me to be the proper function of the Will; and that it may be proved that our instincts, affections, and circumstances work toward this purpose, till they issue in a self-consciousness which is its own evidence of the truth. The object of feeling and of intelligence is simply existence; but observe, that existence is interesting to us in proportion as it rises from nothingness to the full capacity of feeling and of intelligence, with the Will as their arbiter. Hence man is more important to us than an animal, an animal than a stone, and God than all. This is my hierarchy of being, according to the scale of which, Conscience decides that our affections and understanding must act. Sterling.

A charitable untruth, and an uncharitable truth, an unwise managing of truth or love, are all to be carefully avoided of him that would go with a right foot in the narrow way. Bishop Hall.

Truth and Love are two the most powerful things in the world; and when they both go together, they cannot easily be withstood. The golden beams of truth and the silken cords of love, twisted together, will draw men on with a sweet violence whether they will or no. Cudworth.

"Truth and Love are the poles of humanity."

I have no manner of doubt that half the poor and untaught Christians who are this day lying prostrate before

Crucifixes, Bambinos, and Volto Santos, are finding more acceptance with God, than many Protestants who idolize nothing but their own opinions or their own interests. I believe that those who have worshipped the thorns of Christ's crown will be found at last to have been holier and wiser than those who worship the thorns of the world's service, and that to adore the nails of the cross is a less sin than to adore the hammer of the workman.

Ruskin.

Every meritorious act must overlap the limits of mere justice, and go beyond the strict rights of the being to whom it is directed; and it must be all our own.

Now it is the characteristic of all moral systems, as such, that they allow the reality of human merit; of all Religious systems as such, and of the simply religious heart, that has no system at all, that they disown it. . .

Christianity annihilates merit, not by reducing obligation to nothing, but by raising it to infinitude. Leaving us the originating causes of our own acts, as we had always supposed ourselves to be,confirming us fully in the partnership we thus enjoy with the creative energy of God, it resists all encroachment on our responsibility. But then it takes away from us the other element of merit. It renders it impossible for our performance to overlap and exceed the claims upon our will. For, it changes the relations in which, with a conscience simply looking round over the level of our equals, we had felt ourselves to stand. Putting us under Heaven as well as upon the earth, with

In

in the presence and sanctuary of God, while we are at the hearths of our friends, and in the streets with our fellows, it swallows up our duties to them in one immense sphere of duty to him. Into all our transactions with them, it introduces a new and awful partner, to whom we cannot say, "Thou hast no business between them and us; if we satisfy each other, stand thou aloof!" As the holy prompter of our conscience, and guardian of their claims, he must be omnipresent with his interpositions. To him, therefore, our religion makes over all their rights; and thereby not only consecrates and preserves them, but gives them boundless extension. stantly, we discern as a true demand upon us a thousand things which before we had fancied to be at our discretion, and to redound to our praise, if we conceded them. Charity merges into justice; love and pity are offerings that may not be withheld; and every former gift becomes a debt. A solemn transfer of responsibilities has taken place, and all our doings are with the Highest now; and, beyond his acknowledged rights we can never go, so as to deserve any thing of him. Towards him obligation is strictly infinite; it covers all our possibilities of achievement; for, the very circumstance of any good and noble thing being possible, and revealed to our hearts as such, constitutes and creates it a duty. Martineau.

The early life of Saul the Persecutor, the enemy of Christ, left one indelible impression on the heart of the Apostle, not in bitterness or remorse, but in the inex

tinguishable desire to do free service for the Gospel,- to atone for the Past by spending and being spent in its cause, without being placed in any connection with it to which the thought of a recompense could attach. How noble is this desire to do something voluntarily, over and above what he was bound to do, on the part of one who, though no victim of morbid memories, could not altogether efface from his heart its past history. J. H. Thom.

The problem of philosophy is to grasp the truth which is embodied in the intuitions of the age, and bring it out logically in the shape of pure idea.

What, then, is moral philosophy? Is it a mere code of rules for outward conduct? Is it a continued dispute whether morality originates in the understanding or the feelings. No! these, if you will, may be collateral questions, which come into the discussion of the whole subject; but, moral philosophy, rightly viewed, is an attempt to render a clear and intelligible account of the moral fact or phenomena of the world; it is to bring all the phases of human action, individual, social, national, into the region of idea, and show upon what great intuitions they are all based. Like all other primordial sciences, it is built upon a direct revelation coming from God himself to the interior consciousness of man. -Your business as moralists is to look that heavenly light clearly and honestly in the face; to take it as primary, intuitional truth; to see how it develops itself in human life; and then to give it, if possible, a full statement in reflective and scientific

form. Accordingly, we may say that the primary material of moral philosophy consists in those direct and spontaneous intuitions from which all moral action springs ; that the sphere of moral philosophy embraces all the activity of mankind, in whatever capacity; and finally, that the problem of it is to reduce these intuitions of the moral consciousness, in their whole development, into the form of scientific truth.

Philosophy is the last and clearest utterance of every age; it strips off the symbols in which truth is embodied and too often concealed; it clears away the errors and prejudices which encompass the mere spontaneous efforts of the human mind; it brings the real and universal intuitions of every age into the region of pure thinking; it gives a logical order and reflective validity to our knowledge; and thus, having received its primary material from the common reason of mankind, in its turn reacts upon it, and prepares it for a still higher and fuller development hereafter. It is by action and reaction that our intuitions and our logical understanding become mutually more and more perfect; and the history of this whole progress towards perfection is that which we term philosophy. Morell.

While we are looking on the one side of human nature, we are too often impelled to believe that the principle of conscience is, of all the powers that have any influence over the conduct of men, the most lax, nugatory, and inefficacious; but then if we turn to another side, it as often