form, appetites, and nature. Like a 'winged flower,' with brilliant and delicate pinions, and rich in gems, it gladly flutters with the light, and sips nectar from the hand of God. True, an insect's development is no proof of man's immortality; but does not man see in that unfolding of life a symbol of the advancement he desires? The larva prophesies the nympha, and does not man feel in himself the rudiments and the endeavours of a higher nature, and therefore so interpret the supposed analogy as to foster his noblest aims, and that with hope in a future worthy of his faith and his capacity?

The grub may tend to be a butterfly, but why should the worm just peeping from its clod aspire to anything beyond the clay on which it is destined to crawl and rot? And why should man look higher? Why? His spirit, God-awakened, will not crawl, it travels along with the light into infinite space, and calculates on a life and a condition commensurate with its desires after truth and the joys of being true to the God of truth and love. He is impelled by a belief, which seems essential to his rational existence, that this beautiful world is not altogether a delusive show; for he cannot think that the wondrous facts of creation teach him to look for the end of truth only in death; but he feels that, in proportion as his intellectual being expands and expatiates in knowledge, does it aspire to immortality, and when most intimate with the realities of time, his reason finds stability, satisfaction, and rest, only in communion with the Eternal, who inspires him with faith as the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence within him that what thus is promised shall be realised.

Some Christians have no misgivings, and they imagine that atheists have vanished before Bridgewater Treatises and Bible Societies, like glowworms from the daylight. But such easy believers make great mistakes. Atheists or godless persons are plentiful, but philosophers et ceteri

assure us they are quite innocent of blasphemy, for they do not mock the Almighty, since they do not believe there is any-they only laugh at the bugbear of their neighbours. At least they are guilty of wounding the finest feelings; for those who really believe in the revealed and sacred Name, also love it with intensest affection. Their idea of it is Love, and that rules the heart. All materialists, however, are not quite in the atheistic predicament; yet if believers in the material system of faith indeed allow that there is existence beyond things, if they do allow a God, it certainly must be a god of their own, that cannot be loved, and to whom it would be useless to pray. He cannot have revealed himself to them, for there is not any reasonable pretence to a revelation fit for man but in the Bible, and to suppose a revelation of the Divine Will possible to any being is really to suppose created spiritual existences, for however that will may be expressed in matter, we cannot imagine it revealed to matter. Miserable man! too proud to believe thyself the offspring of God, and, in mock humility, renouncing the Word that teaches that Omnipotence is Love, even for thee, thou canst not adore, nor desire to be made capable of enjoying everlasting life.

But there are those who tell us that they have tasted a better philosophy, a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,' of which the more we partake the more we enjoy, and indeed in its fullest enjoyment partake in Heaven's own bliss. This philosophy regards man as formed to be instructed by acquaintance with good and evil in this world, that his will may be disciplined under moral and physical law, and, under the highest truth and purest motives, be qualified to inherit eternal light.

There is nothing more positive than our consciousness of our own existence and personality. Therefore, all reasoning is founded on faith or the belief that what

impresses us is real. Consciousness itself, however, is not faith, but a felt fact, which we do not receive on evidence we can question, for the sense of being must precede, if not preclude, doubt of being. If I feel and think, I cannot but believe both in my own existence, and in the fact that I feel and think. Whether my feeling and thinking give me the consciousness of myself in those acts, or those acts produce the consciousness of myself, amounts to the same thing. I believe that I am, because I am constituted so to believe, by the absolute 'I am,' who transcends knowledge, and yet is known so far that we believe He is by what we know. There is no perhaps in the soul's consciousness of its own existence, and that of objects which impress it. These cause us to be subject to various states in relation to them, with a sense of space in which we are coexistent with them. And are we not equally conscious of coexistence with the Being who gave us our being? Are we not, or at least some of us, endowed with thoughts that compel us to believe that the First Cause gave us a beginning with a final end, in relation to Himself? Are we not as certainly subject to states of soul in our consciousness, more or less clear, of that relation, as we are of being subject to the influence of things upon us, as one of the consequences of our coexistence with things which He has made thus to influence us? The Cause of our objects, as well as of ourselves, is the Cause of our thinking of His will towards us, as manifest in the adaptation of those objects to ourselves, whether in nature or in revealed facts. Our faith in Him, and the hopes springing from that faith, are effects of His will, and could not arise from any other source; for none other than that Will which constituted our conscious souls could inspire the faith and hope which essentially belong to our souls. Being thus subject to various states of consciousness, with a sense of things and succession of time, as also

of power always acting upon us, our continued future existence is as much a category to our reason as our consciousness of our past and present existence. We are, and therefore must be-such substances cannot naturally perish and not be, any more than the elements can perish from the universe of which they are essential parts. That is to say, we feel we are substantially personal beings, having a domain of knowledge and belief, which can have been imparted to us as conscious persons only by the Absolute Person who willed us into being for purposes in relation to Himself, and therefore we cannot believe we shall cease to be until we know, or think we know, from Him, that He means to annihilate us, which cannot be until we have consciously answered all the purposes for which knowledge and faith are given to us.

Aristotle says the soul is 'that by which we live, feel, and understand.' A surer word declares there is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.' In God 'we live and move and have our being.' If, then, we live in the consciousness that we possess our existence as His permanent gift, we shall look to Him to use it rightly, and be incapable of believing that we shall ever cease to live in Him who made us rational that we may consciously so live. Our true life is in our felt dependence on Him for the fulfilment of our being as capable of fellowship with Him through the faith, love, and knowledge by which He reveals Himself to us, and by which we respond to Him, and at last correspond with Him in willing and working. He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them who diligently seek Him.

It is true, that in this state, all intelligence is received through the body, but yet our reason possesses perceptions of truth which sensation could never have conveyed; and all our reflections concerning our nature terminate

in the conclusion which revelation warrants-that the soul dies not. Even the lower creatures, down to creeping things, are endowed with aptitudes, which they acquire not by the use of their senses. No sooner do they burst from their 'procreant cradle' than, instinct with skill, they seek their happiness in the right path, as if directly illuminated by divine guidance. Why, then, should man not feel the hand of God leading him on to the possession of permanent blessedness ? There is a light which, in the hope of such guidance, lightens every man that cometh into the world; we feel it and we will follow it.

In pursuing our theme it behoves us, who profess to be Christians, not to disregard the Source whence we derive our religion, but, as far as we can, to conduct our inquiries as if we really felt the force of those truths which we profess to believe. Believers in revelation are not only preserved from the misery of the sceptic, but excited to larger inquiries than he. Yet real Christian faith is not implicit credence of a prescribed creed, as a matter of course, but it is a tried state, the result of fiery purification from prejudices and opinions, the patient assurance of a mind persuaded because convinced by the needs felt and the provision recognised as made to meet them. The man of faith must indeed be a thinking man, for he infers from the facts of his own nature, and is directed as well as encouraged in his researches after every kind of truth, as of eternal beauty existing for his joyful inheritance. The book that secures his faith, presents him with objects most worthy of his soul's love; it inspires him with agonising earnestness to obtain a full fitness for the knowledge and possession of those pure and imperishable realities which by his faith he feels are necessarily the birthright of true believers. Here we learn our origin and our end; but without it, or the doctrines it teaches, mankind would