difference in the value attached to it by its different proprietors? Yes; it is a very different thing to him who has got it by work to what it is to him who has fallen into possession of it without any labour or anxiety.

II. IT APPLIES TO SOCIAL POSITION. One man is born to social influence; he becomes the centre of an influential circle, and gets a position of extensive power, with no effort but that which is involved in a small amount of mental culture. He is a country squire; he is a member of Parliament; he is a peer of the realm; and all rather by what is called fortune than by anxious and persevering toil. The other man gets to such positions by long years of arduous and indefatigable labour. Are these positions of the same value? To the eyes of the world they are of the same worth, but to these men they are vastly different things.

III. IT APPLIES TO CIVIL LIBERTY. Civil liberty 18 AN INVALUABLE POSSESSION. It is the grandest theme of political philosophy; it is the ideal of patriotic poetry; it is the goal in the race of nations. But what a different thing it is to the men, who have just won it by struggle, bloodshed, and sacrifice, to what it is to those who, like us, the modern men of England, have come into it as an inheritance!

IV. IT APPLIES TO RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGES. To have the right to form our own religious convictions, and to express them freely and fully; to worship our own God in our own way, what a priceless boon is this! Yet do we value it as those who gained it after long years of persecution and battle? Thus it is that labour enhances the value of our possessions. "Weave, brothers, weave! Toil is ours; But toil is the lot of man;

One gathers the fruits, one gathers the flowers,

One soweth the seed again! There is not a creature from England's king

To the peasant that delves the soil, That knows half the pleasure the seasons bring,

If he have not his share of toil." BARRY CORNWALL.

THE TRUE PATHWAY OF SOULS.

"In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death."-Prov. xii. 25.

THE life of souls is a journey beginning at the first voluntary thought, and running on from stage to stage through interminable ages. Wonderful pilgrimage is the pilgrimage of souls! What is the true pathway of souls? This is the grand question of being.

I. IT IS A RIGHTEOUS PATHWAY. The way of righteousness." What is the righteous way? The way that the righteous God has marked out. Nothing can be more axiomatic than this, that the path that the great Proprietor and Creator of souls has marked out is the right path, and the only right path. The path of "righteousness" is, First: The path in which His character is the supreme attraction of souls. In the true pathway all the affections of the soul run after Him as rivers to the ocean. He is always the grand object before the eye, filling the horizon, and brightening all the scenes through which they pass. Secondly: His will is the supreme rule. Wherever that will lead is the path of righteousness. His will is revealed in different forms of expressions. For example: "This is the will of God, that ye believe on his Son." Again: "This is the will of God, even your sanctification."

The true pathway of souls isII. A BLESSED PATHWAY. In the way of righteousness is life;

and in the pathway thereof is no death.

First: In this pathway is life. The highest-mental-social, and religious life. Secondly: In this pathway is life only. "There is no death." No death of any kind, no decay of faculties, no waning of hopes, no wreck of purposes, no loss of friendships. Each traveller steps on in the buoyant energy of immortal youth through lovely Edens of unfading life.

THE TEACHABLE AND THE UNTEACHABLE SON.

"A wise son heareth his father's instruction: but a seorner heareth not rebuke."-Prov. xiii. 1.

I. THE TEACHABLE SON. "A wise son heareth his father's instruction." Solomon, of course, supposes that the father is what a father ought to be. There are men sustaining the paternal relationship who can scarcely be called fathers. They have not the fatherly instincts, the fatherly love, the fatherly wisdom, the fatherly royalty. A son would scarcely be wise in listening to men of this class. When we are commanded to honour our father, and to honour the king, it is always supposed that the father and the king are honour-worthy, and realize, to some extent, the ideal of the relationship. He who attends to the instruction of a father, Solomon says, is wise. He is wise, First: Because he attends to the Divine condition of human improvement. The Creator has ordained that the rising generation should get its wisdom from the teachings of its parents. It is by generations learning of its predecessors, that the race advances. Secondly: Because he gratifies the heart of his best earthly friend. The counsels of a true father are always sincere, dictated by the truest love, and intended

to serve the interests of his children, and nothing is more gratifying to his paternal nature than to see them rightly attended to.

