The Museum

“In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”

SOLOMON’S first recourse was philosophy. He was a king, and he could pursue his researches on a splendid scale. We know that lie collected natural curiosities from distant countries, and it is likely that he attracted to his court the learned of many lands. Nor is it improbable that he attained an insight to natural phenomena, possessed by none of his cotemporaries. To the present day Eastern magicians invoke his name as if he were a controller of the elements; a circumstance from which some have very gratuitously inferred that he must have been a magician himself. But the fact is interesting. It looks as if tradition still preserved a recollection of certain prodigies which science enabled him to perform, and it would suggest that he was an experimenter as well as an observer.

But it was not only apes and peacocks, cedars and hyssop, which he studied, and the elements on which he experimented; he studied man. He looked at man’s position in this world. He examined his story in time past. “He sought and searched out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven;” “he saw all the works that are done under the sun.” And he did not confine himself to grave generalities; he did not read solely the stately histoiy of kings. “He gave his heart to know madness and folly,” as well as “wisdom;” nor was he so pedantic as not to gather instruction from the frivolous and fantastic as well as from the august in human nature. His appetite for knowledge was omnivorous, and whilst hungering for the harvest he was thankful for crumbs.

The result was, satiety without satisfaction; or rather, it was the sober certainty of “sorrow.” “All the works done under the sun are vanity and vexation of spirit.” Look at this Mesech of mortality! What a hot and noisy hive it is, and how each insect hums out and in on his consequential errands, till some night Death, the grim owner, comes and stifles all, and takes the honey. “I have seen all the works done under the sun; “I know their object, I know their result. It is comfort, soul-content for which the millions moil and bustle. For this the clodpole delves in the stiff clay, and the pearl-fisher dives in the deep lagoon. From his fragrant woods the herbalist of Gilead would fain distil it, and from his royal dainties the Asherite strives to confect it. With its rich cargoes the ships of Tarshish and the dromedaries of Midian have many a time been laden; but when the time came to open the bales, nothing was found save ocean-brine or desert sand. All was transmuted into vanity and vexation of spirit.” This sore travail hath God given to the sons of men.” The very pursuit of knowledge is penal. The search after happiness is itself a sore punishment. Here, like a gin-horse, has the world been for ages tramping round and round, hoping to fetch up the golden bucket; from the deep shaft of thought and effort; but alas! sin has cut the rope, and there is now no golden bucket at the end. Still, however, the blind gin-horse limps and wheezes on, and jades himself to death with this sore travail. I see the misery; I see not how to mend it. “That which is crooked cannot be made straight.” There is a twist in man’s destiny, a bias in man’s will, a crook in man’s constitution which science cannot rectify. uAnd that which is wanting cannot be numbered.” I have a list of those ingredients which constitute well-being, and which I am told that man once possessed, e.g., peace of conscience, elasticity of temper, health, contentment, exemption from death, faith in the future; and I have made a survey of humanity and come back with an inventory of mere desiderata. These joys have vanished. The spoiler has been here. The regalia are rifled, and the onyx of Havilah has been torn from the crown which Adam wore in Paradise. And as the upshot of all I say,

LECTURE V.

“Much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” Happier that beggar child who can fancy his reed a sceptre, than that grey-haired monarch who knows that a sceptre is only gilded copper. Happier the fisher boy who, with his kettle, hopes to bail the sinking boat, than his wiser father who, through the widening leak already sees their watery grave. Happier the peasant who fancies the magazine inexhaustible, than the governor who knows that it will be all consumed months before the harvest. In a world like this much science is much sorrow; for it is the know ledge of our penury, — the statistics of starvation, — the assurance that our case is desperate. Therefore, I break up my encyclopaedic elysium, and on my temple of art inscribe, “Vanity and vexation of spirit: “•

“Where ignorance is bliss j
‘Tis folly to be wise.” *

Unless it include the knowledge of the Living God, there is sorrow in much science; that is, the more a man knows, unless he also knows the Saviour, the

* As Lord Byron has expressed it, with his usual mixture of force and flippancy: “The lapse of ages changes all things: time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and everything ’ about, around, and underneath ’ man, except man himself, who has always been, and will always be an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment. All the discoveries which have yet been made have multiplied little but existence.”

