Church North, Methodist Episcopal Church South, Methodist Protestant Church, Methodist Church, American Wesleyan Church, Free Methodist Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Zion Church, Coloured Methodist Church of America, the Evangelical Association, and the Church of United Brethren.

Dominion of Canada.-The Methodist Church of Canada, Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada, the Primitive Methodist Church, and the British Methodist Episcopal Church.

In addition to the above, representatives are to be invited from the French, German, Italian, and Australian Wesleyan Methodists, together with those of other countries. It is suggested that the Ecumenical Conference be composed of ministerial and lay members in as nearly equal numbers as possible, selected by the highest executive authority. These various sections of Methodists, in their united capacity, form a community of fifteen millions of people, of whom rather more than four millions are recognised church members. As nearly as can be ascertained, there are in connection with the various branches of Methodism 30,000 ministers and about 60,000 lay preachers. It is a remarkable fact that subdivided as Methodists are into so many sections, each has been faithful to the doctrines of Methodism as preached by Mr. Wesley, and this for a period extending over more than a century and a quarter. Of the numerous divisions that have taken place during that time, not one has been caused by divergence from doctrine, but all on Church discipline and order.

A CONTRAST.

N Thursday, August 29th, the Rev. George Drury, B.A., incumbent of Akenham and rector of Claydon, stood by the gate of the churchyard at Akenham in the presence of a funeral party. A coffin containing the mortal remains of a little child lay on the ground. A Baptist minister was engaged in reading some scriptural sentences as part of a funeral service, for the rev. incumbent had refused to read the Church Service, or to allow the body to be interred in consecrated ground. A long and unseemly squabble, lasting for more than ten minutes, ensued between the incumbent and the Baptist minister (Mr. Tozer), caused by the declaration on the part of the incumbent, "That child has not been baptized, and is therefore not a Christian, and I object to its being buried as such, and I have the right to teach my parishioners that it is wrong to perform funeral rites of a Christian form over the remains of an unbaptized child.”

On Friday, August 30th, the Rev. Canon Tugwell, rector of Bermondsey, attended at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and received a presentation of a complete set of "Spurgeon's Sermons," and four volumes of the 'Treasury of David," in recognition of his Christian courtesy in offering the use of the National Schoolroom for Sunday-evening services to the committee engaged in conducting the Green Walk Mission.

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The first feeling in every breast is one of sympathy with the bereaved, and a desire to commend them to the God of all comfort and consolation. Unfortunately, some preachers have gone beyond this, and speak of these accidents as being "sent by God" as punishments, and upon this subject we have much pleasure in noticing a letter recently addressed to a contemporary :

"SIR,—It may seem to many like David going against Goliath to question Mr. Spurgeon's 'dicta,' yet as the Lord was then on the side of the weaker instrument, so now I believe His truth to be on the side of those who, like myself, must protest against the affirmations made in last Sunday morning's sermon at the Tabernacle, that accidents are of God,' and 'sent by God.'

"I at least have always regarded them as of sin, and coming through ignorance or neglect of the laws God has implanted in the world, and quite fail to see how either God or man can consistently blame an agent, who, however blundering, would, according to this theory, only be fulfilling His will.

"I suppose Mr. Spurgeon would readily grant that it is sin that causes human ignorance and blunder, and also that God did not send sin into the world. How he can then make out the accident that comes as the result of sin as being of God' is to me a mystery, and is surely an awful perversion both of His character and Word. "That God does not interfere miraculously to prevent either sin or its consequences having a place in this world, I believe equally with Mr. Spurgeon, and also that He makes their very awfulness become a power for good; but that He is their author I deny.

"I have reason also to know the painful revolt such teaching causes in many against religion in general, and lest silence on the part of other preachers might be mistaken for acquiescence, venture thus very regretfully, as well as very respectfully, to enter my public protest against such a doctrine. D. ALEXANDER.