II. THE UNTEACHABLE SON. A scorner heareth not rebuke." Scorn is derision, contempt, and may be directed either to a person or a thing. It is not necessarily a wrong state of mind, its moral character, good or otherwise, depends upon the person or thing to which it is directed. Some persons justly merit derision; some things merit contempt. A son who scorns either the person or the counsels of his father, is not in a state of mind to hear rebuke -he is unteachable. The son who has got to scorn the character and counsels of a worthy father has reached the last degree of depravity, and passed beyond the pale of parental instruction:"The sport of ridicule and of detraction Turns every virtue to its bordering fault,

And never gives to Truth and Merit that Which simpleness and true desert should purchase. SHAKESPEARE.

we have, First: The self-profiting in speech. "A man shall eat good by the fruit of his mouth." The speech of a good man which is enlightened, truthful, pure, generous, is of service to himself in many ways. By it :-(1.) He promotes the development his own spritual being. (2.) He gratifies his own moral nature. (3.) He produces in hearers results which are delightful to his own observation; thus "he eats good by the fruit of his mouth." Here

of

First Controlled speech may be useful. "He that keepeth his mouth, keepeth his life." The tongue is a member that requires controlling. Passion and impulse are constantly stimulating it to action. Hence the importance of it being properly "bridled;" held firmly by the reins of reason. Secondly: Reckless speech may be dangerous. "He that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction." Who can tell the evils that a lawless tongue has done in the world? One spark from it has often kindled conflagrations. (James iii. 8, 9.) "If any man among you seemeth to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain." "Give

not thy tongue," says Quarles, "too great a liberty, lest it take thee prisoner. A word unspoken is, like the sword in the scabbard, thine; if vented, thy sword is in another's hand. If thou desire to be held wise, be so wise as to hold thy tongue." "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips!"

SOUL CRAVING.

"The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat." - Prov. xiii. 4.

These words suggest.

I. THAT SOUL CRAVING IS COMMON TO ALL. Both the soul of the sluggard and the diligent

"desire." Souls have a hunger as well as bodies, and the hunger of the soul is a much more serious thing. You may see physical hunger depicted in the wretched looks of those who crowd the alleys of St. Giles, and you may see the hunger of souls depicted on the faces of those that roll in their chariots of opulence through Rotten-row. What is the ennui that makes miserable the rich but the unsatisfied hunger of the soul. First: The hunger of the soul as well as the hunger of the body im plies the existence of food somewhere. Secondly: The unsatisfied hunger of the soul as well as the body is painful and ruinous.

II. SOUL CRAVING CAN BE ALLAYED ONLY BY LABOUR. "The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat." Charity, or accident, or fortune may allay the physical hunger of man, may make fat even the sluggard's body; but personal labour, diligent effort, is essential to allay the hunger of the soul. Men must labour before they can get the soul's true bread. There must be the sowing, the cultur ing, the reaping, and the threshing by the individual man in order to get hold of that bread which can make fat the soul. Spiritually, I cannot live on the produce of other men.

MORAL TRUTHFULNESS. "A righteous man hateth lying: but a wicked man is loathsome, and cometh to shame. Righteousness keepeth him that is upright in the way: but wickedness overthroweth the sinner."-Prov. xiii. 5, 6.

I. MORAL TRUTHFULNESS IS AN INSTINCT TO THE RIGHTEOUS. "A righteous man hateth lying." A soul that has been made right in relation to the laws of its own spiritual being to the universe and to God, has an instinctive

repugnance to falsehood. A righthearted man cannot be false in speech or life. "He hates lying." The prayer of his soul is, "Remove me from the way of lying! and grant me thy law graciously." (Psalm cxix. 29.)

II. MORAL TRUTHFULNESS IS A SAFEGUARD AGAINST EVIL. The evils specified in these two verses in connection with the wicked must be regarded as kept off from the righteous by his moral truthfulness. This, indeed, seems implied. What are the evils here implied connected with falsehood? First: Loathsomeness. “A wicked man is loathsome." A liar is an unlovely and an unloveable object; he is detestable; he attracts none; he repels all. Secondly: Shame.

He "cometh to shame." A liar either in lip, or life, or both, must come to shame. A rigorous destiny will strip off his mask, and leave him exposed, a hideous hypocrite, to the scorn of men and angels. Thirdly: Destruction. "Wickedness overthroweth the sinner." Inevitable destruction is the doom of the false. They have built their houses on the sand of fiction, and the storms of reality will lay them in ruins.

From all these evils, moral truthfulness guards the righteous. His truthfulness guards him against the loathsome, the disgraceful, and the ruinous :

"An honest man's the noblest work of God." POPE.

THE GREAT PROPITIATION.

Replicant. In answer to Querist No. 16, p. 352, Vol. XVII., and continued from p. 56, Vol. XX.

A further note on the explanation of the atonement of Christ by the theory of debt.

Calvinists are very partial to this theory. The difference, according to their theory, between saint and sinner, saved and lost, is that the account of the one is cancelled, settled, or paid by the surety, and the other's debt remains undischarged, and hence his punish