consists in the weakness that suffers His promptings to plead in vain. And whether this is not the true account of his own evil, that he sins against the suggestions of the Holy Spirit in him, let every man ask his own heart.

And in whatever respect we have had experience of infirmity, in whatever direction our weakness appears, we know that spiritual power is unlimited, and that we can, if we will, make the lower nature the servant and instrument of the Spirit. It is a question for the WILL alone, in persevering co-operation with the Spirit of God. And at least, in every hour of danger, in every crisis of life, before going where we know that temptations lie in wait, before venturing upon seas on which the treasures of faith and conscience may be strewn like wrecks upon the waters, shall we not hear our Lord pleading with us his own example-"What! could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."

For be it ever remembered that Christ feared and trembled in his previsions and meditations, and nowhere else-when the danger was yet absent, never when it was present. How wonderful, indeed, is the self-knowledge he displayed-that he, who was never betrayed by infirmity, should so arm himself against it, in those great hours of inspiration when weakness does not naturally appear, and others are apt to re

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member nothing but their intentions and their strength! He knew what is in man, and how it is that God perfects His strength in our weakness, and makes His grace sufficient for us.

IX.

Circumstance, “the uuspiritual god.”

MATT. xxiv. 26:

"If they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the East, and shineth even unto the West, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be."

THERE is a natural tendency, from which the present age with its vaunted culture is not free, to put faith in material agencies as causes of results in no intelligible connection with them. Our moral securities are mainly mechanical; mind is becoming a department of physics; and the searchers into the mysteries of thought and the special facts of the invisible world conduct their inquiries through material media. These are the gold-seekers and alchemists of the modern world; and their first principle is, that physical conditions and processes are our spiritual illuminators.

In Education, the old faith in an exact training, a vigorous discipline of mind, has been yielding to a growing confidence in the dexterous appliance of favourable circumstances. The old idea, that the true

method was through the effort of the pupil, and the fittest subjects for its exercise and richest results the abstract sciences and the severest forms of language, has been passing into the belief that the effort belongs. to the teacher, that the pupil, without toiling to acquire, may be made to receive, and that the fitting matter for this method is the communication of facts, as if the current coin of general knowledge available in the world, not the development of faculty and power, was the object of the school.

In Medicine, it seems the general impression that where nothing is known, nothing is unlikely; that where all things are possible, or not shown to be impossible, a trial of anything cannot be refused; that nothing in the way of remedy can be so apparently unreasonable as to exempt from the obligation of giving it a chance; and that to desire an explanation before you are committed to new expedients, is a fatal pedantry. But here, as everywhere, to have to look for Circumstance without a law of guidance, is to leave the spirit without peace.

In political and social life appears the same easy faith in the power of Circumstance to produce radical good, as, for instance, that by a physical arrangement of the machinery of elections, both true and precious results may be obtained from those on whose political morality, patriotism, honour or honesty, there is no reliance.

Still more painfully in its own realm of spiritual reason has the reasonable spirit been dethroned, by unnatural attempts to reach the invisible through bodily manifestations, from which it is difficult not to revolt with a mixed protest of the understanding and the soul, in earnest effort to turn away the hearts of men from outward refuges of lies to those inward laws. of our eternal life and light which are the methods of the spirit, and never will abate one tittle of their severe and serene enactments.

The same mechanical reliances, trusting for inward good to outward accidents, are manifested in relation to the moral health of individuals. Circumstance, "that unspiritual god,"* is with many their first and last hope; change of scene, of occupation, of external condition, the only regenerating influence they distinctly recognize. They think to exhibit spiritual results from other than spiritual sources, and by rearranging a man's lot to transform his character. Not in the power of the Will over self and over circumstance, but in the power of favourable circumstances over it, lies their expectation of a new life. But it is a blind game; Heaven only knows what are favourable circumstances, and it is not in that direction, but in the ruling and nourishment of his own spirit, that God has given to man knowledge and power, and placed his responsibility.

* Lord Byron.