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Congregational Church, Plaistow, E., Sept. 10, 1878." These sentiments are well worthy the consideration of all those who would rightly understand the manner in which Divine Providence operates in the affairs of this world.

T

PLANT SEX.

HE communication of "G. T., Jr.," in Morning Light for September 7th most interestingly takes this discussion, which has already occupied so much space in our New Church periodicals, into a higher plane of thought; but yet in doing so it does not touch the question first mooted as to Swedenborg's error in a lower plane, in denying the existence of plant sexes, which he does most unequivocally, and without qualification, and in avowed antagonism to natural science. In the first portion of his paper "G. T." so well and temperately relates and refutes the unwise effort of "J. F. P." to criticise, "with seeming assurance," a subject of which he confessed himself ignorant, even if such a confession had been required to manifest the fact, that further reply is needless, although the communication of "J. F. P." was chiefly controverting one in the Repository for June. S. T.

RELIGIOUS WORK IN PARIS. THE Exhibition has brought every one and everything to Paris, and among its curious and unexpected phenomena is the active proselytism displayed by the English and French evangelical parties. Outside the Trocadero are elegant little kiosques and pavilions, not devoted to pleasure but to piety. The Religious Tract Society, the Bible Society, the Christian Knowledge Society, are here in full force, distributing gratuitously such an amount of New Testaments, Bibles, and tracts as were surely never found in Paris before. 25,000 tracts are distributed a day, and I was assured that were the bureaux open on Sundays 40,000 could be easily disposed of. Large numbers of the separate Gospels, translated of course into French, are distributed also; and so zealously has the work of propagandism been carried on, that, what with the Religious Tract Society on one hand and M. Gambetta on the other, the priests at Belleville will soon not have a leg to stand upon. It is in Belleville, the nest and nursing-ground of Communism, infidelity, and Heaven knows what, that most stringent efforts are being made, English ladies.

helping the French and Swiss evangelical organization with great zeal. The priests are keenly alive to the spiritual dangers besetting their flocks, and preach from the pulpit on the abominable fact that they cannot now enter a dwelling in Belleville without finding a copy of the Bible! But this is not all. Besides getting up prayermeetings and Bible-readings, the ladies have set on foot mothers' meetings, to which flock large numbers of the poorest female population of the district, who sew for two hours, receiving all the time spiritual exhortation or instruction, and at the end fifty centimes for their labours. As the needlework is for the benefit of the poor, the pecuniary reward is not so small as it appears to be. Furthermore there are services held twice daily in the Salle Evangélique close to the Exhibition, and hither, amid the picturesque and glittering crowds, Arabs in their white and crimson drapery, veiled Moorish ladies, accompanied by gaily-dressed negresses, Japanese in sober blue, Italian contadine in full costume, Persians, Hindoos, Annamites, and holiday-makers from the four quarters of the globe, assemble little congregations of all nations to sing Wesley's hymns, and pray for the conversion of their neighbours.-Fraser's Magazine.

THE SLOW GROWTH OF THE NEW CHURCH. To the Editor.

OUR correspondent, H. Edwards, in a recent issue has referred to the slow growth of the New Church, and wishes to stimulate its present members to a different and more successful field of labour than at present occupies their attention.

Without losing sight of the important fact that it is the duty of every receiver of the doctrines to use his utmost endeavours to impart to his fellow-creatures a knowledge of the truths he possesses and esteems so precious, let us ask the question, Is the slow growth of the New Church a reality or an appearance? A little consideration will suffice to satisfy us that it is the latter.

The growth of the New Church does not consist merely in the enrolment of new members to the sect called Swedenborgians, but rather of the increasing reception into the minds of men of the truths of Divine wisdom, flowing forth from their infinite source with accelerated efficacy, capable of making men "wise unto salvation;" and of the reception into their hearts of the Divine goodness, which manifests itself in the outward lives of its recipients, so that each in his finite capacity becomes transformed into the image and likeness of his Maker, and the whole in the aggregate forming the true Church of the Lord.

