting him into the obscurity of a retreat unknown to all men. While there his soul drew near to God, and concentrated his thoughts within itself; then it was plunged again in the waters of adversity; his sufferings and his humiliations constrained him to sojourn for some time at least with the humble, and the principles of the Christian life from that time forward developed themselves more vigorously and freely in his soul." In the whirl and turmoil of this busy world we are most of us at times drawing near to the edge of an abyss, and we need to look well about us. We are often floundering amid forces the direction and full power of which we do not at all times recognize, and we need sometimes to "climb on to a rock from which we may contemplate the whirl of the eddying floods," as somebody says, "in rest and security." The record of Luther's experience in the Wartburg, however, suggests a warning that is enforced God to which others have not perhaps the same near access. There, instead of realising the presence of the Holy One, the professing worshipper thinks only of his own vain self as compared with other men, and drawing matter for self-congratulation even from the goodness which God has shown him, and a sense of which ought to have humbled him in the dust, he turns on his fellow-worshippers with the proud and vain words, "Stand by thyself, come not near me; I am holier than thou!" by tens of thousands of illustrations elsewhere. | privilege, and brought as it were into the Temple of Against his will and in opposition to his judgment, Luther remained a prisoner in the Wartburg long after solitude had done what could be done by solitude to lay before him the spiritual perils amid which he stood, and everybody has heard how he was harassed by the devil who, as he believed, appeared to him in his cell. Solitude undoubtedly has its peculiar dangers, and none are more earnest in their warnings than the very men who have been most emphatic in their opinions as to the advantages of it. We have heard what Baxter says of retirement; but Baxter elsewhere warns very distinctly against what he calls "unnecessary solitude," against anything like living in solitude. "Considering how dark and partial we are," he says, " and how heedless we are of ourselves, and with what difficulty we get or maintain acquaintance with our hearts, we so much the more need the eyes of others. Even an enemy's eye may be useful though malicious; and may do us good, while it intends evil." Bernard again says, "An evil which none sees none reproves; and when there is no fear of being reproved the tempter will be the more bold; and sin will be practised with less hesitation." The truth seems to be that the same mysterious influences of silence and solitude, and, it may be, the companionship of nature, which lay a human heart open to holy and divine impulses, lay it open, also, to the instigations of the devil, and hence it has often been found, as St. Chrysostom declared, that solitude was the cover of all vices. Occasionally, as your soul seems to need it, commune with your own soul and be still. An occasional retirement may purify and strengthen and elevate the soul. But take up your permanent station in selfish solitude, and ten to one but you sink into an idle dreamer, a pitiful embodiment of error and superstition, or, it may become a confirmed lunatic. "A people Sabbath Thoughts. SPIRITUAL VANITY. which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou."-Isa. lxv. 5. AMONG the charges brought by the Lord against the "rebellious people," whom He had so highly favoured, and with whom He was so justly angry, this is one of the most serious and most odious, that they were filled with contempt for others and puffed up with vain conceit of themselves. Instead of being humbled by the thought of the poor returns they had made for God's distinguishing mercies, they thought of those mercies as an occasion of pride and scorned others less favoured. This is the very spirit of the Pharisee as he stood in the Temple, and dared to say to the heart-searching Lord of that place, "God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men!" It is a spirit equally rebuked by the Saviour in the New Testament, and by the Prophets in the Old; because it is a spirit in the highest degree offensive to God, and yet but too natural to the vain heart of man when placed in a position of Let us each take the rebuke and the warning home to ourselves, and watch against the faintest indication of that Pharisee spirit, so odious to God, so unjust to men, so deceitful to our own hearts. If we feel aright the great goodness of God in bringing us into His temple, which is the church of Christ, we ought to feel deeply and truly ashamed that we have done so little for his glory, have served Him so feebly, have been such unprofitable servants to such a Master. There are those whom the Pharisee despises, who would have served God very differently had they been favoured with the same advantages, and whose service even now, from the outer court of the Gentiles, comes up to God undefiled with that spirit of pride which mars all the worship of the self-righteous man. With such a man God will reckon. He marks the secrets of the heart, and that spiritual pride, which, though offensive, is not punishable by man, is "written before" God with the awful warning, "I will recompense, even recompense into their bosom " (v. 6). I Hidden Life. STOOD by her quiet grave in May, And drooping boughs of laburnum gold My tears fell fast on the fragrant sod- I stood by the peaceful grave again, I stood by her grave in early spring, |