show of zeal that is imitative and not honestly spontaneous. If the example of "the Orthodox" is so potent, why not adopt their doctrines as well as their practices? Besides, Mr. Beecher, who in pulpit power is at least one-half of Orthodoxdom, is in favor of one sermon; declaring that the human mind is constructed on the principle of a popgun, and can retain only one charge at a time!

The exacting laymen are as mean as the conforming ones are weak. It is a gross insult to impute the unrighteousness of indolence to all clergymen who do not exult in preaching to pews and pillars. Men who stay at home afternoons, but insist that their pastors shall serve their time out, are treating the shepherds as miserable hirelings, if not wretched galley-slaves. This feeling must have culminated in the remark of a profanely blunt parishioner, "I consider that silent prayer of yours something like a dodge."

After all, the decision of this question is, practically, in the hands of the people. Let them attend the second service in strong force, and there is not the slightest danger that it will be abandoned. It is their neglect of it, their failure to furnish an ecclesiastical quorum, which hangs a mill-stone around the neck of a preacher's enthusiasm. There is a remark of Kean's which ought to be quoted in this connection, "Such an audience would extinguish Etna."

While the people are making up their minds, they will please to consider the moral of this fact, given to us by Macaulay: "Rumford proposed to the Elector of Bavaria a scheme for feeding his soldiers at a much cheaper rate than formerly. His plan was simply to compel them to masticate their food more thoroughly. A small quantity, thus eaten, would afford more sustenance than a large meal hastily devoured."

In love surpassing that of brothers,

We walked, O friend! from childhood's day;
And, looking back o'er fifty summers,
Our foot-prints track a common way.

One in our faith, and one our longing
To make the world within our reach
Somewhat the better for our living,

And gladder for our human speech.

Thou heardst with me the far-off voices,
The old beguiling song of fame;
But life to thee was warm and present,
And love was better than a name.

To homely joys and loves and friendships
Thy genial nature fondly clung;
And so the shadow on the dial

Ran back, and left thee always young.

And who could blame the generous weakness, Which, only to thyself unjust,

So overprized the worth of others,

And dwarfed thy own with self-distrust?

All hearts grew warmer in the presence
Of one, who, seeking not his own,
Gave freely for the love of giving,
Nor reaped for self the harvest sown.

Thy greeting smile was pledge and prelude
Of generous deeds and kindly words:
In thy large heart were fair guest-chambers,
Open to sunrise and the birds.

The task was thine to mould and fashion
Life's plastic newness into grace;
To make the boyish heart heroic,

And light with thought the maiden's face.

O'er all the land, in town and prairie,
With bended heads of mourning, stand
The living forms that owe their beauty
And fitness to thy shaping hand.

Thy call has come in ripened manhood,
The noonday calm of heart and mind:
While I, who dreamed of thy remaining
To mourn me, linger still behind;

Live on, to own, with self-upbraiding,
A debt of love still due from me,-
The vain remembrance of occasions,
For ever lost, of serving thee.

It was not mine among thy kindred
To join the silent funeral prayers;
But, all that long sad day of summer,
My tears of mourning dropped with theirs.

All day the sea-waves sobbed with sorrow,
The birds forgot their merry trills;
All day I heard the pines lamenting
With thine upon thy homestead hills.

Still let them greet thy life companions
Who thither turn their pilgrim feet,
In every mossy line recalling

A tender memory sadly sweet.

O friend! if thought and sense avail not
To know thee henceforth as thou art,
That all is well with thee for ever,

I trust the instincts of my heart.

Thine be the quiet habitations,

Thine the green pastures, blossom-sown,
And smiles of saintly recognition

As sweet and tender as thy own.

Thou com'st not from the hush and shadow
To meet us; but to thee we come :
With thee we never can be strangers;
And where thou art must still be home.

Independent.

THE "WESTMINSTER REVIEW'S" ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY.

THE "Westminster Review" for July, 1863, contains an article on the growth of Christianity, which is interesting as an illustration of a certain attitude of mind in a class of modern thinkers. This Review represents those who, in theology, favor all "the newness." Behind all their investigation and argument lies a prepossession. Just as Christian thinkers are prepossessed in favor of all the common views concerning inspiration, prophecy, miracles, &c., so are these writers prepossessed against them. Back of all thinking, there is apt to be a motive,a motive often unseen by the thinker himself. "What is he driving

at.

at?" is the common-sense question of the reader. But the writer often does not know himself what he is driving He thinks himself an unbiassed inquirer. In reality, he is a special pleader. He is trying to argue down, or argue up, some popular or heretical view.

The object of the writer in the "Westminster" is to account for the " 'growth of Christianity," minus the superhuman element; to show how it came of itself, and could not help coming; to indicate natural causes for its appearance; in short, to re-write Gibbon's famous Fifteenth Chapter, with adaptation to modern ideas and knowledge. And thus he sets about it:

1. THE ROMAN EMPIRE, having conquered the world, had prepared the ground for some corresponding moral conquest, which should unite in one religion what the sword had united in one State. The tendency of Roman civilization was toward social unity.

2. HELLENIC CULTURE also had swept over all nations, and so prepared the way intellectually for some conquest of thought by making a universal public opinion.

3. JUDAISM, through Philo and the Alexandrians, had come fully in contact with this Greek culture. Meantime, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes had developed Judaism in a threefold direction, each containing an important element, to be afterward taken up into the new religion.

4. The Jewish theocracy, with its Monotheism, was itself a preparation also, while it excited hopes of a return of the theocratic kingdom under a new king, — the Messiah.

5. It therefore was inevitable that some prophet should be identified with the expected Saviour. Jesus became this Prophet by the cast of his mind, which caused him to reproduce in a living way the old truths of the theocracy.