Now if we look upon Swedenborg as being the only channel through which the Lord in His mercy communicates His truth to mankind, we shall doubtless be labouring under a delusion, and make a wrong estimate as to the nature and extent of the communication.

Readers of Swedenborg are too liable to think that, as they are the privileged recipients of truths of a much higher order than other people, little or perhaps no living truth is possessed by other sects, and when they do not hear "any quotations from his works," conclude that the principles upon which they build their lives are confined to their sect alone. But this is not so, for notwithstanding the fact that diluted doctrine is objectionable, the minds of men are incapable of accepting the truth in its purity, and Divine Providence permits it to be presented to them in an adulterated form suited to their different states and capacity for reception.

In looking for the "signs" of the Second Advent which we believe to be now taking place, we shall assuredly look in vain in calculating by a proportion sum the time required to complete the work at a certain fixed increase per annum. It is not "Lo here, or lo there, but the kingdom of God is within you," hence we may conclude with certainty that the establishment of the "kingdom of the Lord" is an internal and not an external operation.

Even at the First Advent, when the Lord manifested Himself in the flesh on this material earth, the essential work of redemption was carried on in the world of spirits. The sufferings He endured in this world, and the life of beneficent acts, terminating in the tragedy of the Cross, were the manifestations on a natural plane of the combat between the Almighty and loving God, and the infernal powers of darkness taking place in the world of spirits. Hence it was not His material body which was glorified and made Divine, but the human nature which He assumed in its lowest form of existence, in order that He might snatch the human race at large (and not merely the inhabitants of the country in which He lived) from the depths of wickedness into which it had fallen.

And similarly with the Second Advent. The Lord is making Himself manifest in many ways, and this fact is more evident to New Churchmen than any one; and although we possess direct revelation of the Lord Himself through His servant Swedenborg, yet for us to suppose that the "Swedenborgians" are the only happy participators in the blessed effects of His presence, would be a supposition as fallacious as if we regarded the blessings resulting

from the work of redemption limited to the Redeemer's disciples while on earth.

A great change is now going on in the minds of men throughout the world, and when we endeavour to look at the Church in general, as the Lord looks upon humanity at large, and not to sections of that Church, we find old dogmas gradually falling away; the personal devil and similar myths are now retained with less tenacity than heretofore, and more correct ideas of religion are taking their place. To my mind the distribution of New Church literature to the clergy and other leading men, which is carried on now by ardent pioneers of the Church, is performing a use in aiding this work of preparation which cannot be esteemed too highly. It is well known that although Swedenborgianism" coming from the lips of Old Church ministers might drive their hearers away, New Church truths, divested of any ism whatever, are gradually finding their way into Old Church pulpits, and listened to with eagerness by the unsuspecting congregations; and notwithstanding the fact that the world of religious thought is darkened by lowering clouds of error and falsity, we see here and there beams of light breaking through the gloom, assuring us that the Lord is hastening the time when "the knowledge of Him shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." F. A. G.

I

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THE NEW RHETORIC. URBANA LETTER, NO. II.

To the Editor.

HAVE noticed with no little interest the series of papers by Mr. Grindon on 66 Figurative Language" now appearing in your columns. As one of those engaged in the endeavour to build up a system of distinctively New Church education, I wish to express my appreciation of the excellent service Mr. Grindon is rendering our cause in these able and interesting papers, and particularly in showing, as he does, what would seem to be a conclusion of logical necessity, and yet what many New Churchmen are slow to practi cally admit, that the New Church really has to do with every one of even our common-school branches" of study. There is, I con fidently believe, yet to be produced a new grammar, a new rhetoric, a new logic, and a new ethics, not to speak of the new chemistry, and new mathematics, and physics which are already beginning to take shape, not only in the great prophecies of Swedenborg's scien tific works, but more or less in modern applications of our author's principles in various scientific systems.

