believes a lie, and acts up to his belief, than one whose belief may be right, but who is at no pains to carry it out into practice.1 God God ever blesses with success the man of earnestness and energy of purpose. It was the man that knew his master's will and did it not that was beaten with many stripes.

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There is the greatest possible difference between committing errors in ignorance, or believing them to be right, and committing them, knowing them to be wrong. It is from not acting according to conviction that men chiefly err.1 Their actions are thus undirected or uncontrolled by any "Two adversaries, equally enamoured of the truth, are less adversaries than allies."-(Ditto.) "Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think."-(J. S. MILL.)

1 A man 66 may even be more basely and mischievously disloyal because he does not break out in some flagrant treason. . . The meanest kind of disloyalty is that which keeps just within the law, and only dares not perpetrate the treason it wants to have done."-(HORACE BUSHNELL.) "A truth learned by heart and not by the heart; we much prefer to such a lifeless, impersonal, and as yet soulless truth, an error, yes a sincere error, an error that is honestly believed in. Such an error has more claim to the name of truth than truth itself before we are identified with it."—(VINET.) "The highest truth, if professed by one who believes it not in his heart, is to him a lie, and he sins greatly by professing." (Dr. ARNOLD.) "Facts and arguments all concur to prove that we more easily succeed in correcting a sentiment misled by a false appreciation of the object that excites it than in giving birth in the soul to a sentiment entirely absent." (VINET.) 'Were we called upon to say who are the worst enemies of religion, we should not name pagans or Mohammedans, or infidels, or heretics, but the men who have only a form of godliness while they deny the power thereof." (Dr. SYMINGTON.) "We can better understand those who in good earnest reject the Gospel on account of what it contains than those who accept it through ignorance of its contents. The aversion of the former is more natural than the good will of the latter."-(VINET.)

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2"It is wonderful how even the casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to subserve a design which they may in their first apparent tendency threaten to frustrate."-(JOHN FOSTER.) "Alaric and Buonaparte, all great minds must believe they rest on a truth, or their will can be bought or bent."-(R. W. EMERSON.) "The one serious and formidable thing is nature is a will."- (Ditto.) "What we pray to ourselves for is always granted.”—(Ditto.)

3 "I had rather, indeed, infinitely be in the wrong with a humble inquisitive and honest mind than be in the right without it."-(Dr. RICHARD PRICE: Sermons.)

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"What most stands in the way of the performance of duty is irresolution, weakness of purpose, and indecision." The power of exercising the will promptly in obedience to the dictates of conscience, and thereby resisting the impulses of the lower nature, is of essential importance in

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fixed principles, and are liable to be called forth or suppressed by any passing circumstance.1 Such are well said to be double-minded," and are described as being "unstable in all their ways."

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It is by action that the world is made better; that truth is discovered, and error detected and overcome; that man is improved and perfected. Thought originates in action, and from it derives the materials with which it works.3 Action clarifies and purifies thought, dispersing the haziness and mists that would otherwise surround it, and giving it clearness, definiteness, and point. The object of thought is to guide and direct our actions, and the thought that tends to no action, or that has not action in view, as its final and ultimate end is of little value.1

moral discipline, and absolutely necessary for the development of character in its best forms."-(SMILES: Character.)

1 "The lives of most are misspent only for want of a certain end of their actions; whence they alter upon all changes of occasions, and never reach any perfection, neither can do other but continue in uncertainty, and end in discomfort. . . . Tranquillity consisteth in a steadiness of mind; and how can that vessel which is beaten upon by contrary waves and winds and tottereth to either part be said to keep a steady course? -(Bishop HALL.)

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2" Most true it is, as the wise man teacheth us, that doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by action." (T. CARLYLE.) "Practice Christianity and you will know it. The words of our Saviour are, 'If any man will do the will of my father, he shall know the doctrine, whether it is of God or from men.' -(VINET.) It is by writing that one learns to write; it is by painting and drawing that one learns to draw and paint; and it is by practising virtue that one learns it, and grows perfect in it."-(NELSON: True Devotion.) "No man can become a soldier by studying works of military tactics in his closet; he must in actual service acquire those habits of coolness, courage, discipline, address, rapid combination, without which the most learned in the theory of strategy and engineering will be but a school-boy soldier after all." (Dr. CAIRD: Religion in Common Life.)

