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flexible enough to sing a song of hope to the heavy hearts of sorrowing men. No withered unconcern, no dead exactitude, is fitted for a life like ours,—a life full of free elements, related not merely to the punctualities of material nature, but to the heaving passions of living men ;- -a life strewed with various sorrows and full of struggling nobleness, where no open ear is ever far from the curse, the sigh, the prayer;-a life of outward heats and inward thirst, that no sleeping millpond can keep clear and fresh, but only the running waters of the pure soul descending from the upland wilds. Neither in the human nor in the Divine existence does the most faultless uniformity in itself constitute perfection.

But there is something far other than this in God. He is not only the Author of Nature; he is also our "Father in Heaven." Above and around all his action in the physical creation there lies a diviner and a tenderer realm, an infinite circumambient space of his mind, that does not act on matter but is only present with spirits, and whose transcendent nature we can only express by saying that here he is "in Heaven"; -not on the earth, not in the planets, not with the sun, though the place and orbits of them all are in the natural sky; but out of the whole astronomic realm, in a præternatural sphere, more beautiful and glorious than any where bounden law and rigorous necessity prevail. However vast and majestic the uniformities

of nature, they are nevertheless finite: science counts them, one by one; and completed science would count them all. God however is not finite: he lives out beyond the legislation he has made; and his thought, which defines the rules of matter does not trans-migrate into them and cease else-how to be; but merely flings out the law as an emanating act, and himself abides behind as thinking power,-an eternal Spirit with a boundless inner life still unexpressed. In this silent ocean of his being,—this transcending spiritual sphere of his life, dwells the remaining element of the perfection which we seek. It is an all-embracing Love, an inexhaustible holiness, an eternal pity, an immeasurable freedom of affection, whence all the regularities of his will spring forth, and which leaves enough behind to visit the private wants of every soul, to linger with tenderness near every sorrow, to be present with rescue in every temptation. This it is that is the real ground of our trust and love: God is not merely the power of nature, but the Father of spirits: his resources are not spent and used up in the legislation of the physical universe, but are large enough to overflow freely and copiously into the spirits that are in the likeness of himself. Hence, without violated rule, without breach of pledge, he can individualize his regards, enter with his gentle help into every mind, and while keeping faith with the universe, knock at the gate of every lonely heart. Stupendous as may be the network of determinate

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law, with threads fastened on every world and continuous through all kosmic ages, there is room enough in the interstices for the free play of the Spirit that passeth where it listeth, for the movements of an everlasting moral life amid the natural,-and all the swift pulses of Divine affection. It is precisely in the union of these two, a customary order he will not loose, a free Spirit he will not bind,-that he is perfect in himself and open to near communion as well as distant trust.

And if it is with this perfection that we are to be perfect, how clear becomes the type of our highest good! and how truly it speaks to our purest aspirations! An imperturbable Order penetrated with an ever-fresh and pliant Love,-is not that the very balance we need, to bring the conscience to repose? First, like God, to reclaim the wild spaces of our life, to reduce its chaos of possibilities, to divide it into times and seasons, and tell each punctual duty when to rise; to organise a scheme of faithful habits, against which impulse shall dash in vain, and within whose barriers the waters shall lie safe and still; to be accurately reliable and true, to begin no cycle we do not maintain, and of all the lights we hang aloft to see that "not one faileth";—is to vindicate our affinity with the creative method of his mind. But then there is a higher kindred with him, the kindred of the spirit, yet to claim. Through all the inexorabilities of habit the living breath of every

gracious affection must flow at its own sweet will: around the rocky fixtures of resolve, the tides of a great heart must freely dash and sweep. If once we allow the method and mechanism of our being to stiffen on us and shut us in; if in the rigour of our duty we have no love to spare; if, within our rules of justice, pity cannot stir; if toiling day by day in our field of patient work, we forget what it is to mingle with the beauty of the world, to wonder at the mystery of life, or sink into the meaning of death and sorrow;we become what the universe would be without a God, a fatalised organism, in servile bondage to its own lowest forces, transcended and wielded by no Diviner Soul. From this uttermost blight no trustful disciple shall seek deliverance in vain. Let him but keep close to the fountains of living inspiration, and the spring will not run dry. Let him go even to the task-work of action in the spirit, not of egotistic mastery, but of reverent obedience, and it will bring no withering to his heart. Let him keep his thought and faith in sympathy with both sides of this great world, which manifests the life of God,-its everlasting ways,—its ever living spirit; and he shall renew his strength like the eagle's; he shall blend the ground-note of constant duty with the sweet and running melody of an evervarying love; and by the harmony of opposites, become at length "perfect as the Father in Heaven is perfect."

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VII.

The Moral Quality of Faith.

2 TIMOTHY i. 5.

66 (When) I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee; which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded in thee also."

IT is not often that the old Reformer, preparing to quit the scene of his labours, bequeaths to his young successor such parting counsels as those of Paul to Timothy. The usual product of experience, especially of an experience gained in attempting a great moral revolution, is a certain caution and lowering of hope: and when, looking back upon the past, the spent enthusiast measures the smallness of his achievements by the splendour of his early projects, he is tempted to regret the magnitude of his aims, and to advise for the future a zeal too temperate to live through the frosts of circumstance. Towards the end of life, the precepts which most naturally flow from our lips express themselves in negatives: we warn the fresh aspirant not to

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