I have long felt in our college class-rooms that the time is near at hand when in the interest of our own schools, and of education at large, our New Church scholars should make at least a modest beginning in the way of providing school manuals and new codes constructed on distinctly New Church principles. We have had the subject before us in our Faculty at Urbana for several years, and each year adds strength to our conviction, not only of the need of such codes, but of the feasibility of their production. A better system of general metaphysics than is afforded in the "Divine Love and Wisdom," which is read through in Latin in our regular academic curriculum at Urbana University, could hardly be desired. In anatomy and physiology we need only a convenient digest and abridgment of the "Animal Kingdom" and "Economy," illustrated if desired with the new materials furnished by scientific research, with a careful avoidance of these falsities which poison almost every prominent scientific theory of modern invention.

So in physics and chemistry, I have long felt convinced that even Swedenborg's principles of chemistry are yet to find themselves occupying a very important position in our future science of this subject, and the great outline of physics in the "Principia" looms already before us in majestic proportions in almost every important and far-reaching induction of our modern scientists, when viewed apart from the vain and arbitrary theories with which they bedim the brightness of their own discoveries.

To return to rhetoric. I have been driven almost to despair at the paucity of ideas in our modern treatises prepared for the use of schools. How utterly without rational basis are their wandering speculations about the origin of language, the peculiar use or function of rhetoric, the secret of rhetorical power and of the laws of expression. As for classification of words, the parts of speech, could anything be more arbitrary and irrational? What is learned in grammar has only to be as quickly unlearned in logic, and that which neither of these sciences can deal with, namely, the appal to the affections, and which should therefore be dealt with especially in rhetoric, is generally passed over by the rhetoricians them selves with a mere incidental allusion, as though deserving of only passing notice. And so it comes very naturally that the subject of figures of rhetoric" or "figurative language" is also treated of as only a subordinate and accidental feature of rhetoric,

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I allude here to the treatment of adjectives in grammar aš abstract, whereas in logic they become concrete terms.

instead of constituting, as it does, a fundamental and most vital division of the science. It is gratifying to observe that some modern writers, as, for example, Emerson and Carlyle, as well as rhetoricians, are coming to acknowledge at least that " all language is figurative."

This of course involves an admission of a correspondence between mind and matter, or between two worlds and their contents, as objects of thought and expression. Then, if it be admitted that there is any law governing the growth or use of figurative language, must it not also follow that there is a law of the implied correspondence? This once admitted, the rhetorician will be compelled to resort to revelation for a true, final knowledge of this law, for a law so far-reaching and fundamental as that governing the inter-relation, and even the creation, of the two worlds of matter and mind can hardly be regarded as coming within the reach of human ability to discover or "contrive" without the aid of the Divine Creator, by whose word all things were made that are made. When this fact is admitted, and made the basis of the study of figurative language, and of the laws regulating its rhetorical use, how fascinating and how delightful does the study become! We seem to be striking literally at the roots of things in getting at the roots of words, and these things, these substances, are they not what the affections perceive, feel, and find delight in, or what peculiarly strikes, moves, touches, affects the will of man, and thus makes the orator's speech more effectual and moving than the more correct grammarian's ?

But I must desist from the pursuit of so inviting a theme to revert again to Mr. Grindon's admirable and suggestive studies in this direction. May we not hope that when the series is completed they will be digested and abbreviated so far as necessary, and put into the shape of a text-book for practical use in the class-room with students in rhetoric. The author is pursuing the subject on that true and satisfying principle that all language is indeed figurative and correspondential, and that the figures or words themselves were originally objective, and that they became gradually applied to subjective ideas.

