special purpose, by God Himself. The grand and concluding object is that by this reciprocal communication of one another's individuality there shall be a more consummately beautiful adaptation of each for the heavenly kingdom to which we are all hastening; and anything in "education" that tends to mar or interfere with the accomplishment of this must needs be intrinsically wrong. Let us remember at this point, and before going further, that man is essentially a spiritual being. Ordinarily, men are supposed to be masculine, and women to be feminine, in their respective characters, and in the moral actions resulting therefrom, because of their respective animal structure. Not so. Like many another current doctrine, born of the illusions of the physical senses, this one of the body possessing the soul, influencing it, and even governing it, as many people suppose it does, exactly reverses the genuine truth. So far from being an adjunct, a shapeless something composed of attributes, the soul is the man himself. The unvarying and manifold testimony of Scripture, the conclusion of all sound philosophy, is that the outward or organic body is as much an expression and result of the soul within as any of the actions which it instrumentally performs. Man is corporeally what we find him-energetic and robust; woman is what we find her-comely and delicate-because of the operation of the constructive forces that inhere in the spiritual fabric within-a fabric not visible to the eye, nevertheless veritable, and qualified to endure for ever. "There is a natural body," says the apostle, "and there is a spiritual body." By "spiritual body" he plainly means a body altogether different from the natural or material one-that which the vulgar consider to be the all-in-all; and by speaking of both in the present tense-saying of each that it now is he gives us to understand that the two bodies are contemporaneous and coexistent, so long, that is, as the natural one may endure. By adding that it is to be "raised" he intimates that this spiritual body is the immortal portion of our present twofold being, and logically implies, at the same time, as a corollary, that the natural or material body will not be raised. How finely this great truth of the spiritual body, and of its being man himself, instead of an aëriform appendage to man, is recognised by the men of penetrative thought! "This spirit" (of man), says Lord Bacon, "of which we speak, is not from virtue, or energy, or act, or a trifle, but plainly a body, rare and invisible, notwithstanding circumscribed by place, quantitative, real." So in Shakspere, when Viola, in "Twelfth Night," asks Sebastian if he is "a spirit:"— 66 "A spirit I am indeed, But am in that dimension grossly clad Which from the womb I did participate.' The soul, in a word, exists in the material or natural body, as God exists in the universe-everywhere and nowhere: everywhere for the enlightened intellect, ruling all and shaping all; nowhere for the physical view, and never to be unveiled to it. The spiritual body animates and suffuses the whole, operating as it were architecturally, and with an art that is exquisite in every circumstance and particular. It is out of the surgeon's reach, because formed not of material substance but of spiritual; and as old Nicholas Mosley says (1653), Though it filleth the whole body, yet it taketh up no room in the body; and if the body decease, if any member be cut off, or wither, the soul is not diminished, only ceaseth to be in that member it was before, and that without any hurt or blemish to itself.” Hence if we want to learn what the soul is, or is like, in respect of any of its superb realities, all we have to do is to contemplate the living and moving beauty of a human figure (using the phrase in the accustomed physical sense) when holding the ripeness and perfection of form and quality primarily designed by God for all His creatures. A thousand familiar facts illustrate and confirm this great principle of creation. man's deportment and language at once declare his tastes; we learn what he is "made of" by his manners and his adjectives; we are informed as to every specialty of his nature and temperament by the way in which, as it is instinctively said, in a familiar metaphor, he "shapes." It is a principle, in short, of all sound speculative philosophy, one borne out by all sound natural science, that there is an invisible mental cause for everything that we see with our eyes. Cause and effect, forces and phenomena, must needs therefore always correspond and be conterminous, the outward being the expression of the inward. People who have studied the matter are able to say from the appearance of a man even what profession he probably follows. Physiognomy and phrenology depend upon similar observations. Sex, the outward and physical sex, which is popularly supposed to be the cause instead of the result, cannot be an exception to a rule apparently absolute. How it comes that men and women with handsome souls are not infrequently possessed of insignificant terrestrial Compare the sublime passage in the "Merchant of Venice," which ends * with "But while this muddy vesture of decay bodies, and that beautiful corporeal outlines often accompany a bad and despicable spirit, are questions to be resolved from another platform, the material world having conditions and laws of its own. Why do many acorns produce only wretched mockeries of trees instead of magnificent oaks, would have to be asked at the same time, and the reply to either question would serve for both. The consideration at present before us does not involve the matter referred to. It is the existence of material sex which we are now contemplating, and this, without question, has its interpretation in St. Paul's great doctrine of the spiritual body. A true and elevated philosophy of the sexes, whenever it may be arrived at, will certainly leave on one side all considerations based upon the phenomena of animal structure, dealing with them as secondary and illustrative, instead of allowing them to be, as commonly supposed, primary. The entire philosophy also of wise education, and of all that pertains to the history