cere belief that does not bear on the life, or that bears it down, is little worth; while if a man is indeed searching for truth, if he goes to the Source of light for light, if he applies to the Fountain of wisdom, he shall receive wisdom and light and truth. No man asks his Heavenly Father for bread, and receives a stone. He may go for a stone. He may be seeking, not for what is true, but for what will build up his opinions, strengthen his party, and give him the victory; and he will probably get what he is after. But the man who seeks to know what is the will of God concerning him, will be sure to succeed. His sincere belief

will act on his life, and his life will react on his belief. So far as he is sincere, he will follow on to know the Lord, and as he goes he will see that, though the landmarks are not removed, and though every one saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ, yet Christ is not divided. Neither Paul, nor Luther, nor Servetus, nor Wesley, was crucified for us; but the ultimate, the momentous, the essential fact stands, that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all those whose life is hid with Christ in God.

T is not possible to be too familiar with the spirit or the letter of the Bible, nor are people often too much addicted to the use of Scripture language but it is of great importance that it be used understandingly. A passage of Scripture, aptly quoted, has often more pith, point, power, than anything else could have; but, inapt, it recoils both on him who employs it and on the cause which it was intended to further. Some of the expressions of self-abasement to be met with in prayers, exhortations, and religious books, though transferred bodily from the Bible, are injudicious and disagreeable. It is not uncommon to hear good men call themselves "worms of the dust," but the impression produced is unpleasant. You feel that the statement is not just. Look at man's body only, brimful of hinges, balls, sockets, tubes, cells, bags, and strings, with its more than two hun

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dred beautiful ivory bones, everything ingeniously contrived so as to combine the greatest lightness with the greatest speed, strength, durability, and beauty, a set of complex and delicate machinery, doing its own oiling and repairing, working without friction, and of which the most admired inventions of man are but a clumsy imitation. Then look at the worm that disfigures your garden-walk after a shower, a long, raw, writhing, disgusting little fellow, without a bone in his body, -no limbs, no eyes, no lungs to speak of, and not so much of a head but that he can spare it with the smallest possible inconvenience. him in pieces, and he plasters up the ends and makes himself answer. Head or tail, it is all one to him, or all two, or all three, as the case may be; the only difference being that, whereas he was one before, he is now a mob. And a man calls himself such a one as this! When, in addition, you consider that marvellous and awful Thing, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, whose substance no man knows, which we cannot define, and can describe only by saying what it does,-it thinks, it loves, it hopes, it suffers, it reasons, it remembers, that Living Principle which sits inscrutable, in solitary state, behind all nerve and muscle and blood and brain, without which nerve and muscle and blood and brain are but so many particles of dust, — what has a man in common with a worm?

Do you say that his sinfulness is so great that he is an abomination in God's sight? Then you slander the worm; for he is not an abomination to his Maker. I suppose a worm is, in its way, just as pleasing to God as an archangel; that is, the worm is just as exactly what God meant beforehand a worm should be, as an archangel is. It just as truly fulfils the end for which it was created. In its own little sphere the hole which it has bored in the ground-it is like everything else which God has made, "good." It cannot sin. It never violated law. It never disregarded conscience, nor forgot God; nor has it ever passed, or shall it pass, away from its Maker's notice. There is, in that respect, no comparison to be made between it and a human being.

Do you say, that, although man is so fearfully and wonderfully made, yet, compared with God, he is but as the worm to man? But "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." When Deity became incarnate, he took not upon him the nature of worms, but of man; and shall man, the only being created in the image of God, the being honored above all other created beings in lending his likeness to God manifest in the flesh, and furthermore

and forever elevated and sanctified thereby, shall he voluntarily debase himself to the level of a creature with not a thousandth part of his physical, nor a millionth part of his mental faculties, nor any of his divine privileges? This is not honoring God. God is never honored by vilifying his works. An artist is not honored by decrying his pictures. A machinist is not honored by treating lightly the engine which he has built. God is great, yet man is but little lower than the angels. God is great, yet in nothing that we know greater than in this, that the man whom he has made in his own image, chained down to one little world and a few years of time, can, by his own wonderful, God-given powers, sweep the broad heavens, pierce the deep earth, grasp the infinite past, penetrate the infinite future, and be the discoverer and the historian of worlds in numberless ages before he was born, and boundless space where he has never been. Man, man only is made after the likeness of God; man only is bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.

Probably the phrase in question is generally used without thought, without discrimination, almost without meaning. It is found in the Bible, and, assuming that anything found there must always be available, it is pressed into service. But it should be remembered that the Bible is the revelation of God to man through an Eastern na