sadder may we expect him to become. Of this we have an instance in a late philosopher, who, like Solomon, united to ardour of physical research a thoughtful and musing spirit, and who in his “Last Days of a Philosopher,” has bequeathed to the world a manual of mournful “Consolations.” It was not from any drawback in his outward lot, nor from any disappointment of his hopes, that Sir Humphrey Davy took leave of life so gloomily. Of the sons of science few have been so favoured. In his grand discovery of the metallic bases, and in his more popular invention of the safety-lamp; in the com mand of a laboratory which opened a royal road to chemistry, and in the splendid crowds who thronged to his lectures; from the moment that he found a generous patron till he became a Baronet of the United Kingdom, and President of the Royal Society, his whole career was a series of rare felicities. Nor was he the anchoret of science, a lonely and smoke-dried alchemist. He was a man of fashion, and, like Solomon, mingled “madness and folly” with graver pursuits. Yet with all his versatile powers, — orator, philosopher, poet; and with all his distinctions glittering around him, his heart still felt hollow, and in his later journals the expressive entry was, “Very miserable.” What was it that he wanted? He himself has told us: “I envy no quality of mind or intellect in others, — not genius, power, wit, or fancy; but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness, creates new hopes when all earthly hopes vanish, and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights, calling up the most delightful visions, where the sensualist and sceptic view only gloom, decay, and annihilation.”

Whilst the philosopher has here truly said that nothing can fill the central gulf in man’s spirit, except a sound religious belief, he speaks of its attainment despondingly; and probably he felt, what many have expressed, that it is not easy for a man of science to “receive the kingdom of God as a little child.” It is possible that some one now present may be in the same predicament. You wish to be lieve, and are sorry to doubt; but you find that it is not easy to be at once the votary of science and the hearty disciple of Jesus Christ. When examining the evidence, or when reading the Bible itself, you are convinced that it is the Book of God. You recognise on its pages the same autograph with which you have long been familiar in the volume of creation, the same inimitable style of majesty, wisdom, goodness, and power; and you own that to refuse its authenticating credentials would be to set at defiance all the laws of evidence. You believe the Bible as long as you are in its own society; you love it as long as you commune with it. Looking into its face you perceive the halo, and tarrying in its precincts you are conscious of the Divinity indwelling. But passing away from it, and no longer warmed by its immediate inspiration; mingling with the cold materialisms which it is your province to explore; handling the diy preparations, or the gritty fossils, or the fuming retort, — the joy and the fragrance and the vital influence of that Bible fade, and your devotion expires. Or, when you bore into the strata, and find yourself drilling down through cycles of unimagiried time; or, when you look up into the starry vault, and find yourself transported into a measureless abyss, and its unnumbered worlds, — then all sorts of doubts and queries seem to rise like dragons from the deep, or they come trooping home like spectres from the dark immensity. You begin to feel yourself an atom in creation, and this world a mere mote in the universe, and you cannot help thinking revelation too great a boon for such an atom, and the Advent too great a wonder for such a world. You catch yourself saying, not in adoration, but in doubt, “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? Or, what the. son of man, that Thou shouldest visit him?”

Now I will not stop to suggest the cure for all these cavils. I might say that the best cure for nervous spectres or nightmare horrors, is to get a light or look at something familiar and real; and the best cure for sceptic doubts is to look at the Bible itself. And I might farther say, that the mind is soundest and best constructed which receives all truth on its own evidence, and which does not suffer every wandering chimera to disturb a truth thus ascertained. But as it is a difficulty embarrassing to some thoughtful minds, we may just glance a little at the religious doubts occasioned by the extent of the universe.

Twenty years ago some English voyagers were standing on a flat beach within the Arctic Seas. From the excitement of their looks, the avidity with which they gazed into the ground, and the enthusiasm with which they looked around them, it was evident that they deemed it a spot of signal interest. But anything outwardly less interesting you could hardly imagine. On the one side, the coast retreated in low and wintry ridges, and on the other a pale ocean bore its icy freight beneath a watery sky, whilst under the travellers’ feet lay neither bars of gold nor a gravel of gems, but blocks of unsightly limestone. Yet it was the centre of one of nature’s greatest mysteries. It was the reward of years of adventure and hardship; it was the answer to the long aspirations and efforts of science; it was the Magnetic Pole. The travellers grudged that a place so important should appear so tame. They would have liked that it had been marked by some natural monument, a lofty peak or a singular rock. They were almost disappointed at not finding an iron needle as high as Cleopatra’s own, or a loadstone as big as Mont Blanc.*

