rejoice evermore is the religious frame of spirits. A rigid, severe and stern man, though he was pure as infancy, which indeed he will hardly be, for sympathy is a great cleanser, will neither be able to use words perfectly, nor yet to abstain from their abuse. Some of their functions he will not even conceive, and some of those that he does attempt he will never be able to exercise with a natural grace. No one means, unless he would be wiser than God, that our words should always be important, grave and weighty, but only that, in all our moods, they should be without offence-that to whatever conditions they are addressed, whatever chords they touch, they should come out of a heart that "thinks no evil."

"Who is a wise man and endowed with knowledge among you. Let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. And the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace, of them that make peace."

So much depends on tones of voice, the subduing, elevating power of natural language informed by the heart, that the evidences of our Lord's use of speech, as that of Perfect Man, could not fully be reported. Yet ample and memorable are the suggestive testimonies, not alone in attitudes of his which we cannot

assume" He spake as one having authority"—" He spake as never man spake"-but also in the magic charm which is purest issue of the life within, and in our measure open to us all-"And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth."

XVIII.

Strengthen what remains.

REV. iii. 2:

"Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die for I have not found thy works perfect before God."

WHEN things look difficult, there is an instinctive inclination to abandon the position and seek well-being in an untried sphere. Vaulting imagination lifts us at a bound out of our entanglements, and sets us down, free and unembarrassed, amid the supposed facilities of happier life. Around us are the old troubles which every day turn up afresh-the old difficulties of impracticable problems and impracticable people-the stale influences which excite to no new effort or hopethe flat and weary habits which there is nothing outward to break, and no power within to re-model. It is vain, helpless men begin to think, to stand where they are and disentangle this network-to untie all these hard knots-to introduce order into these arrears of confusion, life and movement into these dead or dying things; but if they could break away from them altogether-if they could escape from the associates who

hang upon their strength and spoil their purpose of reform, from those wearied friends whose confidence has long gone, and whose hopeless looks turn them to stone-if on an unspoiled field they could start afresh -then the causes of past failure would act no more, and they might be new-born into a life of power. It is the old phantasy, not confined to the heartless or the indolent, the feeble in affection or in will, of those who dream that the problem of life would be more easily solved in any other circumstances than those in which they are.

And it is true that deliverance does sometimes come from change of atmosphere-a rescue, by external aid, from the familiar fiends that lurk in our paths and haunt our thoughts, whose accustomed spells we have not strength to break. Some hearts have been stifled from their birth, and in translation to new scenes is their only chance that a pure and cool air will breathe freshly on the low fever of existence, or that the sacred aspects of life will ever have internal reflections in their awakened perceptions and desires.-There are many, again, who could not rescue themselves from inveterate habits and evil communications, who yet, if their prison doors were opened by some saviour hand, would rejoice to go forth upon fresh plains, and forget for ever the noisome dungeons of the past.-There are also weak and sickly times in the history of most minds, when existence is distempered, when the grasshopper

is a burden-when the very blessings of life bring no gratitude, but only a feeling of unfitness and bitter agonies of shame-when the richest opportunities of God come to us only as joyless tasks and care-bound responsibilities-times of darkness, of soul-sickness and disease, in which, though the cure must at last. work from within, alteratives are needed that reaction may begin.

The cases in which a change of external circumstances may possibly regenerate a character are, first, those of an utterly neglected education, in which the conscience, hitherto dormant or stifled, may actually be called into existence by some acquaintance with the purer forms of moral life; secondly, those in which reviving Virtue, still timid and drooping, desires to be removed for a time from scenes where former enemies abound, and no hallowing memory awakens, and the very air breathes only of past guilt and present shame; and, thirdly, those in which there is an utter want of adaptation between condition and faculty, between the work we have to do, the position we have to fill, and the aptitudes of Nature;-but where failure in life. and peace arises from none of these causes, but from wilfulness, from faithlessness, from inexertion, from selfindulgence, from feebleness of purpose, from suffering things to perish through sheer default, what hope can there be that any new ordering of the outward conditions of existence will touch that deeply-seated