happiness. In the pursuit of wealth, in dissipations worldly or religious, in excitements of a harmful or a harmless nature, he ever seeks escape from his most dreaded self, till all the seeking ends in "Vanity of vanities!" or, "Father, I have sinned."

Not so does the beneficent moralist desire that man should escape from individual self-concern and merge himself in the whole. Rather by those attractions which nature offers in his birth-place, and around his own hearth, does he hope that man may be led out of himself, while at the fire of domestic love he trusts that a torch may be kindled to warm, if not to light, the world. This is not always found to be the case: much of the love that begins at home ends there.

"What matter if it does? A world of happy homes would be a happy world." Of happy homes? Has nature, then-the wise, as well as bountiful-planted no thorns inside these cosy nests, thorns which the purest love cannot remove?

Each member of each family has a public as well as a private nature. Elective affinities do not run hand in hand with family ties; and, were it otherwise, the one great foe would only be more

dreaded. The power of death is greatest in the family. There he leaves—

"bitter memories to make

The whole earth blasted for the loved one's sake :"

and those will never envy the joy a mother has had in possession, who can fathom her grief in loss.

There are persons, however, born lovers of their kind, benefactors by nature, who, it is hoped, will fan the spark of philanthropy in others to a flame. Aye, but "their love afar is sometimes spite at home."

Who can forget the picture, drawn by Carlyle, of the elder Mirabeau, "The Friend of Men," sitting lonely by his own hearth, several members of his family being in prison by his order? Let us not "call him hypocrite," but accept Carlyle's most merciful extenuation, and allow that "it is much easier to love men on paper" in the next generation-or even in the next street, than " Jack and Kit, near at hand," with their " great greed and little faculty," their tyrannies and perversities. Only-we have to live with Jack and Kit, and need a motive for forbearance.

B

Where philanthropy has been genuine and enlightened, how often do we hear laments something like those of the good Pestalozzi: "I see it is not in the power of man to help his fellow-man." If not against English law-it would seem to be against Nature's law-to do men good against their wills. The philanthropist too often has to be "satisfied from himself." To save men from the consequences of their actions, to "draw them out of themselves," or "to bring society to bear upon them"-each of these is man's way of trying to restore his fellow-man.

But they are not God's ways. "Nature pardons no mistakes." "The soul that forsakes its better knowledge must suffer ;"* and it is in suffering and in solitude, often, that a man at last "comes to himself." Then, all his thoughts centre in "his Father's house," for "there is plenty;" there "shall he find rest unto his soul." Then, all his sins are seen as "against his Father."

'Against thee, thee only, have I sinned;" that is the language of the true penitent. It does not betoken indifference to the sufferer from his

* Thorndale.

sins. No, but there is a point of view from which sin is seen to be the cause of all suffering; to be worse than all suffering; and the victim enviable beside the criminal who has wronged him. And this, not from the fear of punishment; no, but from the view of God's goodness, and of the glorious possibilities of a man's own nature.

The penitent may be a beneficent man. He now feels what, beyond all doing, he might have been to those nearest and dearest to him if but his own "heart had been clean;" his "spirit right." Such an one will often say, "They made me a keeper of the vineyards, but mine own have I not kept. "Restore unto me the joys of thy salvation." Uphold me with thy free Spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee."

Yes, once in his Father's house, not as a servant, but a son, he needs "must be about his Father's business," which is to bless, to serve the world. He feels a dignity unknown before, for is he not "of the party and interest of the universe," against his own sins, against all sin? He can work hopefully. The God in whom he has a loving trust he can rely on, for the care and good keeping of His

own world. Ingratitude, hesitation, may hinder, but they do not dishearten him; "his reward is with him, and his work before him.' "He finds the end of the journey in every step of the road."* So does―

"Each individual man,

Remain an Adam to the general race,
Constrain❜d to see, like Adam, that he keep
His personal state's condition honestly,

Or vain all thoughts of his to help the world." +

That self-love should be the strongest passion in our nature, and that it should find no rest for the sole of its foot, until it find its home in God; that there, as "child of the Father in Heaven,” it inclines to be "good to the just and the unjust, kind to the evil and unthankful," I take to be a utilitarian scheme, more motived and insured than any of man's devising.

"The joy that is sweetest

Lurks in stings of remorse."‡

And this is why the Gospel of repentance can make its way into the heart of man, where it will