* “We could have wished that a place so important had possessed more of mark or note. I could even have par-One day, a few summers since, sailing up the Rhine on a dull and windy afternoon, with little to look at but the sedgy banks and the storks exploring for reptiles among them — the vessel halted over against an old German town. We were looking languidly at its distant spires, and carelessly asked some one what town it was? “Worms,” Worms! The battle-field of the Reformation; the little Armageddon where light and darkness, truth and error, liberty and despotism, the Son of God and the Prince of Darkness fought together not so long ago! Suddenly it seemed to swarm with Imperial troops and bluff old burghers; and had we been near enough we should have glanced up to the tiles on the house-tops, and in the streets looked out for Luther; but though it was the very spot where Protestantism gained its decisive victory, the spot where modern Europe threw off the cerements of the middle age and emerged to life, to enterprise, and freedom, there was no outward sign to tell it, a dreary German town on a swampy plain — that was all.

Thus is it usually with memorable places. There is nothing external to arrest the eye; no gigantic landmark nor natural sign to serve for a Siste, viator: and the more refined and reflective do not grudge this. They feel that morally there is nothing so

cloned any one among us who had been so romantic or absurd as to expect that the magnetic pole was an object as conspicuous and mysterious as the fabled mountain of Sindbad,” &c — Ross’s “Second Voyage.” F sublime as simplicity, and that it is God’s way to work great wonders, not only by means of the things which are despised, but in despicable localities. Man is a materialist, and he tries to give a material magnitude to memorable places; but God chooses any common spot for the cradle of a mighty incident, or the home of a mighty spirit. Elbowing through Bread-street, amid trucks and drays and Cheapside tumult, who would fancy that here was the bower where the bard of Paradise was born; or looking up to that small window in the Canongate, who would guess that from these narrow precincts the spirit which new-created Scotland passed away? Or, sailing along the deep, what is there to tell you that this rock was the cage of the captured eagle, the basaltic prison where he chafed and pined and died; and yon, the willow-tree, under which he quietly slept, the Magor-Missabib of modern history? Or, floating on the soft J^gean, and looking up to the marble cliffs, where the aconite grows and the halcyon slumbers in the sun, what trace is there to tell that heaven* s windows once opened here; that here the last thrill of inspiration was felt, and here the last glimpse of a glorified Redeemer vouchsafed? To the passing glance or the uninstructed eye, they are mean and inconspicuous places — so mean, that ascertaining the wonders connected with them, the vulgar world declares them unworthy of such distinction till otherwise distinguished, and exclaims, “Let us build a monument, a mausoleum, or a church.” But to spirits truly great every place is great which mind or moral glory has aggrandized. Patmos could not be improved though it were expanded into a continent; nor the house where a poet was born or a Reformer died, though it were enshrined beneath a national monument.

There is another remark which we may make regarding memorable places. They are usually more interesting to strangers than to the regular residents. Had the Esquimaux seen Captain Ross and his party, they would have marvelled what brought a band of Englishmen from their comfortable homes to that bleak and barren shore. And, far from sympathizing in their errand, they could hardly have been taught to understand it. Food, not information, being their chief motive to exertion, they would gladly have sold the magnetic pole for a few pounds of blubber or a few pints of oil. It was interesting enough to British science to bring many at the peril of their lives; but to the poor benighted natives it never had occurred that there was anything more important in that particular spot than in any other bend of their frozen beach. And so of historic scenes. You know more about Luther’s bold appearance at the Imperial Diet than do most of the people who now reside at Worms. The spot where a great battle was fought, or where a hero breathed his last, is often interesting to its inhabitants only as a source of gain; and unless they be men of congenial taste and strong emotion, people will hurry daily past the places consecrated by departed greatness, without finding their step detained or their spirit stirred. It is reserved for the far-come traveller to stand still and wonder where the incurious native trudges on, or only wonders what it is that the stranger is gazing at.

