ony puir soul, for that cud dae nae guid, and was the devil's wark. Ye asked me :

"Am I a guid mother tae ye?' and when I could dae naethin' but hold, ye said, 'Be sure God maun be a hantle kinder.'

"The truth came to me as with a flicker, and I cuddled down into my bed, and fell asleep in His love, as in my mother's arms.

"Mither," and George lifted up his head, ❘ "that was my conversion, and, mither dear, I hae longed a' thro' the college studies for the day when ma mooth wud be opened wi' this evangel." | Marget's was an old-fashioned garden, with pinks and daisies and forget-me-nots, with sweetscented wall-flower and thyme and moss roses, where nature had her way, and gracious thoughts could visit one without any jarring note. As George's voice softened to the close, I caught her saying: "His servants shall see His face,” and the peace of Paradise fell upon us in the shadow of death.

The night before the end George was carried out to his corner, and Domsie, whose heart was nigh unto the breaking, sat with him the afternoon. They used to fight the college battles over again, with their favorite classics beside them, but this time none of them spoke of books. Marget was moving about the garden, and she told me that George looked at Domsie wistfully, as if he had something to say and knew not how to do it. After awhile he took a book from below his pillow, and began, like one thinking over his words: Maister Jamieson, ye hae been a gude freend tae me, the best I ever hed aifter my mither and faither. Wull ye tak this buik for a keepsake o' yir grateful scholar? It's a Latin 'Imitation,'

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dominie, and it's bonnie printin'. Ye mind hoo ye gave me yir ain Virgil, and said he was a kind o' Pagan sanct. Noo here is my sanct, and div ye ken I've often thocht Virgil saw his day afar off, and was glad. Wull ye read it, dominie, for my sake, and maybe ye'll come to see-” and George could not find words for more.

But Domsie understood. "Ma laddie, ma laddie, that I luve better than onythin' on earth, I'll read it till I die, and, George, I'll tell ye what livin' man does na ken. When I was your verra age I had a cruel trial, and ma heart was turned frae faith. The classics hae been my Bible, though I said naethin' to ony man against Christ. He aye seemed beyond man, and noo the veesion o' Him has come to me in this gairden. Laddie, ye hae dune far mair for me than I ever did for you. Wull ye mak a prayer for yir auld dominie afore we pairt?"

There was a thrush singing in the birches and a sound of bees in the air, when George prayed in a low, soft voice, with a little break in it.

"Lord Jesus, remember my dear maister, for he's been a kind freend to me and mony a puir laddie in Drumtochty. Bind up his sair heart and give him licht at eventide, and may the maister and his scholars meet some mornin' where the schule never skails, in the kingdom o' oor Father."

Twice Domsie said Amen, and it seemed as the voice of another man, and then he kissed George upon the forehead; but what they said Marget did not wish to hear.

When he passed out at the garden gate, the westering sun was shining golden, and the face of Domsie was like unto that of a little child.

F the botanist be asked the difference between an oak, a palm tree, and a lichen, he will declare that they are separated from one another by the broadest line known to classification. Without taking into account the outward differences of size and form, the variety of flower and fruit, the peculiarities of leaf and branch, he sees even in their general architecture types of structure as distinct as Norman, Gothic, and Egyptian. But if the first young germs of these three plants are placed before him, and he is called upon to define the difference, he finds it impossible. He can not even say which is which.❘ Examined under the highest powers of the microscope, they yield no clue. Analyzed by the chemist, with all the appliances of his laboratory, they keep their secret. The same experiment can be tried with the embryos of animals. Take the ovule of the worm, the eagle, the elephant, and of man himself. Let the most skilled observer apply the most searching tests to distinguish the one from the other, and he will fail. But there is something more surprising still. Compare the next two sets of germs-the vegetable and the animal-and there is no shade of difference. Oak and palm, worm and man, all start in life together. No matter into what strangely different forms they may afterward develop no matter whether they are to live on sea or land, creep or fly, swim or walk, think or vegetate-in the embryo, as it first meets the eye of Science, they are indistinguishable. The apple which fell in Newton's garden, Newton's dog Diamond, and Newton himself, began life at the same point.