of manly and womanly deeds-deeds of love, nobleness, generosity, devotedness, faithfulness, succour, charity-will be found to depend likewise on the recognition of spiritual sex as the first, best, and most living of distinctions. The truest and sweetest pleasures of human society, the advancement of wisdom and virtue, the bringing into fragrant bloom of all that is loveliest in the human heart, alike call for the acceptance of this as the point to start from. So far, in the history of the world, the distinctions and capacities of the two sexes have been regarded only from the lower level of thought. Surely it is now time to contemplate them from the higher one. Viewed from this higher level, the sexes do not present any radical inequality. When the respective powers and aptitudes of each are fairly balanced, there is certainly on the side of woman no radical inferiority. The relation, in truth, in which man and woman stand towards one another, as moral and intellectual beings, is like that which preserves the order and harmony of the solar system. Man is centrifugal, woman is centripetal. He looks abroad, and loves adventure; she, dreading derangement and disquiet, deeply imbued with the sentiment of veneration, a love of order and peace, maintains the idea of Home. That many women are naturally deficient in brain-power, as individuals, is no doubt quite true. How many of their "lords and masters" are equally deficient, and often far more deplorably so? And this, too, without possessing any compensatory heart-power. For when all is reckoned up, centrifugal and centripetal, the head and the heart, the intellect and the affections, mean much the same thing, and every one of the little living solar systems we call men and women is happily constituted in the degree that they are adjusted so as to work harmoniously. Men, who in past ages, taking advantage of their greater physical strength, have behaved so meanly and cruelly to women, have nothing to boast of that will outweigh what women have done. However lacking a woman may be in what is often so irrationally demanded of her as proof of merit and equality, a chaste and honourable one never fails to prove that she is what God created and intended her to be-man's best friend. (To be continued.) THE WORLD'S FUTURE. "Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh."-ISAIAH xxi. 11, 12. HOPE and faith are the noblest inspirations of finite intelligence. Not less justly than beautifully has it been said, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." But what is hope without faith-that heartfelt conviction of what is believed to be divinely true? The two are companion-angels in our fairest habitations. Absent, what a dull monotony is life! and how perplexing the coming course of our race ! Some dark, inevitable Power is assumed to rule the universe, equally indifferent to the sweet smile of innocence, the sleek artfulness of hypocrisy, and the bold effrontery of vice. "The thought would drive a stoic mad, And make a heathen blush." But what is this Weird Dominion? and who has ever "demonstrated" its existence? There is a strange blandishment in the isolated activity of the sensual faculty of thought. To magnify the nature of corporeal things by a brilliant phantasy, and to involve mental things by incredulity in the densest obscurity, has from the earliest times been the common tendency of mankind. 66 'Reasoning at every step he treads, But who shall fully describe 66 By what unseen and unsuspected arts The serpent Error twines round human hearts; Thus, a hundred years ago, sang a poet who despised every ornament of verse but what was beautiful from wisdom. What might he have uttered at this day, when moral perception is considered to be superseded by experimental demonstration! It is not so much from the words as the general tone of what is now written that the impression I have stated is derived. Sometimes, indeed, this blank philosophy is nakedly asserted. But the picture is more commonly thrown into the background, whilst matters of scientific interest take the more conspicuous part. If something of traditional belief is occasionally mingled in the sketch, the addition is looked upon by our more "advanced" alumni as a relic of super stition. To set against this spectral philosophy, which finds its gospel in the laboratory, the museum, and the dissecting-room, what ideas of the world's course do we find in the orthodox circles? Truly we encounter a somewhat motley spectacle; antiquated criticisms, vague and varying opinions, puerile conceits, hesitating theories, fanatical imaginations, which mystify the student, and seem to call forth little attention, or to excite incredulity and irreverence! The diverse sentiments which prevail touching the great teachings of the Scriptures, and notably of the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies, plunge the inquiring mind into a whirlpool, and leave the understanding prostrate. The Apocalypse, viewed from the sensational and contradictory expositions which abound, still remains a "book sealed with seven seals," the advocates mostly agreeing in hurling at each other's heads the denunciations with which the prophecy concludes. The region where light might be expected to break forth seems hardly less gloomy than where the sun has gone down. theologies there is much that critical the world has known, essential principles on which But although in past and present cannot bear the test of an age the most shall we indiscriminately root up the universal belief has rested for countless centuries, and rob the generations to come of the priceless consolations of a Divine Religion? Shall we ruthlessly obliterate a pure and sincere trust in an overruling Providence, and dash to the ground the bright hopes that in every age truth and virtue are immortal? It is a wild demand of an impossible school, and the common-sense of humanity recoils from it. Call mental and spiritual truths "poetical" -"metaphysical" bugbears-meteors in the air, having no real basis, no scientific value; this claptrap may succeed with thousands; yet the good sense of the world will rise up in indignation at the sophistry, |