,,

My interest in the subject, and in the treatment of it by Mr. Grindon, will warrant, however, my suggesting an inquiry as to our author's entire consistency in the system he is laying down. I must admit that it was not without a mental shock that I read in the beginning of Chapter II. that "man constructed language." "If it can be proved," Mr. Grindon goes on to say, "that terms, first for physical objects, secondly for emotions and abstract ideas, could readily have been contrived by the early members of society, the requirements of the argument will be met.' The italics are mine; and I here venture to inquire whether the theory of language as a human contrivance is consistent with the principle adhered to throughout the subsequent discussion, that it rests upon a Divine law of correspondence between matter and mind? In other words, was it open to human option or deliberate choice and subsequent social agreement to call certain things and express certain emotions by certain names or sounds? or were, on the contrary, the names and sounds involved in the very things themselves as a law of their very production and being. ́ I have supposed the latter to be the case, and that men can in no sense be said to have originally contrived how to express their emotions and ideas than they originally contrived how to digest their food or how to grow. It would certainly be a puzzling inquiry if, thus, language were a matter of conventional agreement by a number of persons deciding arbitrarily how to call this thing or that by name, or how to express this or that feeling,-how, namely, did that congress of original contrivers contrive to make themselves at first understood one to another? As a human contrivance, necessitated, that is, by no absolute creative law, of course the ejaculations of each member of this community would probably differ from those of every other, and since no two minds are alike, and even if that term suggested by one member of the conference ultimately proved universally acceptable to the rejection of others, this does not give such a term or root in language the force of being a divinely correspondential expression such as all language must originally have been if there be any true correspondence in it at all. In other words, if language is correspondential, or was so in its origin, in any true sense of the word (which involves of course the idea of sounds corresponding to certain affections, as well as objective things corresponding to subjective ideas), could it in any sense be an arbitrary human contrivance? And does not this opening declaration of Mr. Grindon really invalidate all his later, and to my mind very acceptable, reasoning as to the universality and absolute truthfulness of "figures of speech"?

Another very important branch of the subject which Mr. Grindon, I believe, has not touched upon as yet, is the relative priority of written and spoken language-or, as we might rather designate it from a New Church standpoint, of visible or audible expression. This has a vast deal to do with the whole question of the rise and growth of language. Was not the original Divine language in Principles of Rhetoric (A. S. Hill, Professor of Rhetoric in Harvard College), p. 93.

forms addressed to the eye rather than in sounds? Did not God thus speak first in uttering the initial WORD: "Let there be LIGHT"? -speak, I mean, not in sound, but in the light itself, the origin of all form, and thus all expression or communication by form of feeling or of idea? FRANK SEWALL.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Law and Medicine.-Dear Mr. Editor,-Will you, or some one of learned readers who know more of the writings of Swedenyour borg than I do, kindly reply to the following questions? 1st, Does Swedenborg in any of his writings speak of the presence of the professors of either law or medicine, or the need of their services, either in heaven, where the will of the Father is done, in the world of spirits, where the vastation of souls is effected, or in the new age or Church which is to regenerate this earth? 2ndly, In his doctrine of Uses, does he in any one instance assign a place or use to those professions in this or any other world? 3rdly, Supposing the fact should be as I anticipate, that he has not discovered a place or use for those professions, does it not necessarily follow that they had failed, in his estimation, to establish a reason for their existence, and that they might and will, for the benefit of mankind, be relegated to the obsolete domain of a past age and a dead Church? Please insert this in Morning Light, and thus relieve the doubts of ZENO. your friend

[We do not remember any references in Swedenborg to the professors of law or medicine as such; perhaps some of our rea ders may be able to give definite information in reply to questions one and two. In reply to question three, however, we may say the mere omission of reference to the uses of the two professions named does not necessarily imply that in the opinion of Emanuel Swedenborg, the said professions had failed to establish a reason for their existence. Many other useful occupations are not mentioned by Swedenborg.

We must remember that the Lord Himself is the great Lawgiver as well as the great Physician, and, though in all probability the "good time coming" will be distinguished by its freedom from legal contentions and quibbles, as well as by the comparative absence of physical disease, it will still be necessary for us to have men learned in the law of nations and in civil and municipal law, and also men profoundly versed in the laws of health. So long as man lives in this world he is liable to err, and hence he is liable to adopt false notions of law and to violate the laws of health. In heaven the LORD is the Lawgiver and the Physician, and those works which correspond to the perpetual work of the Lord can scarcely be regarded as relegated to the obsolete domains of a past age and a dead Church.]