If we analyze this material point at which all life starts, we shall find it to consist of a clear,

structureless, jelly-like substance resembling albumen, or white of egg. It is made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen: its name is Protoplasm. And it is not only the structural unit with which all living bodies start in life, but with which they are subsequently built up. "Protoplasm," says Huxley, "simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life: it is the clay of the potter. Beast and fowl,

reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polyp, are all composed of structural units of the same character-namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus."

What, then, determines the difference between different animals? What makes one little speck of protoplasm grow into Newton's dog Diamond, and another-exactly the same-into Newton himself? It is a mysterious Something which has entered into this protoplasm. No eye can see it; no science can define it. There is a different Something for Newton's dog, and a different Something for Newton; so that though both use the same matter, they build up in these widely different ways. Protoplasm being the clay, this Something is the potter. And as there is only one clay, and yet all these curious forms are developed out of it, it follows that the difference lies in the potters. There must, in short, be as many potters as there are forms. There is the potter who segments the worm, and the potter who builds up the form of the dog, and the potter who moulds the man. The artist who operates upon matter in this carries out this law, is Life. many different kinds of Life. the broader meaning to the words of the Apostle "All life is not the same life. There is one

subtle way, and There are a great

If one might give

kind of life of men, another life of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds "-there is the Life of the Artist, or the potter who segments the worm, the potter who forms the dog, the potter who moulds the man.

What goes on, then, in the animal kingdom is this: The Bird-life seizes upon the bird-germ, and builds it up into a bird, the image of itself. The Reptile-life seizes upon another germinal speck, assimilates surrounding matter, and fashions it into a reptile. The Reptile-life thus simply makes an incarnation of itself; the visible bird is simply an incarnation of the invisible Bird-life.

It

Now we are nearing the point where the spiritual analogy appears. It is a very wonderful analogy-so wonderful that one almost hesitates to put it into words. Yet nature is reverent : and it is her voice to which we listen. These lower phenomena of life, she says, are but an allegory. There is another kind of Life of which Science as yet has taken little cognizance. It obeys the same laws. It builds up an organism into its own form. It is the Christ-life. As the Bird-life builds up a bird, the image of itself, so the Christ-life builds up a Christ, the image of Himself. When a man becomes a Christian, the natural process is this: The Living Christ enters into his soul. Development begins. The quickening Life seizes upon the soul, assimilates surrounding elements, and begins to fashion it. According to the great Law of Conformity to Type this fashioning takes a specific form. It is that of the Artist who fashions. And all through Life

this wonderful, mystical, glorious, yet perfectly definite process, goes on "until Christ be formed" in it.

The Christian Life is not a vague effort after righteousness-an ill-defined pointless struggle for an ill-defined pointless end. Religion is no disheveled mass of aspiration, prayer, and faith. There is no more mystery in Religion, as to its processes, than in Biology. There is much mystery in Biology. We know all but nothing of Life yet-nothing of Development. There is the same mystery in the Spiritual Life. But the great lines are the same-as decided, as luminous; and the laws of Natural and Spiritual are the same as unerring, as simple. Will everything else in the natural world unfold its order, and yield to Science more and more a vision of harmony, and Religion-which should complement and perfect all-remain a chaos? From the standpoint of Revelation no truth is more obscure than Conformity to Type. Conformity to Type. If science can furnish a companion phenomena from an every-day process of the natural life, it may at least throw this most mystical doctrine of Christianity into thinkable form. Is there any fallacy in speaking of the Embryology of the New Life? Is the analogy invalid? Are there not vital processes in the Spiritual as well as in the Natural world? The Bird being an incarnation of the Bird-life, may not the Christian be a spiritual incarnation of the Christ-life? And is there not a real justification in the processes of the New-Birth for such a parallel?

