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love, we give to the man that to which he can always look back with hope, and use for the kindling of effort and aspiration. For the dim remembrance of their pure and powerful pleasure, the divinity within them, have virtue to recall us in after-life, when high feeling is dulled with the cares of this world, to loftier and better thoughts; to nourish and repair imagination when its edge is blunted by distress and doubt; to exalt the soul with hope, that though innocence is lost, yet goodness remains to be won; to tell us, in the midst of the transient and the perishable, that our life is hidden in God, and our spirit at home in immortality.

It is true that inimitable innocence and fearlessness, that perfect trust, that belief that nothing is impossible, that fresh and honest freedom, that divine joy, cannot be the blessing of the man. He has been driven out of Eden, and the swords wave for ever over the gate and forbid return. But there is a nobler paradise before us, the paradise of the soldier spirit which has fought with Christ against the evil, and finished the work which the Father has given him to do. There the spirit of the child shall be mingled with the power of the man, and we shall once more, but now with ennobled passion and educated energies, sing the songs of the fearless land, children of God, and men in Christ.

It is true that, tossed with doubt, and confused with thoughts which go near to mastering the will, we are tempted to look back with wild regret to the days, when children, we dreamt so happily of God, and lived in a quaint and quiet heaven of our own fanciful creation, and took our dreams for realities, and were happy

in our belief. But after all, though the simple religion is lost, its being now more complex does not make it less divine; our faith is more tried, but it is stronger; our feelings are less easily moved, but they are deeper; our love of God is less innocent, but how much more profound; our life is not so bright in the present, but its future is glorious in our eyes. We are men who know that we shall be made partakers of the child's heart towards our Father, united with the awe and love and experience of the man. And then, through death, again we enter the imperial palace whence we came. We hear the songs and voices which of old we heard before we left our home, but we hear them now with fuller, more manly comprehension; we see again the things which eye hath not seen, but our vision pierces deeper. We worship God with the delight of old, before we went upon our Wander-Year, but the joy is more stately, for it is now the joy of sacrifice; and all things now are new to us, for we have grown into men, and we feel the power and joy of progress. we look to Him who led us all our life long until this day, shall we lose the feeling of the child. Through all eternity the blessing of the child's heart shall be ours. In the midst of our swiftest work, in the midst of our closest pursuit of new knowledge, in the midst of all the endless labour and sacrifice of the heavenly life, we shall always turn with the sense of infinite peace to God, and say, Our Father, suffer a little child to come to Thee.

But never, as

[Jan. 1870.]

YOUTH, AND ITS QUESTIONS TO-DAY.

'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'
Matt. xxviii. 20.

THERE are pictures which, to the very close of the artist's work, want a magic touch to make them perfect -one point of light, one spark of brilliant colour. At last the hour comes when all is finished but this. Its addition is not an after-thought; one might say that the picture had been painted with the intention of it in the creator's mind. He adds it; it is but a touch, but it transfigures and completes the work.

Such a touch of finish is my text. All has been told of the Saviour's work-the lowly birth, the quiet ripening years of youth, the entrance into the ministry, the redeeming, revealing ministry itself, the founding of the kingdom, the sacrificial death, the resurrection, the passing into glory, the mission of the disciples to the whole world—and yet the picture is incomplete. 'Of what use,' we say, 'is all this, if the revealer of God and the Saviour of men is gone away from his work and left it in our feeble human hands? What beauty is there in a work which must perish, unsupported by the spirit of its author? The thing is incomplete.' At the very moment that we say this, as we read the

gospel, Christ turns and adds the perfecting conception : 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'

'The end of the world!'-what does it mean? Literally, the conclusion of the age, of this present timeworld. There have been many theories with regard to the manner in which this conclusion will take place. But bound up with them all and almost up to the present day, one idea has been constant-the idea of a terrible catastrophe, in which the whole frame of things, with cities, nations, men, shall be dissolved in a fiery ruin, that out of the dissolution a new heaven and a new earth may be upraised.

So constant and unquestioned was this idea, that it had an insensible influence on scientific theories, and the earlier geologists transferred to the past history of the globe the idea of catastrophes. It was said that each new series of life and strata had been ushered in by the total overthrow of the preceding.

Historians shared in the same thought. States and their work, to theoretical eyes, seemed to be absolutely swept away. Assyria, Greece, Rome, perished and left no trace. Catastrophe, convulsion, almost annihilation, marked, they said, the history of earth and the history of man, and the theologians appealed in triumph to this as confirming their theory of the close of the world; unaware, apparently, that it was their own idea, with which they had prejudiced the world, coming back to them again.

But, within the last thirty years, an immense change

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has taken place-a change of idea which has spread itself over nearly all the realms of human thought. The idea of uniform evolution has succeeded the idea of violent catastrophe. As geologists ceased to theorise, and looked closer into the history of the earth, the conjectured catastrophes faded away one by one. It was seen that one age slid slowly into another through insensible changes; it was seen that the animal life of the world altered its character even more slowly than the earth itself; that there was no break; that transition, instead of being exceptional, was the rule; that there were, properly speaking, no transition periods; that it was all transition.

The same change of idea waited upon history; nations, it was seen, when facts were examined, did not die suddenly, but decayed. The catastrophe, when it did take place, was the result of inward and slow disease, and did not at all produce annihilation. The elements of the fallen nation lived again in other forms, and entered into the new national life which rose over its ruins. Successive nations were like the succession of forests which we are told clothed Scandinavia in the old days, passing, as the climate changed, from fir to oak, and from oak to beech. Each forest period was new and different from its predecessor, but each drew its life from the elements of the preceding.

In the history of nations, as in the history of the earth, there were no violent transitions. It was seen that each historical era overlapped its successor, and modified it, and that new political systems arose, with a few exceptions, not only within but absolutely out of

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