Our earth is a little world. In bulk it is little as compared with some of its neighbours. Even the same planetary system contains one world a hundred times, and another three hundred times as large; whilst, if suns be peopled worlds, there are suns hundreds of thousands of times as large. And there are races of intelligence and capacity far beyond our own — races both fallen and unfallen, to which our highest genius may seem a curious simplicity, and our vastest information an interesting ignorance, even as we may smile at the wit and knowledge of the Esquimaux. But this is the little world, and ours the lowly race, which God selected as the scene and the subject of the most amazing interposition. Like its own Bethlehem Ephratah, little among thousands of worlds; like its own Patmos, a point in the ocean of existence, our earth already stands alone in the universe, and will stand forth in the annals of eternity, illustrious for its fact without a parallel. It is the world on which the mystery of redemption was transacted; it is the world into which Christ came. And though lower than the angels, ours is the race which Jehovah has crowned with one peerless glory, one unequalled honour. It is the race which God has

THE MUSEUM. b9

visited. Ours is the flesh which Incarnate Deity wore, and ours is the race for whose sinners the Son of God poured forth a ransom in his blood. This is the event which over our small planet sheds a solemn interest, and draws toward it the wondering gaze of other worlds. And just as in traversing the deep, when there rises on the view some spot of awful interest or affecting memory, you slack the sail, and passengers strain the eye, and look on in silent reverence; so, in their journeys through immensity the flight of highest intelligences falters into wonder and delay as they near this little globe. There is something in it which makes them feel like Moses at Horeb, “Let me draw near and see this great sight,” — a marvel and a mystery here which angels desire to look into. It is a little world, but it is the world where God was manifest in flesh. And though there may be spots round which the interest gathers in most touching intensity; though it may be pos sible to visit the very land whose acres were trod by “those blessed feet which our offences nailed to the accursed tree; “though you might like to look on David’s town where the advent took place, and on the hills of Galilee where his sermons were preached, and on the limpid Gennesareth which once kissed his buoyant sandals, and on that Jerusalem which He loved and pitied, and where He died, and that Olivet, from whose gentle slope the Prince of Peace ascended, I own that with me it is not so much Jerusalem or Palestine as Earth, Earth herself. Since it received the visit of the Son of God, in the eye of the universe the entire globe is a Holy Land; and such let it ever be to me. So wicked and sin-tainted that it must pass through the fire ere all be ended, it is withal so consecrated and so dear to heaven that it must not be destroyed; but a new earth with righteousness dwelling in it shall perpetuate to distan ages its own amazing story. And though an illustrious author wrote,” I have long lost all attachment to this world as a locality,” * I do not wish to share the feeling. I like it for its very littleness. I like to stand on its lonely remoteness, and look aloft to vaster and brighter orbs; and when I consider the heavens, the moon and the stars, then say I,” What is man that thou shouldest visit him? )3 And, as in the voyage of the spheres, I sail away in this, the little barque of man, it comes over me with melting surprise and adoring astonishment that mine is the very world into which the Saviour came; and as I farther recal who that Saviour was, — that for Him to become the highest seraph would have been an infinite descent, or to inhabit the hugest globe a strange captivity, — instead of seeking to inflate this tiny ball into the mightiest sphere, or stilt up this feeble race to angelic stature, I see many a reason why, if an Incarnation were at all to be, a little world should be the theatre and a little race the object.

It would indeed give melancholy force to the

* Foster.

saying, “Much wisdom is much grief,” if much wisdom were fatal to the Christian faith, and if he who increased his general knowledge must forfeit his religious hopes. But whilst science is fatal to superstition, — whilst fatal to lying wonders and monkish legends, it is fortification to a scriptural faith. The Bible is the bravest of books. Coming from God, and conscious of nothing but God’s truth, it awaits the progress of knowledge with calm security. It watches the antiquaiy ransacking among classic ruins, and rejoices in every medal he discovers, and every inscription he deciphers; for from that rusty coin or corroded marble it expects nothing but confirmations of its own veracity. In the unlocking of an Egyptian hieroglyphic, or the unearthing of some ancient implement, it hails the resurrection of so many witnesses; and with sparkling elation it follows the botanist as he scales Mount Lebanon, or the zoologist as he makes acquaintance with the beasts of the Syrian desert, or the traveller as he stumbles on a long-lost Petra, or Nineveh, or Babylon; for in regions like these every stroke of the hammer and every crack of the rifle awaken friendly echoes, and every production and every relic bring home a friendly evidence. And from the march of time it fears no evil, but calmly abides the fulfilment of those prophecies and the forthcoming of those events with whose predicted story Inspiration has already inscribed its page. It is not light but darkness which the Bible deprecates; and if men of piety were also

LECTURE V.

men of science, and if men of science would “search the Scriptures,” there would be more faith in the earth, and also more philosophy.