The distinction between the heavens.—“ Anxious ” is perfectly right in believing that each heaven must have its uses, but the uses of the three heavens are performed from different principles of actions. Those in the highest heaven perform uses because they love the Lord who is Use itself. Those in the middle heaven perform uses because they love the neighbour, and the performance of uses manifests that love. Those in the lowest heaven perform uses because to do so is to render obedience to the Divine law. classes of persons residing in the three heavens are described in “Heaven and Hell" No. 33. There are two classes of angels in each of these heavens-the celestial and the spiritual. These two classes in the two higher heavens are described in "Heaven and Hell" Nos. 20, 28; those in the lowest heaven are described in No. 31.

ITEMS OF INTEREST.

The

On Sunday, September 15th, Mr. Gunton of London conducted the services, morning and evening, at the New Church, Ipswich, and also administered the Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Supper. The subjects brought under the notice of the congregations, which were good on both occasions, were "The Spiritual SeedTime and the Harvest of the World," from the Lord's parables of the sower and of the wheat and the tares. The preacher showed that there was an analogy between natural seed-times and harvest-times and spiritual seed-times and harvest-times, and that the spiritual lesson was the one intended to be conveyed by the Lord by means of the natural emblem. The three states of the ground-the way. side, the stony places, and the thorns-the preacher said represented, the first a spirit of indifference, or carelessness and unconcern about spiritual things; the second a spirit of formalism, a state in which religious observances were attended to, but only as a matter of form, the real spirit of religion, love to God and our neighbour, being very much lost sight of; and the third a state of evil, the result of the two former; for in a spirit of indifference evils always spring up. In regard to the harvest of the world, the preacher said that as the

production of wheat and other cereals was the end or object of the natural husbandman, so the production of that which is represented by wheat and other cereals was the end or object of the spiritual Husbandman-the Lord Jesus-whose object was to implant in every field-every human mind-heavenly goodness; and this was effected by sowing good seed, which good seed represents the precepts of life from the Word, and these precepts when practised confirm good in the mind, and heavenly good in the mind is the harvest, and such minds are at length gathered into the Lord's barn-the kingdom of heaven.

A very interesting meeting was held on Monday, the 16th inst., at Reading, in the schoolroom of the Broad Street Congregational Chapel, the occasion being the delivery of a lecture to the members of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society on the "Life of Swedenborg," by Mr. J. Adnams, a member of the Society; and although the gathering in point of numbers, owing to another important meeting being held at the same time, was small, very marked attention was paid to the various remarks of the lecturer; and in the short discussion which ensued at the close of the lecture the same lively interest was fully maintained, showing that the several speakers had had more or less an acquaintance with the writings of the Great Seer, and were by no means unfriendly to the claims and doctrines he advances. The chair was taken by one of the deacons.

The Manchester Examiner says that the Rev. William Impey has resigned the office as General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Missions in South-Eastern Africa. Some time ago Mr. Impey wrote to the Mission secretaries in London expressing his inability any longer to enforce on his brethren, or on the Kaffir converts of the mission, the "plain grammatical sense" of the words in the Methodist standards, which require it to be taught that "hell is a dark and bottomless pit, full of fire and brimstone, in which the wicked will be punished for ever and ever by having their bodies

tormented by the fire and their souls by a sense of the wrath of God." At the request of the secretaries he came to London and conferred with them, and the result has been that he was compelled to resign his position. His connection with the Wesleyan ministry has thus ceased after serving as a missionary for forty years.