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8 "Movement precedes sensation, and is at the outset independent of any stimulus from without." Action "enters as a component part unto every one of the senses."-(Prof. BAIN.) Although they (i. e., actions) often reveal the states of the mind, this result was not at first either intended or expected ... the movements having been at first either of some direct use or the indirect effect of the excited state of the sensorium."-(DARWIN; On Expression.)

"All knowledge which is not followed by action is unprofitable and imperfect, like a beginning without an end, or a foundation without a superstructure."-(CICERO.) "If principles do any good, it is proportioned to the readiness with which they can be converted into rules, and the patient constancy with which they are applied in all our attempts at

We think it of importance to establish the doctrine that this world is God's world-that he is the Ruler and Governor of it, and that he is working out his own purposes with regard to it. We regard it, therefore, as perfect as it stands; better adopted for the end he has in view than any other possible or conceivable world. Nor is this body of ours the vile, polluted, despicable thing that many persons seek to make out.1 God views it otherwise, for he has honoured it by making it the dwelling-place of the soul and temple for the Holy Ghost, and he will raise it up again at the last day. It

excellence." (Archbp. THOMSON.) "By turning knowledge to action, we make it what Bacon meant when he said it was power, invigorating the thinking substance, giving tone, and you may call it muscle and nerve, blood and bone to the mind, a firm gripe, and a keen and sure eye: that, we think, is far too little considered or cared for at present."-(Dr. JOHN BROWN.) "The knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that." "Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by working: the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge, a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds in endless logic vortices, till we try it and fix it. Doubt of whatever kind can be ended by action alone." (CARLYLE.) "That he values knowledge only as a means to social action is one of the highest titles to our esteem that any philosopher can have."-(JOHN MORLEY.) "Neither metaphysics nor medicine is worth a rational man's while, if they do not issue certainly and speedily in helping us to keep and to make our minds and our bodies whole, quick, and strong."-(Dr. JOHN BROWN: Hora Subseciva.) "Action and not knowledge is man's destiny and duty in this life."-(Dean MANSEL.) "Knowledge and faith are in order to practice and a good life, and signify nothing unless they produce that."-(TILLOTSON.)

"We have frequent glimpses and revelations allowed us, that the body is not merely a painful and corrupting thing, but a being formed by divine hands, and the befitting partner of the more etherial spirit; and that it is not always, nor most frequently, a passive, lumpish mass-a clog on the nimble soul-but, on the contrary, a combination of lithe and living forces -a being of life and strength and glory."-(R. S. WYLD: Philosophy of the Senses.) "No power of man's nature is evil of itself. God has bestowed on him no faculties of mind or body, and allows him to possess none but such as have their good application, and are intended for their proper use. It is true that man is naturally prone to evil. This is a matter of experience, as well as a truth of Scripture. But it does not mean that he possesses any powers or faculties which are essentially evil, but that he is prone to misapply the good powers, and to transgress the bounds of temperance imposed by nature."-(Rev. R. A. THOMPSON: Christian Theism.) "The appetites, passions, affections, and desires, held in due subordination, directed to their legitimate ends, and acting in their several places with harmonious concurrence, will work out the great and diversified results of personal and social happiness and glory to God.” -(Dr. WARDLAW.)

2" According to the biblical view, the body is essential to man's completeness; therefore, also to his well-being, whether present or future.”

is one thing to view all that happens to us as coming from the hand of God, and as designed for our instruction and benefit, and another and very different thing to attempt, with our imperfect knowledge and powers of observation, to distinguish between them, and to regard some as evils to be by all means avoided and shunned. It is one thing to spend our time in idle aspirations after goodness, or in seeking to avoid everything that we believe to be evil, or calculated to our hurt, and quite another to strive to make the best use of the means and faculties God has given to us for our improvement and benefit and for the good of mankind." Unless we regard this world as perfect, exactly suited to our powers and capacities, and everything around us as designed for our benefit-unless we believe that all our powers and faculties are intended to be used and cultivated-our ideas of education will be very imperfect. This world was designed

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(C. E. LUTHARDT.) "Christianity has never represented to us this body of ours as an arbitrary and troublesome appendage of the soul-not an essential portion of the man. Christianity has done honour to the body in calling it to be the temple of the Holy Ghost. Christianity admits the glorified body to share the destiny of the glorified spirit. It is not, therefore, against the body that it has declared war.”—(VINET.)