Few minds are sufficiently catholic. The psychologist is apt to despise the material sciences, and few mathematicians are good historians. But although there may be indifference, or rivalry amongst their votaries, there is no antagonism between the truths themselves. There exists a mind as well as a material universe, and there are laws of thought as well as laws of motion; and although it cannot be proved by algebra, yet it is pretty certain that Julius Caesar invaded Britain, and that George Washington achieved the independence of America. All truths are friendly and mutually consistent, and he is the wisest man who, if he cannot be an adept in all knowledge, dreads none and despises none; the Baconian intelligence to which the Word and the works of the Most High are alike a revelation, and to which both alike are faithful witnesses, though both are not alike articulate.

Be sages then, not sciolists. In the world of knowledge be cosmopolite, and be not the pedants of one department. Be historians as well as mathematicians. Receive every truth on its appropriate evidence, and there is nothing to prevent your faith in the Gospel from being equally strong with your faith in the course of nature. And although the Cyclops of science may have an eye for only one half of truth’s horizon; although the bigot of demonstration may jeer at testimony; although the sectary of physics may repudiate history; if your knowledge be really “general;” if it be sufficiently comprehensive and catholic, and correct withal, — the more you grow in knowledge the more will you be confirmed in that most excellent of all knowledge, — a positive and historical Christianity.*

But you say, the natural sciences are all certain; theology is all conflict and confusion. Let us understand one another. If you say that the phenomena of nature are all patent and explicit, I reply, And so are the sayings of Scripture. If candour and ingenuousness can interpret the one, they may equally expound the other. But, if you say that, unlike the Word of God, his works have never been misunderstood, you surely forget that the “History of the Inductive Sciences” is just a history of erroneous interpretations replaced by interpretations less erroneous, and destined to be succeeded by interpretations

* Of how much scepticism has Bacon given the rationale in his noted sentence, “A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to Atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.” — ESSAYS 16. And of how many Freethinkers might the foolish boasting be silenced in the words which Newton retorted on the infidel Halley, “I have studied these things, and you have not.” There are various sources of unbelief; but next to the “evil heart,” the most fruitful is ignorance. It is easy for a sciolist to be a sceptic; but it is not easy for a well-informed historian to reject the records of faith.

still more exhaustive and true. If you smile at the Hutchisonian or Cocceian systems of exegesis; if you quote the hostile theories which still linger in the field of polemics, I ask, Is this peculiar to theology? Have you forgotten how the abhorrers of a vacuum abhorred Torricelli and Pascal? Have you forgotten how the old physiologists were vexed at Harvey for discovering the circulation of the blood? Do you not remember how the Stahlian chemists, like a burnt-out family, long lingered round the ashes of phlogiston, and denounced the wilful fire-raising of Lavoisier and oxygen? In early youth have you never seen a disciple of Werner, and pitied the affectionate tenacity with which he clung to the last plank of the fair Neptunian theory? Or would every world-maker forgive Lord Rosse’s telescope if it swept from the firmament all trace of the nebular hypothesis? Or, because there is still an emissionary as well as an undulatory theory of light, must we deny that optics is a science, and must we hold that the laws of refraction and reflexion are mere matters of opinion? Nature is no liar, although her “minister and interpreter” has often mistaken her meaning; and, notwithstanding the errors which have received a temporary sanction from the learned, there is, after all, nothing but truth in the material universe; and, so far as man has sagacity or sincerity to collect that truth, he has got a true science, a true astronomy, a true chemistry, a true physiology, as the case may be. And even so, whatsoever vagaries p rticular persons may indulge, or whatsoever false systems may receive a transient support, there is, after all, nothing but truth in the Bible, and so far as we have sincerity or sagacity to collect that Bible-truth, we have got a true religion. Nay, the most important facts and statements in that Word speak for themselves and require no theory. And just as the mariner might safely avail himself of Jupiter’s satellites, though Copernicus had never existed; just as the gunner must allow for the earth’s attraction, whatever becomes of the Newtonian philosophy; just as the apothecary would continue to mix his salts and acids in definite proportions, even although some mishap befel the atomic theory; just as we ourselves do not close our eyes and dispense with light, until the partizans of rays shall have made it up with the advocates of ether, — so the Scriptures abound in statements and facts on which we may safely proceed, whatever becomes of human theories. “God so loved the world, that He gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” “If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature:” so far as it is founded on such sayings as these, religion is not only the simplest, but, being immediately from God, it is the most secure of all the sciences.

