pray without ceasing, - though our prayers will be often only a throb of gratitude, or a sudden aspiration of love, or the soul falling down in humility, and bowing itself before God. And then, too, we shall find a place and a use for times of prayer, and for a certain degree of method and system in prayer. It does not prove my friend

ship insincere, that I say to my friend when we part, "Let us write to each other at least twice a week," or "Let us look every evening, at a certain hour, at a particular star, and think of one another." If the letterwriting and star-looking are done merely as a duty, it will be bad, and if the method of prayer be retained when its life is gone, this is also bad. But every pious heart must feel that God, in the very arrangements of nature, and in the ordinances of the heavens, says to us, "In the morning think of me, in that calm hour which I send you before the din and toil of life commences; and in the evening think of me; after it is over, when the holy stars pour quiet upon the earth, then remember me." And so, too, on the Sabbath day, we shall have opportunity for a closer walk with God. J. F. Clarke.

Motives are symptoms of weakness, and supplements for the deficient energy of the living principle, the law within us. Let them then be reserved for those momentous acts and duties in which the strongest and best balanced natures must feel themselves deficient, and where humility no less than prudence prescribes deliberation. S. T. Coleridge.

Satisfaction in our moral conquests, and gratitude for free gifts, need not be antagonistic, or even separate feelings; for we have no greater cause for gratitude than that we were created with moral power.

VI.

THE WHOLE CHARACTER ON ONE LEVEL.

LIFE A RESISTANCE OR A PROGRESS.

LIFE, strong life and sound life, that life which lends approaches to the Infinite, and takes hold on Heaven, is not so much a progress as it is a resistance. North British Review.

Kant makes virtue consist in self-government, Schleiermacher in self-development; the former makes virtue a struggle, the latter a harmony; the former holds by the Roman idea, the latter by the Greek; the one is more akin to the law of the Old Testament, the other to the love of the New. They form the outermost seamarks of the great ocean of moral speculations, and the whole tide in different ages has rolled backwards and forwards between them. Review.

Christian Goodness differs from the Goodness of Nature in being principle, and from the Goodness of Morality in being spontaneous; and is the purest union and harmony of both kinds. For Goodness in general is of

those two kinds, consisting of Intention on the one side, and Character on the other. The Goodness of Morality or Intention, consists in effort, struggle, and conflict; and is esteemed great in proportion to the temptation resisted, the trial borne, the obstacle encountered, the difficulty overcome.

The Goodness of Nature or Character

is not conflict but harmony; not struggle but attainment. It consists in natural good tendencies and pure tastes, or in acquired habits of goodness. The Goodness of Intention is meritorious; the Goodness of Attainment is beautiful; we respect the first, we love the second. The absence of one implies guilt; the absence of the other implies depravity. He who does not try to do right and to become good is guilty. He who has no love for goodness, no true, kind, and noble tendencies, is depraved. The seat of the one is the conscience, or will; the seat of the other is the instinct, or natural tendencies. Now, the will is determined toward goodness, through the conscience. We choose goodness because we feel that we ought to do so. The heart is determined toward goodness by its perception of moral beauty. We love goodness because it appears to us beautiful. The conscience is commanded; the desires, instincts, tendencies, are attracted.

That this distinction is real, and no mere distinction of words, will appear, if we consider how often these two kinds of Goodness are found separate. Many good men have no beauty in their goodness; and many beautiful characters have no strength with their beauty.

We

esteem the first, but are unable to love them; we are attracted toward the last, but cannot esteem them.

Now it has been a usual fault, both with moral and religious teachers, first, not to notice and distinguish these two different kinds of goodness; or, secondly, to undervalue Goodness of Nature and tendency, when compared with that of Resolve and effort. Some Moralists and Theologians even go so far as to make all goodness to consist in conscious, deliberate effort and struggle.

The essential peculiarity of the Christian Life is, that it is the complete harmony, THE ABSOLUTE SYNTHESIS OF BOTH KINDS OF GOODNESS. Christian Faith, revealing the high Law of God, awakens the conscience, and rouses the will to effort to overcome all evil. Christian faith, revealing the abounding Love of God, creates new affections, and attracts the soul upward, ascending by its proper motion. The love of God moves us to effort; the effort enables us more entirely to rely upon and realize His Love. Faith and Works; Love and Labor; Prayer and Action; the Reception of the Holy Spirit, and the Endeavor to impart it, these follow each other like Day and Night; repose preparing us for labor, and labor for repose. And so the Christian, in every moment of his Christian life, may unite the sense of responsibility and the sense of dependence, obedience, and love.

Now, what is the harm of aiming exclusively or chiefly at working out our own salvation, that is, of cultivating exclusively the goodness of Intention or Effort?

The first evil is that we are led to look at ourselves