"The greatest treason which the heart of man can entertain against the author of existence is the belief that life is a gift rather to be spurned for the suffering that it brings than joyfully accepted for the good which it offers."-(Manual of Conduct.)

2 "The difference between those who spend their lives simply in wishing to be perfect, or in waiting for some preternatural influence, which is at once to carry them to their desired end," and those who "set themselves to attain this excellence by assiduous cultivation of the good actually and at successive moments within their reach, will be obvious to the least attentive minds. . In waiting for this perfection he permits actual opportunities of well-doing to pass by him unnoticed, or views them as unworthy of his regard; and thus, while tormenting his own mind by visionary notions of what he might be, he fails to effectuate any real improvement in his actual condition. The true duty of man lies not amidst generalizations that have no relation to life, but in the due and skilful management of the active circumstances amidst which

he is placed, and the faithful discharge of the duties which those circumstances impose.' "The highest, the most useful, the most truly progressive life, is that of him who, working after a high model, for the beautifying of his life, is yet careful at all times to make the most of the very humblest means of progress that may have been put within his reach."-(Manual of Conduct.)

"I would maintain that nothing can be better adapted as a residence for a probationary being like man than the state of the earth after the fall."(Rev. E. C. TOPHAM.) "This life is a state of discipline, a scene of probation, and, by consequence, we are to expect such dealings and dis

by God as a place of education, and everything in it is adapted to that end.1

It is not for us to cavil at the established order of things, or to condemn them; least of all is it for the Christian who believes in the sovereignty and goodness of God to do so, or to look upon the trials and temptations with which he has to contend as other than designed for his benefit." In the place of regarding them as evils to be by all means

pensations as are suitable to such a state."-(Rev. J. BALGUY.) "The population of this world is a conditioned population; not the best, but the best that could live now."-(EMERSON.)

1 "The whole life may be regarded as a great school of experience in which men and women are the pupils."-(S. SMILES.) "The whole earth can be but a place of tuition till it become either a depopulated ruin or an elysium of perfect and happy beings."-(JOHN FOSTER.) "It does look as if this world, under the government of God, were a school, if we would so use it, for the improvement of the inhabitants."(M'COSH.) "God makes all things on earth and in heaven subordinate to the culture and unfolding, through grace, of our divine though sinperverted powers."-(Rev. J. BALDWIN BROWN.) "It is only as the theatre upon which moral beings may develop their character and ripen for heaven, that the whole material system is upheld.”—(Dr. H. DARLING.) "The world is God's cradle and nursery for a race of intelligent beings. He has made all its arrangements with reference to the development of our faculties and the education of our minds and hearts.”—(Dr. CHEEVER.) "The system of nature is so arranged that we may draw analogies and instructive lessons from it, or suggestions in regard even to our eternal destiny; while in the study of God's works, by which we are surrounded, we have some of the noblest and most perfect means, both of moral and mental discipline."-(Ditto.) "We find nature full of an order which can be observed by man. By means of common points of resemblance the objects can be grouped and classified for the assistance of the memory, and for the practical purposes of experience." "The human mind is so constituted as to be able and disposed to observe relations, and especially resemblances, and so to group objects into classes by means of these relations. There is thus, on the one hand, a tendency in the human mind to arrange and classify; and, on the other hand, the objects around us have multiplied relations one towards another, affording befitting exercise for the intellectual faculty, and enabling it to dispose all individual substances into a series of groups, and to connect all nature in one sublime system."- (M'Cosн.)

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"He who has made and governs us certainly must know what is best for His creatures; and I do not at all doubt that if I were better acquainted with myself and the real state of things, I should approve and prefer what He is pleased to appoint."-(JOHN BOWDLER.) "To say that God has formed an imperfect world is the same thing with saying that He has acted weakly, or erroneously, or maliciously."-(Manual of Conduct.) "Though we may not comprehend the full meaning of the discipline of trial, through which the best have to pass, we must have faith in the completeness of the design of which our little individual lives form a part."-(S. SMILES.) "God, who in mercy and wisdom governs

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