national dealings, not the recognition, only, but the inculcation of that kindred exercise of retrospection which, with more or less of definiteness, is a necessary habit of the soul. Memorial feasts and ordinances, memorial exhortations by the mouths of His prophets, memorial institutions of every kind, were to cast their shadows backward over the past and to remind His people of all the way by which the Lord their God had led them. We are not wrong in asserting that retrospection formed essentially the basis of both preaching and teaching in the days when Canaan was the school wherein Israel, as a child led forth out of Egypt, should be before the world "brought up" of God. The anticipations enfolded in the promises to the patriarchs were peculiarly committed to the sacrificial ritual for guardianship and perpetuation. The burnt offerings contained incorporated within them the one great future hope whereof all others would be but attendants. In the Feasts, retrospection and anticipation joined hands; but the voice of the first, more than of the last, made itself distinctly heard. "Thou shalt remember," was the great text of Old Testament doctrine: "Be

cause they remembered not," the mournful memorial, inscribed in ruins and traced with the pencil of desolation upon the face of a land proclaiming for centuries before the world the sin of the daughter of Zion.

But not in His dealings with nations, only, do we find. as before remarked-this recognition of the two-fold faculty of our nature. The stones of Bethel, and the solitudes of Sinai,* and many another now deserted spot testify that when, with the return to once familiar places, a rush of memory brings back old reminiscences of friends, thoughts, and conflicts of other daysthat when a flood of associations, beyond our powers to analyse and too deep for expression, fills the heart with a nameless and passionate yearning, the God who needeth not to be told what is in man, and who sent His servant of old to remember and be still in the neglected audiencechamber whence the ladder of glory had been seen linking earth and heaven, will meet that longing of the heart with a human sympathy and with a divine comprehension.

There will not be wanting some among those

* Exod. iii. 12.

who read these pages to confirm the words which we have written. For, to not a few, a habit of retrospection occupies the position, individually, that it did to Israel nationally. It is a necessity of the heart, realised as such more or less by all, but in some natures indulged with a constancy whereof others little dream. And this, more especially, when the revisiting of scenes associated with other days revives and intensifies such retrospections beyond the power of utterance and in a degree to which the deeper voice of silence alone can give expression. If we consider the comparative strength of feeling called forth in connexion with places of historical, national, family, or purely individual interest, we cannot but be aware that in proportion as the right of association becomes exclusively our own, in such proportion is it deepened and intensified. This is, of course, peculiarly the case when we come to the records of that inner spiritual life secretly chronicled, and known to God, only, and the soul.

The outer court of a man's memory is hung with many a picture pourtraying scenes of other days, in recalling which he will not shrink from

eliciting the sympathies of friendship with the "don't you remember?" of early intimacy. But before the inner sanctuary—the Holy of holies of the heart-hangs the vail concealing its sacred memorial-gravings from every eye but His who knoweth our down-sitting and up-rising, and who understandeth our thoughts afar off.

To carry out our subject more fully-this man revisits the home of his childhood or of his youth. His brother or his friend is by his side, and to his ear are confided the recollections which every turn of the road, every cottage, every tree brings to his mind. Here is the scene of some boyish frolic or escape; there the place where a Jonathan and David friendship was cemented. Yonder is the "little window where the sun came peeping in at morn;" further on, the spot associated with a father's blessing or a mother's counsel. And when one point after another has been revisited, and, touched with the magic wand of memory, has glowed again in the light of other days, the friends separate, bound to each other yet more firmly than before by the confidences of those hours of retrospection.

Is that intimacy without reserve?

The man

But

turns again, and retraces those same paths which he trod in company so short a time before. now the hidden memories of his life, recalled by those silent memorials which through past years have kept their secrets for himself alone, are uncovered and reviewed. The tree beneath whose branches was recorded the dedicationvow known to God only, the retired pathway where to and fro he was wont to pace "meditating at even-tide," the hill-side from whence the book of the works of God was read and studied by the companion light of the book of His Word, the seaside cave, perchance, where his Maker was found of him in prayer-sites as little sacred in the eyes of the outer world as could have been Bethel to the people of the land, stand before him as consecrated and holy ground, because he remembers how, long ago, he found that "the Lord was in this place."

In the memories of many, epochs of retrospection stand out distinctly as epochs, equally, in the soul's history. Marked terminations to chapters in life, culminations in plans and undertakings, visitations of sorrow and chastisement, returns of anniversaries - these, independently