free communion, but it has its work to do. It is, therefore, to be managed, not defied, or overborne. It follows that real interchange of feeling on religious topics obeys the same laws that interchange of feeling on other topics does. In its outward manifestations, in its practical and wise benevolences, the Church can band together. In all social and kindly offices, its members should prove to themselves and show to the world how Christians love one another. They are baptized into one name, moved by a common love, bound by a common vow. They should be real "brothers in unity." But further than this they are not required to go. Friendship, confidential outpourings, the exosmose and endosmose of souls, is a matter of magnetism, not of morals or religion. Respect is awarded to worth; excellence wins esteem; but "Our likings and dislikings Have their own instinctive laws." Church-members, like others, will group themselves unconsciously, according to hidden organism. Money or learning or "high birth" does not decide it, but internal construction. One man is indifferent to circumstances, and can unbosom himself without regard to time or place. Another must enter into his closet and shut the door. That closet may indeed be the solitude of his own study, or the circle of his chosen friends, or the place where heavy-laden souls cry out for weariness, or Christian hands, prayer-burdened, lay hold on God; but wherever it is, it must be in the atmosphere where alone his soul can live, and move, and have its being. It is useless to demand or expect otherwise, and he who does so knows little of human nature. Therefore, if a brother is silent when you would fain have him moved to speech, think it not always because he is not a Christian, but sometimes simply because he is not you. You choose your own time and place. Grant him the same liberty. This sensitiveness works in two ways. It not only restricts Christian intercourse, but it renders necessary the utmost watchfulness in dealing with those who are not Christians. Here, alas! we often fail. We are not delicate and wise in our modes of operation. It does not hurt a drum to be beaten, but a harp gives up its soul of sweetness to the touch of dimpled fingers. Some hearts are all out-doors, and some are a labyrinth in which, unless you get a clew-thread, you may grope forever without discovering the secret chamber where the Presence sits enthroned. Therefore be wary, be vigilant, be wise. Feel your way. Do not fire your shots at random. Your object is not ought not to be to discharge or exhibit your revolver, or to show that you can pull a trigger. It is to do execution, to bring down the foe that is leading a soul captive. Take aim before you shoot; otherwise your charge may go crashing in among heartstrings, and still their quivering forever. - - "Be instant in season and out of season," is an injunction that has been sadly misunderstood and misapplied. There are good people — the Lord reward their unselfish seeking, and not visit their blunders upon the heads of their victims! — who fancy it to mean that "personal appeals " are always in order. I knew a woman, bearing now, I doubt not, a new name among the angels, who, feeling it her duty to admonish her neighbors of theirs, and not being endowed with a nice sense of the fitness of things, used to startle her friends by the most unexpected forays. If, at a social gathering, she saw a person in whose salvation she was interested, the presence of one, two, or a dozen others was no obstacle to exhortation. "Dear Mr. A., won't you seek religion? Promise me that you will seek religion." I have heard a person, whose own heart was full of love to the Saviour, ask a young lady sitting next him, at a dinner-party, if she did not find great consolation in the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. It is unnecessary to multiply instances. All the way along, we more or less waste our strength by smiting when the iron is cold. Yet we might learn a better lesson every day. The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light; and the children of light are often wiser about everything else than about the light itself. When your little three-year old trips, nightgowned and barefooted, into your room in the morning, and climbs up into your bed, and begins forthwith to plan and execute surprising excursions, planting his heel upon your throat, and his fist on your nose, plumping himself down at irregular intervals, entirely oblivious of paternal sensations, you hardly undertake then to imbue his mind with quiet, loving, religious thoughts. His little soul, fresh from long, dreamless sleep, is wide awake. Every nerve and fibre of his body is quivering with life, and harnessed for action. So, if you are sensible, you tumble him over, and roll him about, and punch him, and knead him, and tickle him, till he screams with delighted laughter. But when he has danced away the summer day, and goes to his mother, tired, happy, and subdued, she takes him in her arms, and tells him "That sweet story of old, How Jesus appeared among men," and with the music of divine love murmured into his ear from lips that are only not divine, the blue eyes film, the silken lashes droop, and the childsoul wanders off into the land of sleep; but the human and divine, woven together in his heart forevermore shall, through all the years that are to come, preserve his eyes from tears, his feet from falling, and his soul from death. If you do not learn it from your course towards your child, you may learn it from his towards you; and I often think that children have a certain fresh, instinctive knowledge of human nature that after years incrust and destroy. When you are waiting in your half-warmed breakfast-room, impatient of delay, and anxious to be gone to your of fice, your boy amuses himself as best he can; it is when you sit by your evening fire in dressing-gown and slippers, in happy quietude, that he wriggles up your knee, sits astride your lap, and says confidently, "Now, papa, tell me a story." All the way from infancy to old age, if we wish to make an impression on hearts, we must take hearts when they are open to impression. I do not attempt to give, and I do not think there is, any specific rule. Every man is constructed upon a different basis, and must work and be worked after his kind. Some it may be well to meet breastwise, with full front, breaking in upon their absorbing business, or pleasure, or madness, with a "Thus saith the Lord." Others will be moved by a loving word, a tender inquiry, a gentle suggestion, as you walk home with them on a summer evening. You must be the judge of where and how, but judge. Do not follow a blind impression that you are to make home-thrusts right and left, without regard to time or place. Do not fancy, as I knew an excellent woman who seemed to do, that your social, religious duty is discharged when you have put to every person you meet the question, "How do you feel in your mind"? The human heart remains ever an unsolved and in |