where all the virtues may be learned and exemplified. Self-denial, patience, perseverance, integrity, justice, charity-in one word, love to God and love to man-are included in good work. Work is the Divine test by which all are ultimately tried. We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive the things done in the body, whether they be good or evil. This truth cannot be too strongly enforced, as opposed alike to the faith alone of the Protestant, or the piety alone of the Romish Church. Mr. Froude is a Bible student as well as an historian, and we are pleased to find him on the side of truly rational and spiritual religion.

A PRAYER

WRITTEN IN SEVERE AFFLICTION.

HEAR, Lord of love and light,
Once more our simple prayer.

Oh grant us grace to read Thy will aright
And strength to bear.

What though we cannot tell
The wherefore of this flood,

That billows o'er our heads, we know full well
The end is good.

'Tis not in anger sent,

But for some mercy's sake.

The bruised reed by tribulation bent
Thou wilt not break,

Nor quench the smouldering flax
Of our poor feeble faith:

Thy mercy ever gives and never takes
From him that hath.

So, Lord, increase our faith,
Anchored on Thee in heaven;

Fulfil the precious word, "to him that hath,
More shall be given."

And bid all faith result

In patience and sweet rest

On Thy wise love, which ever must consult
For what is best.

Then let this bitter cup

"If possible" pass on:

But if our souls' health need we drink it up,

Thy will be done!

A. T. R.

HYMNS.

I. PRAYER.

WHEN the clouds of life hang o'er us,
When the tempest rages high,
When our path is rough and weary,
To Thy refuge, Lord, we fly.
Fearful of the dangers round us,

Hopes and pleasures crushed to dust,
Driven by our sense of weakness,
In Thy mercy then we trust.

But we would at all times trust Thee-
In our joys as in our woes-
For our lives when all is fairest,
Oft are most beset with foes.

Make us pure in thought and feeling,
Heavenly wisdom may we know;
For Thy blessing, Lord, we ask Thee
On our efforts here below.

II. WORSHIP.

I FEEL my heart with rapture glow,
My voice shall sing Thy praise,
While from the depths of worldly care
I strive my soul to raise.

O Lord, Thy Word of life and power
Shall teach me how to live,

And from its inner fount of truth
More light and comfort give.

Before Thy throne I bow me down
In humble earnest prayer;

For faith and hope, for trust and love,
O Lord, my heart prepare.

I thank Thee for the mercies great
Thy Love to me has given,
The blessings round me on the earth,
But more that flow from heaven.

In this Thy temple I would strive
My soul from sin to free,
And learn how day by day I still
May nearer draw to Thee.

W. M. C.

* This noble passage may be thus rendered: The soul, well disciplined, cherishes hope in adverse times, and even in prosperity is mindful of reverse. Dread winter yields to the Divine bidding. And present trial will also pass away.

Fortitude and diligence, and self-control, and all that makes men good and great, cannot be purchased from professional educators. Charity is not the only quality which begins at home. It is throwing away money to spend a thousand a year on the teaching of three boys, if they are to return from school only to find the older members of their family intent on amusing themselves at any cost of time and trouble, or sacrificing self-respect in ignoble efforts to struggle into a social grade above their own. The child will never place his aims high and pursue them steadily, unless the parent has taught him what energy and elevation of purpose mean, not less by example than by precept.-LORD MACAULAY.

MIRACLES.

Miscellaneous.

his harmless toy. But all this wonderful, this boundless, power over One of the objections to Christianity material laws is gained by these laws. raised by modern scepticism is the per- He alters no property of matter, but he formance of miracles. The disclosures uses one property or another as he of modern science and the wide diffusion needs, and he uses one property to of scientific knowledge has rendered it overpower another." Into the extended impossible to adhere to the popular discussion and application of the printeaching that a miracle is a suspension ciples thus indicated our space forbids or violation of a law of nature. The us to enter. We can only give, somelaws of nature are the laws of creative what abridged, examples of his treatwisdom, and, like their Divine Author, ment of some of the miracles of the are uniform and unchanging in their Bible. Thus of the miracle of making nature and action. The belief in mira- the iron swim he writes: "If we were cles, therefore, can only be retained to hold a magnet of suitable power over by a deeper insight into their meaning the original heavy iron when at the and purpose and a clearer knowledge bottom of the water, we might see it of the method of their performance. A rise and float, although not touched or miracle, according to Swedenborg, is upheld by any visible substance, and not a violation of any law of nature, although its specific gravity remained but an extraordinary manifestation of constant. In this case it would be Divine power in and by the laws of moved by a power which overcomes nature. And this view is beginning to gravity, but there would be no creation dawn on other Christian teachers. In nor destruction of any property, and no the December number of the Contem- natural law would be broken. But if porary Review is an able article on now we substitute for 'magnetic Miracles, Prayer, and Law," by J. 'Divine' power, there is still no breach Boyd Kinnear, in which an effort is of a natural law, for no property is made to reconcile the two revelations of created or destroyed." So in regard to the Book of Nature and Divine Revela- the healing of diseases. "Many fevers, tion. Mr. Kinnear truly remarks: "It if the germ theory or the poison theory is not possible to abandon the convic- be correct, are cured when the germs tion that the works and the acts of God die, or the poison is eliminated. cannot really be at variance. Before power that could kill the germs, or surrendering His words contained in remove them or the poison from the the Scripture as either spurious or mis- system, would then effect immediate understood, no effort can be too often cure in accordance with natural laws. reiterated to show them to be com- It does not seem necessarily beyond patible with what we have learned of man's reach to effect this when he shall His works. The writer by laws under- understand natural laws more fully; it stands the properties of matter. "The cannot, therefore, be a breach of natural advantage of thus explaining law is that laws if God should effect it by laws as it excludes some other senses of a vague yet unknown to man, provided they are and misleading character, while it in- brought into play with no other agency cludes the sense in which alone law can than the motion of matter. properly be applied to physical nature;" and also embraces "all which the materialist can desire to include when he insists that law is permanent and unchangeable."

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Now it is obvious that man has enormous power over nature. "Despite the law of gravity, he ascends to the sky in a balloon; despite the resistless power of the thunderbolt, he tames electricity to be his servant or

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"It would be folly as well as impiety," continues Mr. Kinnear, 'to assert that it is in such ways only that miracles are performed. No such assertion is made. But when, on the other side, it is asserted that the miracles narrated in Scripture cannot be true because they must involve a breach of the immutable laws of nature, the answer is justifiable and is sufficient, that they do not necessarily involve