the call of Another, be emancipated by the messengers of Another. That Other has come. "Awake, thou that sleepest, arise from the dead; and Christ shall give thee light."

2. Completely. As the travellers once safely in their ships again, were beyond all the perils of the land of the lotos, so the Christly man shall become conqueror of appetite,

lord over lust. The perfectness of the Divine life is only known by him who has learned to keep under his body, and to mortify the flesh. The self-restraint of Him who endured the cross is repeated in the lives of men who in His name and spirit carry their cross after Him.

Bristol.

URIJAH R. THOMAS.

The Variety of Christ as a

Teacher.

THERE was nothing monotonous in His teaching. There was always something new. The same thing twice said by Him seemed different. Variety is a characteristic of nature, monotony of art. Take the flower blooming in the landscape and the flower painted on the canvas; or take the cedar towering in the forest, and the cedar cut down, carved, and polished by the hand of art, to adorn some lordly mansion. The flower and the tree abroad in the bosom of nature are changing their forms and tints every hour; but in the cold sphere of art they remain from year to year almost the same. There seems to me as much difference between a teacher who is natural and one who is artificial, as between the growing cedar and the polished pillar. The former is constantly varying-new branches sprout forth and new tints appear; but the latter, from its constant sameness, becomes uninteresting. The want of naturalness

has always been the sin and weakness of religious teachers. They have too generally lost their nature in their art, they have merged all the idiosyncrasies of their manhood in their office. Their education, instead of strengthening and developing their nature and bringing out all its strong and characteristic points, has moulded them after some conventional model, by which all are made to think in the same way, speak in the same voice, and move in the same style. Hence people sleep under the monotony of the pulpit now-adays.

Gospel Hearers.

THERE are two widely distinct classes of unprofitable Gospel hearers the morbid sentimentalists, and the theoretical intellectualists. The former are never gratified in the sanctuary unless their passions are stirred and their animal sympathies awakened. Dramatic exhibitions of truth, terrible details of misery, pictorial sketches

of hell, tragic exhibitions of Christ's physical agonies-whatever, in fact, in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the hell under all, will move the mere feelings, is gospel to them, and nothing else. Hence the preacher, however material and gross in his notions, if fluent in speech, vehement in spirit, and dramatic in style, is ever most popular with such. And the latter, namely, the theoretical intellectualists, esteem nothing as gospel but certain doctrinal views. They feed on the husk of a metaphysical creed.

The Tenderness of Christ

in His Teaching.

CHRIST'S tenderness was not the simpering of an effeminate nature; it was the sense of a mighty mind, who looked into the heart of things, having the deep consciousness of their solemn and strange relations. It could roll the thunders of faithful rebuke, as well as breathe the words of soothing sympathy and hope. His tenderness was as the sap of the oakthe strength of His nature. His tear was the exudation of moral force. Let all teachers imitate the Great Teacher in this. Tenderness is the soul of eloquence; it tunes the voice into music; it breathes our thoughts into the hearts of our hearers, and makes them one with us.

philosophies

infidels would

have us believe were the fountains of His best ideas. Does the sun borrow from the ray? Then did Jesus borrow from your Socrates, Plato, and Seneca? No, He borrowed not. He drew His sermons from Himself. His ideas came forth from Him, wearing the impress of His own nature. Even the ideas that had been current in the world before, He made His own-made new. He moulded them into new forms, breathed into them new life, and gave them new voices to startle the dormant faculties of mankind, and mould men into His own image. He cut a new channel for the world's thought, ever widening and ever deepening, and threw into it a tide of sentiments that shall one day flood society with a new life.

The Suggestiveness of

Christ as a Teacher. THERE was more religious thinking, perhaps, in Judea during the three years of His ministry, than had been there for centuries before. He put the wheels of religious thought, which had been all but motionless for ages, into a rapid movement, which has been perpetuated ever since, and which has borne humanity on to its present advanced stage of civilization, knowledge, morality, and religion. His thoughts, like the breath of spring, swept over the mental world, and quickened its dormant germs into life. This suggestive teaching is the highest kind of teaching, the only teaching of any worth. He who crams the

THE Pagurida, or Hermit Crab, generally seeks for its home the shell of some univalve mollusk. Into this spiral home he coils himself. As the crab does not possess the same power of adding to the size of the domicile that was enjoyed by the original tenant, he is compelled from time to time to change his residence for one a little larger, and almost as difficult

often appears to please as a human householder in the same predicament. Often they may be seen crawling about amongst the empty shells just thrown upon the beach, trying one after another, until they meet with one uniting all the conditions requisite for crustacean comfort; but until this great object of their search is attained, always returning to their old house after each unsuccessful trial. It is said, indeed, that when two of them happen simultaneously to cast a longing eye upon some particularly suitable residence, they often engage in a fierce battle for the possession of the

coveted object. But there is no continued bickering or bad feeling excited in the neighbourhood, for the victor carries off his house in triumph to the place of his adoption.

This shows, that besides men there are other existences which have some trouble in finding suitable houses; and, like most householders, these little creatures live in habitations they themselves could not have built.

The Ant: A Model Community.

THE ants, those tranquil inhabitants of subterranean republics, are bound together by a mutual affection in a devoted fraternity, which makes them ever ready to assist each other. They all help one another as much as they can. If an ant is tired, a comrade carries it on his back. Those which are so absorbed with their work that they have no time to think of their food, are fed by their companions. When an ant is wounded, the first one who meets it renders it assistance and carries it home. When an ant has discovered any rich prey, far from enjoying it alone like a gourmand, it invites all its companions to the feast.

Community of goods and interests exists amongst all the members of this model society. It is the practical realization of the dream formed by certain philosophers of our day, who were only able to conceive the idea, the possibility, the project, of such a community of goods and interests, which is among ants a reality.