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The proceedings of the recent New Church Conference were very widely, though necessarily at no great length, reported in the London daily papers. As in former years, this work was undertaken by the Auxiliary" Society, which appointed a sub-committee to arrange the matter. Availing itself of the presence in the Conference of the Society's hard-working Secretary, the Committee deputed him to forward a brief telegram each day to all the metropolitan daily newspapers, and by this means an aggregate of insertions consider. ably in excess of that in former years was obtained. The Daily Chronicle published four paragraphs, the Daily News five, the Daily Telegraph three, the Echo four, the Morning Advertiser two, the Morning Post five, and the Standard five. Thus seven out of the ten daily papers which appear in London gave publicity to the more important proceedings of the Conference, the most noteworthy exception being that of the Times, which has, however, in previous years frequently inserted similar notices. These paragraphs were probably copied by many country newspapers and weekly journals notwithstanding that the Committee has only traced two such instances, viz. in the Portsmouth Evening Standard and the Baptist. A brief notice of the Conference also appeared in the Christian World, the Kensington News, and the Good Templars' Watchword.

The Manchester daily newspapers devoted considerable space to reports of the proceedings of Conference. A file before us shows that from the Tuesday to the Saturday in Conference week the Examiner and Times, the Guardian and the Courier, each gave daily notices of the session of the Conference and the meetings in connection with it.

JESUS' TEACHING NEW AND DIVINE. October 6, Morning.-Matt. vi. 24-34. A man cannot be at the same time both in good and evil, or in love to the Lord and self-love; for one must be the ruling love, and the other must serve (ver. 24). The good of love with its intelligence, and all the truths of faith, are continually provided for man by the Lord (ver. 25). All spiritual intelligence is continually nourished by good from the Lord, without any care of its own, and much more the things of celestial love (ver. 26). A man cannot give increase to that intelligence and love by any care of his own apart from the Divine Providence; and in like manner all lesser truths are provided of the Lord (vers. 27, 28). In them is contained Divine Truth and Good (ver. 29). But if the Lord's Divine Providence thus extends to the lowest things of the regenerate life, how much more to the higher? (ver. 30.) Man ought therefore to depend upon the Divine Providence for sustenance in all degrees of his life, and not to trust to his own prudence (ver. 31). The unregenerate are more solicitous about external things and natural life than about internal things and spiritual life, when yet the sole end of the former is to minister to the latter (ver. 32). Therefore spiritual truth and good ought to be exalted above natural, and then both are preserved (ver. 33). A man should live free from care and anxiety, trusting in the Lord. He will then be protected from the opposite states of evil and falsity which are attached to every state of good and truth (ver. 34). SAMUEL SENDETH SAUL TO DESTROY AMALEK. October 6, Afternoon.-1 Sam. xv. 1-9. After the anointing of

Saul to be king over Israel, as also after we have raised the standard of the Lord in our souls, the work is by no means complete. Israel was not consolidated as a kingdom until it had fought with and subdued its surrounding enemies, bringing some into the position of hewers of wood and drawers of water, and utterly exterminating others, according as the Lord had commanded. So we likewise are not at once regenerate when we adopt the Lord's Word for our guide; we have still our battles with the natives of the land, with our hereditary evils and falsities, to fight with and subdue; we have still to bring some into the position of servants to our spiritual nature, and to utterly destroy others. The command of Samuel to Saul to destroy Amalek is still made by the Church to those who are desiring to become regenerate, and they are called upon to remove wholly the falsity grounded in interior evil which infests the Canaan in our minds. And we, like Saul, are too apt to spare what we in our opinion think good, irrespective of the higher judgment of the Lord, and only to destroy what we ourselves think utterly base and valueless. This is a grievous temptation, but a sure test of the measure to which we have attained a trust in the Lord and His Word.

BIRTH.

On September 19, at 5 Calder Terrace, Lower Hopton, Mirfield, Yorkshire, the wife of Mr. Joseph Hartley of a son (Herbert).

Printed by MUIR AND PATERSON, 14 Clyde Street, Edinburgh, and published by JAMES SPEIRS, 36 Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C.