T may be a surprise to the unenlightened to learn that probably no explorer, in forcing his passage through Africa, has ever, for more than a few days at a time, been off some beaten track. Probably no country in the world, civilized or uncivilized, is better supplied with paths than this unmapped continent. Every village is connected with some other village, every tribe with the next tribe, every state with its

neighbor, and therefore, with all the rest. The explorer's business is simply to select from this network of tracks, keep a general direction, and hold on his way. Let him begin at Zanzibar, plant his foot on a native footpath, and set his face toward Tanganyika. In eight months he will be there. He has simply to persevere. From village to village he will be handed on, zigzagging it may be sometimes, to avoid the impassable

tribes, but never taking to the woods, never guided solely by the stars, never, in fact, leaving a beaten track, till hundreds and hundreds of miles are between him and the sea, and his interminable footpath ends with a canoe on the shores of Tanganyika. Crossing the lake, landing near some native village, he picks up the thread once more. Again he plods on and on, now on foot, now by canoe, but always keeping his line of villages, until, one day, suddenly, he sniffs the seabreeze again, and his faithful foot-wide guide lands him on the Atlantic seaboard.

Nor is there any art in finding out these successive villages with their intercommunicating links. He must find them out. A whole army of guides, servants, carriers, soldiers, and campfollowers accompany him in his march, and this nondescript regiment must be fed. Indian corn, cassava, mawere, beans, and bananas-these do not grow wild even in Africa. Every meal has to be bought and paid for in cloth and beads; and scarcely three days can pass without a call having to be made at some village where the necessary supplies can be obtained. A caravan, as a rule, must live from hand to mouth, and its march becomes simply a regulated procession through a chain of markets-there are neither bazaars nor stores in native Africa. Thousands of the villages through which the traveler eats his way may never have victualed a caravan before. But, with their chief's consent, which is usually easily purchased for a showy present, the villagers unlock their larders, the women flock to the grinding stones, and basketfuls of food are swiftly exchanged for unknown equivalents in beads and calico.

The native tracks are veritable footpaths, never over a foot in breadth, beaten as hard as adamant, and rutted beneath the level of the forest bed by centuries of native traffic. As a rule, these footpaths are marvelously direct. Like the roads of the old Romans, they run straight on through everything, ridge and mountain and valley, never

breathe. Yet within this general straightforwardness there is a singular eccentricity and indirectness in detail. ness in detail. Although the African footpath is on the whole a bee-line, no fifty yards of it are ever straight. And the reason is not far to seek. If a stone is encountered no native will ever think of removing it. Why should he? It is easier to walk round it. The next man who comes that way will do the same. He knows that a hunded men are following him; he looks at the stone; a moment, and it might be unearthed and tossed aside, but no; he also holds on his way. It is not that he resents the trouble, it is the idea that is wanting. It would no more occur to him that the stone was a displaceable object, and that for the general weal he might displace it, than that its feldspar was of the orthoclase variety. Generations and generations of men have passed that stone, and it still waits for a man with an altruistic idea. But it would be a very stony country indeed-and Africa is far from stony-that would wholly account for the aggravating obliqueness and indecision of the African footpath. Probably each four miles, on an average path, is spun out, by an infinite series of minor sinuosities, to five or six. Now these deflections are not meaningless. Each has some history-a history dating back perhaps a thousand years, but to which all clue has centuries ago been lost. The leading cause probably is fallen trees. When a tree falls across a path no ever removes it. As in the case of the stone, the native goes around it. It is too green to burn in his hut; before it is dry, and the white ants have eaten it, the new detour has become part and parcel of the path. The smaller irregularities, on the other hand, represent the trees and stumps of the primeval forest where the track was made at first. But whatever the cause, it is certain that for persistent straightforwardness in the general, and utter vacillation and irresolution in the particular, the African roads are unique in engineering.

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