shall freely use all such helps, and possibly give hints to those who might wish to prosecute such study; but here at least we must limit ourselves to the results of our toil in this mine of religious truth. May the great Spirit, eternal and ever living, aid our endeavour! May we find by His help not the word that killeth, but the spirit which maketh alive!

The order of our studies will be simply that of the Sacred Scriptures themselves. Our first study will be THE CREATION. The Bible commences with the first great act of God. It is a book about God and His relation to man. It is the story of man's life as seen by God's eye. It was, however, necessary that man should have a clear and definite announcement of the origin and source of himself and the world around him. In the midst of false cosmogonies, Egyptian and Oriental, God gives man through a particular people His version of the beginning.

We learn

I. THERE WAS A BEGINNING AND THIS WAS THE ACT OF GOD. An important declaration when Moses wrote it down-still a truth that some moderns should ponder. Matter is not eternal. The world is not the form of an ever changeful necessity. Atheism and Pantheism are demolished by the first sentence of the word of God. There is a God. He is a Being separate from the world, for He has created it. We are thus introduced to the Divine will which exists in this universe.

II. THE DISORDER OF PRIMAL CREATION IS REDUCED TO ORDER BY THE POWER AND INTELLIGENCE OF THIS DIVINE WILL. We might have had matter created by will, but all might have remained shapeless and inane. Darkness on the world, and darkness in the soul of God. But this is not so. The life of God is imparted to the chaotic world. God's intelligence is reflected in the light which he gives to the heavens and the earth. Another step in the grand progress is then indicated. The light is approved by God. Power has developed

through will and intelligence into emotion. Marvellous parallel! What a picture of creation's growth! What an unfolding to him who reads, of the attributes of God!

III. THIS PROGRESS OF CREATION PASSES FROM ORDER, THROUGH ORGANIZATION, INTO LIFE, UNTIL IT CULMINATES IN MAN. Sea and land, light and darkness, are separated; plants and animals are created; man is at last formed. Plants and animals are after their kind-the first created are the only pattern except the idea in the mind of God. Not so with man. He is after the likeness of God. What is this? It cannot be in form of body, nor, perhaps, in form of thought. Divine intelligence cannot be limited as ours is. But what have we in the history? A command. "Be fruitful, &c., and have dominion." Man is the subject of expressed law-a king, he is yet to obey. This is only the next step in creation's progress. We rise to its crown-the place where moral law must be recognised. To man is given the expressed command of his God.

What then is the story that the book of creation tells ? It is, that one all mighty intelligent personality created the whole universe; through a wonderful series of creative acts He marches on His way; and, at length, forms a being like Himself, with intelligence, will, and moral attributes, giving to this, His son, all dominion over the earth which He has made his residence.

There are, perhaps, a few minor lessons which may be suggested here. 1. The adaptation of this world to be man's place of abode while God tries him by the duty He has placed upon him to perform. 2. All things are subject to man's use and government. 3. The human race is of one blood, derived from one pair. 4. God loves order. When He performs a series of works there is most probably progress. LLEWELLYN 1. BEVAN, LL.B.

Weigh House, London.

SUBJECT: The Voice of the Past.

"For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles."-1 Peter iv. 3.

Analysis of Homily the Seven Hundred and Forty - First. ET us break up this sentence into three or four parts, making each section a sort of textual division :— our life"-" the past of life"-"the time past of

"life"

life," &c.

"LIFE."

What mystery is wrapped up in life! How great the power needed to bestow it! He only who is the author of life can impart life. Great is the power of man; almost exhaustless his resources of ingenuity and muscular force. But the power that can erect pyramids and palaces, bridge rivers, almost annihilate time and space, through the wonders of electricity, has not yet discovered means whereby 'to resuscitate the vanished life of an insect. The whole of inanimate nature, with all its marvels of revelation and divine power, does not, perhaps, furnish a lesson of instruction comparable to the living moving wonders of a drop of water. What consummate skill, what exquisite perfection and beauty of workmanship are revealed in the organic structures of creature-life, residing in a mere globular world! We need not wonder that the Psalmist should, by way of an expressive pre-eminence, call upon "everything that hath BREATH" to "praise the Lord."

What transcendent worth, then, must belong to human life!-to

"OUR LIFE." We read of the Creator speaking dead and shapeless matter into beautiful formations, and, by the working of a divine manipulation, calling into existence the creature-life of all that moved in air, earth, and sea. But when the sacred historia would record the masterpiece of the divine workmanship, he tells us that "God breathed

into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul"— "fearfully and wonderfully made," even as regards his bodily organization, but as respects his sublime relationship to the Author of life, and to the ages of interminable being, a creature marvellous and fearful, begotten by the breath of Him who is the Father of everlasting ages.

"Our life" is redeemed life. It was great to speak a world from nought. It was greater to create moral life, and fashion it after the divine and high original. It was greatest to redeem. To create life required but a word, a touch, a breath; but to redeem life was a work sufficient to tax infinite wisdom and almighty power-a work so stupendously great that it demanded the mysteries of the incarnation, the long and protracted stages of the Saviour's humiliation, sufferings, death, and resurrection! What infinite and unutterable value must belong to human life! "Our life" is the only life, of which we have any knowledge, for which a ransom has been paid!—and what a ransom! We wonder not, then, at the Redeemer's words, in which He has given to us his own estimate of human worth,-"What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

"THE PAST OF LIFE." How little we know of the past— taking the word in its broad and comprehensive relationship to the world! As a question of history we know something of the world's civilization, science, art, human laws and governments, human thoughts and actions. But what do we know of the individual experience of mankind-its joys and sorrows the swelling surges of human emotions of evervarying moods, which, like successive waves of ocean, have swiftly chased each other over the broad surface of humanity, for the space of more than 6,000 years! And oh! what an impenetrable veil lies between that past and us as respects the moral and eternal consequences of wasted life-the irrecoverable past-extending over so many generations, and affecting in each generation so many millions of immortal

souls! We thank God that He has thus concealed from us this past! We thank Him, more, that it is not our past!

But there is a past for which God holds us responsible— an individual past

"THE TIME PAST OF OUR LIFE." Nothing that I have is my own. I belong to God, in body, soul, and spirit. In Him I live, and move, and have my being. I am, therefore, accountable to Him for my time. Life is God's loan to man, and time man's "life-rent of the world." That loan has been granted on one great condition; that it be returned with interest: otherwise forfeited-taken from him. In the great day we are to stand before God to give an account of our stewardship, when the faithful will be able to say, "Lord thy pound hath gained ten pounds;" while to the unfaithful, the message will go forth: "Take from him the talent, and give to him that hath ten talents." The "life-rent" which the great Proprietor claims is service. He has put us into His beautiful world to make it more beautiful by adding moral to material beauty. If we fail to render this service we shall lose our life, in a sense which human language is not adequate to express. "He that loveth his life shall lose it." Life is God's property, and from every one of us, sooner or later, He will "require" it at our hands, either to glorify it with a life, the lease of which will never run out, or to judge it by leaving it to its self-chosen death. "God requireth that which is past "the time past of our life." Equally to the saved and unsaved will the words one day have a stirring application,-"This night thy soul shall be required of thee." God forbid that any one of us should be addressed, in that day, as-"Thou fool!" Rather be it our lot, when the voice of God shall call, to reply to it with the same confidence as that of the child Samuel, who with a true faith, and obedient heart, and a love that knew no fear, rushed into the presence of his father, saying, "Here am I, for thou didst call me!"

"And now, what have we to say with respect to this strange, solemn thing-Time?-that men do with it through life just