greater significance to the old records, and we now better understand the action of the Spirit upon the chaotic world. Mighty torrents, stupendous glaciers, raging fires, awful earthquakes and volcanoes strove together for ages, gradually shaping this glorious. world. Agitation, alternation, antagonism marked the whole process of nature's moulding. And this process still persists. The earth is being perfected through ten thousand fermentations and unbalancings. Nature cannot endure immobility. We might easily be beguiled into supposing that she is now in a state of quiescence; but from time to time events like the eruptions of Vesuvius, the earthquake of San Francisco, the blizzards of the West Indies, and the tidal waves of the Atlantic, remind us that what we call the solid earth is really in a state of flux, and is being unceasingly remodelled. It would sometimes seem as though the destructive elements and movements would prevail; yet they do not-the destructive is also the constructive. "God sitteth upon the water-floods." "The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters; yea, than the mighty waves of the sea." Out of confusion He evokes more perfect harmony, and from uproar a sweeter music; out of catastrophes arise grander creations, and from death a nobler life. Through mutability and conflict is the new earth being shaped for the new humanity.

That new humanity is being perfected by a strictly analogous process. He who controls the restlessness

of nature to His own high ends also governs and limits the ambitions and passions of men, bringing forth good from threatening revolutions. "Which stilleth the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the tumult of the peoples." As the lightning cleanses the air and the tempest purifies the sea, so are the antagonisms of the nations overruled to the furtherance of civilization. Every decisive battle secures the progress of the race. The terrible struggle between the Oriental and Grecian civilization was consummated by the triumph of the morally superior combatant. Instead of the history of the world becoming a mere record of the rise and fall of despotic dynasties, Marathon "secured for mankind the intellectual treasures of Athens, the growth of free institutions, the liberal enlightenment of the Western world, and the gradual ascendency for many ages of the great principles of European civilization.” The Roman general who finally defeated the great Carthaginian won a victory for mankind; the triumph of Hannibal would have arrested the progress of the world. When the Germanic forces prevailed against the Roman legions, they secured the ascendency of truthfulness, honour, liberty, and purity, as against a decadent civilization. On the momentous day when the pagan savages of the wilds of Central Asia threatened to crush the relics of classic civilization, and the early institutions of the Christianized Germans, victory crowned the banners of the worthier warriors, and preserved for centuries of

power and glory the Germanic element in the civilization of Europe. In the great appeal of battle between the champions of the Crescent and the Cross the mighty victory of Charles Martel rescued the Christian nations of the West from the deadly grasp of alldestroying Islam. When the storms of God and the ships of Elizabeth broke the pride and power of Spain in her terrible Armada, the progress of the world was once more guaranteed. Again and again the retrogressive elements become terribly dangerous, they reach the very brink of disastrous success; but the final struggle invariably vindicates the providence of God and furthers the highest welfare of mankind. Local struggles often appear doubtful as to their exact effect; contemporaneous history is inchoate and puzzling; there are many seeming hesitations and backwaters; yet whenever the clock strikes twelve it is patent that things are being urged forward. Hegel held justly that the triumph of the best, and not the strongest, results from war, and was right in his contention that "the characters which do win in war are the characters we should wish to win." Darwin considered that, notwithstanding degenerations and reversions, the law of evolution secured the general progress of the world; and history, with her long, perplexing story of ebb and flow, is ever making that cheering fact more impressively clear.

True, certain political and dynastic changes seem for the worse, a higher civilization being replaced by

So.

an apparently inferior one, and in many respects really In certain aspects the Roman power compared unfavourably with the brilliant culture of Greece. Lecky dwells on the inferiority of medieval government and character when contrasted with the heroic

days of Rome. The brutal Spaniard fell painfully below the wonderful Aztec civilization he destroyed; and the withering rule of the modern Turk over scenes once illustrious gives the optimist pause. The end, however, is not yet; and we believe it will ever be found that, whilst the new condition of things may in certain particulars be distinctly inferior to that which it has displaced, on the whole it is better, introducing vital forces and establishing higher ideals. Much that is beautiful and precious perishes in successive cataclysms; but the ideas, principles, and faiths by which nations live and grow are anew vindicated and established. Awhile ago it was my duty to preach at the consecration of a church that had been built by a society of lowly people on the sea-coast. The new structure was an exceedingly modest affair, in which the architect had struggled with narrow resources; and in recalling it I have a general sense of iron girders, stucco, mean lights, and broad effects of crude colour. After the service we visited the ruin of a great abbey in the immediate neighbourhood. Everything around suggested the magnificence of the ancient shrine. Massive and delicate columns, graceful arches, exquisite carvings, sculptured tombs, many-coloured

marbles, rich mosaics, and a glorious window seventy feet high, once filled with gorgeous glass, but which glory had vanished as other rainbows melt, testified to the original splendour of the sacred fane. Looking on the majestic ruin, and comparing it with the rough conventicle we had just consecrated, I could not refrain from asking myself what had been gained by the religious struggles of the five centuries which separated us from the flourishing shrine. Ages of sorrow and sacrifice-battles, revolutions, imprisonments, martyrdoms-come between us and the monastery in its pride. Are we any the better off for the treasure, blood, and tears which the transition has cost? What have we lost? Architecture, pictures, porphyry and gold, painted glass, prismatic missals, music, gorgeous robes, and solemn pageantry. What have we gained? An open Bible, individual access to God, free grace, the right of private judgment, the supremacy of conscience, popular knowledge, civil and religious liberty. Jewelled glass, precious stones, lavished gold, stately processions-the artistic, the picturesque, the splendid-have perished in the interests of truth, freedom, righteousness, manhood. God makes short work of marbles when they come in the way of men; when institutions wrong and cramp humanity, it is inevitable that they perish. Costly indeed is moral movement; through long travail do we attain the ideal so wistfully pursued: but the agony is worth all. One storm bursts after another-the white sea is littered with wrecks; yet,