However, we must add one remark. In the region of revealed truth, increasing knowledge will not always be increasing conviction, unless that knowledge be progressively reduced to practice. If knowledge be merely speculative, in extending it a man may only “increase sorrow;” for it is “with the heart that man believeth unto righteousness,” and it is to the “doers” of his Father’s will that the Saviour promises an assuring knowledge of his own “doc trine.”* The mind needs tonics. For the body, next to wholesome food, the best toning is vigorous exercise; and if long cradled in a luxurious repose, the penalty is paid at last in so many imaginary ills as constitute a real one. And just as the child of sloth is haunted by visionary fears; as he dreads that his pulse will stop or the firmament fall in: so the man who arrests his moral activities and lets his fancy wander at its will; the man who is doing no service to God and no good in the world, will soon become an intellectual hypochondriac. Musing, day-dreaming, marvelling, he will soon be lieve the phantoms of his own creating, and will not be able to believe the facts of God’s revealing. And as the meet recompense of his indolence and uselessness, if he be not given up to believe a lie, his relaxed and pithless grasp will not be able to hold fast a single truth: like an interesting scholar, whose life we lately read, and who during years of speculative inactivity, dwindled down from a devout and laborious * Rom. x. 10; John vii. 17.

clergyman to a slipshod and etiolated free-thinker,* and like those voluptuous theologians of Germany who mope away their lives in selfish meditation, and who, never letting their brethren taste the fruits of their practical beneficence, are never themselves permitted to taste the blessing of a sure belief. The true remedy for this spiritual moodiness is a holy and abundant activity. So deemed the Apostle Paul. In the midst of a glowing argument, and when refuting certain cavils against the Resurrection which had arisen in the Church of Corinth, he ejaculates all at once, “Be not deceived; evil communications corrupt good manners. Awake to righteousness and sin not, for some have not the knowledge of God.”f Like a sagacious physician who finds his patient haunted by fantastic fears, and who orders him out into the open air, and compels him to dig, or row, or wrestle; and after a few days of this rough regimen the crystal arm grows flesh and blood; and he who was afraid that the sky might fall and smother him, begins to have faith in the firmament, — so the apostle sounds a reveilles in the ear of these drowsy reasoners. ‘A wake to righteousness! These doubts and difficulties are the fruits of sloth. They are the hypochondriac fancies which lazy loungers nurse in one another. Evil communications corrupt good manners. Rouse

* See the remarks at the close of Archdeacon Hare’s “Life of Sterling.”

f 1 Cor. xv. 33. — 35.

you! — Awake to righteousness. Bestir you in the business of practical Christianity, and these shadows will flee away! ‘And so to any haunted or unhappy mind here present, we give the same advice. Do you admit the Bible to be the Word of God, and yet are you haunted with speculative doubts and evil surmisings as to any of its particular doctrines? Then, awake to righteousness! Your doubts are ridiculous, your fears are unfounded, and each idle hypothesis might be easily refuted. But the real remedy is, not reasoning, but righteousness; not the arguments of others, but your own practical piety. Awake, then, to righteousness. Embody in your conduct your present limited stock of conviction. Try to pray more, or praise more; try to cure the bad temper or the unholy passion; try to do some good to your neighbours: and that very effort will be the cure of some cavils. It will teach you, for one thing, that the heart is desperately wicked, and that if God does not change it, nothing else can. And that discovery will prompt you to prayer, and that prayer will procure an answer, and that answer will deepen your trust in God; and thus item by item your faith will grow exceedingly. Thus, by the corrective of wholesome discipline and by being confronted with realities, your foolish doubts will dissipate; and the doctrine which was incredible to a lazy and dyspeptic intellect, will soon be absorbed and assimilated by a sound understanding, and become the joy and rejoicing of a sanctified soul.

Alas! for the knowledge which knows no Sa viour. Alas! for the science which includes no Gospel. The most erudite of lawyers was Selden. Some days before his death he sent for Archbishop Ussher, and said, “I have surveyed most of the learning that is among the sons of men, and my study is filled with books and manuscripts on various subjects, yet at this moment I can recollect nothing in them all on which I can rest my soul, save one from the sacred Scriptures, which lies much on my spirit. It is this: ‘The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works!”’ Nor is it only at the close of the pilgrimage that the hope full of immortality is a pearl of great price. Without it, life is so transient that every invention is a melancholy plaything, and the vastest acquirements are a laborious futility. But the student who toils for immortality need never want a motive in his work; and, however sad some of his discoveries may be, the sage who knows the Saviour will always have in his knowledge an overplus of joy.