and a sapping scepticism, which men are seeking unhappily and erroneously to meet by reviving forgotten superstitions? Is our Church so full of that life of holiness that might well burn and consume all these defects, that she need dread no judgment from her Master? Is the nation so full of righteousness? Are we so honest in our dealings, so true, so just, so manly, so forgiving, so thankful, class with class, man with man, that we can claim to be considered a righteous nation? If not, brethren, if the peaceful wealth and comfort of England be breeding sins, and sorrows, and shames, neglected and unheeded, we provoke God's wrath. If there be sores in our country that have not been healed, or bound up, or mollified with ointment, let us look to it, lest these end in national death, and after death should come the judgment.

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Yes, brethren, there is a worse invasion than the invasion of a foreign army; and it is the invasion of domestic vice, and wickedness, and selfishness, and luxury. The invasion of a foreign army makes deep tracks and furrows in the nation's life, and cuts deep scars upon the surface; but, after all, they are but on the surface; the invader sweeps along, and, in his time, he passes away; and the homes he has desolated are rebuilt, and the fields he has ravished, fertilised with his dead, grow green again; and the time comes when men scarce believe that the quiet fields they walk in, where their little ones gather flowers, have been, in times past, blackened with the smoke of the combatants, torn by the rush and tread of multitudes of armed men. Not so with the invasion of vice. That makes itself a home, and is not so easily expelled. The locusts of war consume the green leaves of a nation's life; but vice is the worm at the root that gnaws its very life; and then it shrivels and it withers into barrenness and into dust."

EDITOR.

THE SYMBOLISM OF DARKNESS.

I HAVE desired to call the attention of the readers of this periodical to a subject which is seldom referred to among the many figures of the Jewish Tabernacle, and yet one fraught with deep instruction, namely, the place assigned to darkness in the two sanctuaries of the Holy and Most Holy.

Moses was bidden to make a place of worship so constructed that not one ray of light could enter from the outer world, and in two compartments, one double the size of the other, but both quite dark until illumined with light from within the larger chamber to be provided with derived or artificial light; the smaller and most interior, when lighted up, resplendent with the uncreated glory of God, in His own presence,-the Shekinah light.

Now what could the intention be, in giving such a figure, but to show that the heart of man is naturally dark and unillumined until light of some kind is brought into it, and also that it is capable of receiving two distinct kinds of light, and the innermost vastly superior and was not this a leading thought in the minds of all the apostles when they spoke, as they so frequently did, both of darkness and light? John i. 5: "And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." 2 Cor. iv. 3: "But if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them who believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." 6th verse: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined into our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory

of God in the face of Jesus Christ." And was not the same idea uppermost in the mind of Peter when he, referring to the putting off of his "tabernacle,' distinctly speaks of two kinds of light, evidently in allusion to the differing light of the first and second sanctuaries in Moses' Tabernacle, and added, "And we have the more sure prophetic word" (or the word of prophecy more sure), "whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the Light-bearer arise in your hearts"?

Nor must we overlook the fact that there may also be an intention in the figure, not only of the darkness itself, but also in the exclusion of all natural outward light, and this might have been to show that something more than natural light is needed to reveal God unto us, or give us a knowledge of the deep things of God, as is stated so explicitly by Paul :" But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

It was to the Jewish nation that the oracles of God were committed, and in this consisted the advantage they possessed over the Gentile world; and yet when the greater light of Christ Himself shone in their midst, they, whilst profoundly reverencing the outward word which testified of Christ, refused to come unto Him, and even crucified Him. (Ye) "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me, and ye will not come to Me that ye might have life"; and even now that the veil has been rent in twain that was formerly suspended between the two Sanctuaries, and access has been made into the Holiest by the blood of Christ, it is to be feared that many are not only content to worship altogether in the outer court, but that some of those who do enter the Sanctuary abide still in the first, and enter not into the Holiest.

Assuming then that there be adumbrated truth in

these figures of darkness and light may we not sum up with the following conclusions:

1. That the heart of man in the fall is dark and without illumination.

2. That it is capable of being illumined, and with two kinds of light, a lesser and a greater.

3. That something beyond natural light is needed to do this.

4. That the Almighty, in giving forth the Scripture through holy men, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, designed to shine in on the receptivity that exists in all men as a lesser light to lead or point to a greater light that should come in course of time. 5. That it is the purpose of God we should progress in our course to receive this greater light.

6. That Christ, being the image of the invisible God, "who is Light and in whom is no darkness at all,” is that greater Light, the Day-star or Light-giver, the Antitype of the glorious Shekinah Light.

7. That it is still possible to rest short in the lesser, and consequently not come to receive this greater one in his brightness and fulness.

To those of your readers who would like to follow this subject further I would select the fellowing passages:-Luke i. 78, 79; Luke xi. 35, 36; John viii. 12; John xii. 36, 46; 1 John i. 5, 6; and in connection therewith read once more those beautiful words of our Lord, where this truth is expressed in unveiled language :-"Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth. He shall glorify Me for He shall receive of Mine and shall show it unto you" for this is the unction from the Holy One, which if any man receive, will teach him all things, and being the Truth and no lie, so they whom it hath taught shall abide in Him.

May we progress to this glory in this world, and we need not then be anxious about the world to come! JOHN G. HINE.

A FIRESIDE MEDITATION.

"Now I, to comfort him, bid him not think of God. I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with such thoughts yet."Shakespeare's Henry V., Act 2, Sc. 3.

'Only to sit and think of God

Oh what a joy it is.

To think the thought, to breathe the Name,

Earth hath no higher bliss."-Faber.

"My meditation of Him shall be sweet. I will be glad in the Lord."-Psalm civ. 34.

"To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."--Phil. i. 21.

OUR habitual thoughts of God are one of the truest tests of our religious status, and it may be a profitable meditation, in the light of the experiences depicted above, so to analyse our individual conceptions of Him, as to decide which of these experiences most closely resembles our own; for between these extremes of the natural and the renewed heart, lie all the gradations of sentiment towards our Creator and Redeemer.

With regard to the first-it is not the worldly man alone to whom the thought of God is an unwelcome visitor, but the sentiment quoted describes the attitude of many professing Christians. It is in this respect that I desire to treat it, for we are perhaps hardly aware how practically allied to this our own thoughts often are.

The description of the death of Falstaff is rightly regarded as one of the most truthful pictures of human nature that the hand of Shakespeare has drawn. Let us test our own experimental knowledge of the joy of