Roman Catholic Endowment question, or is another Louis Napoleon vanquishing another Cavaignac, or is another clergyman lecturing at this hour to another Early Closing Association, on the laws of our Milky Way? Singular, beyond all conceivable singularities, to think, that, so to speak, the other self, the wraith of our firmament walks in those mysterious regions which lie beyond the solar path and milky way. Think again of the fact, that there are what are called double stars; that is, stars which revolve around each other, some of them taking hundreds of thousands of years to complete their tremendous revolution, as though the snn were to move round Sirius, his nearest neighbour in the infinite space.

Think again of the appearances which the skies present, of change, of motion, of growth, of decay, of gradual consolidation and concentration.

There is manifest change among those lofty bodies. In the course of ages, stars appear receding from, and others approaching towards, each other. Sheeted masses of stars seem to be breaking up into individualized portions, and here and there, are stars torn away as if by handfuls from an abyss or ocean of an hundred orbs. May we not in all this read as in sunsyllables, the word "Change," which we had fondly thought to be confined to this earth, written on the broad page of the starry heavens ?

There is manifest motion among these mighty luminaries. The story was long told, as a good jest, of a worthy minister in Scotland, of the old school, saying once in a sermon, “ All things, my friends, are in motion; the earth is in motion, the moon is in motion, the planets are in motion, and even the very fixed stars are in motion." But don't laugh, for the honest old man had stumbled upon the truth; the fixed stars are in motion. Our own sun is now generally believed to be turning round a point in the constellation of Hercules, and drawing all his planets, and all their satellites along in his train. So that our sun is but himself a satellite, circling around some larger luminary. And there is reason to believe that the same motion is found in all the varied orbs which compose the universe,— nay, that there are stars moving to and fro at a rate so swift, and on a stream of energy so prodigious, as to bewilder and

appal us. For example, a star was perceived by Tycho Brahe, which increased and swelled in splendour till it eclipsed the planet Venus, and was visible in the day time; and which yet in a very short time vanished from view, and has been seen no more. Nay, it has been found out of late, they tell us, by an approximate solution of the problem of the stellar parallax, that as to the distance of the stars, there are some so far from us, that the distance between us and Sirius is but one unit in the stupendous sum of their ineffable remoteness; and that as to their motions there are others-my mird sinks under the ideawhich are going faster that their own light.

There is not only motion, but there is growth in the heavens -still and steadfast as they seem. Other chaoses are curdling into other creations. There the Spirit of God is, for aught we know, brooding upon other waters. So that the Scandinavians did not so far err in figuring the universe as a tree, its root the throne, its leaves the stars, earth one withered autumnal leaf among the great green constellations, growing upwards towards boundless, measureless perfection, and the music of the spheres just the waving of the eternal branches in one wind-like spirit which pervades them all.

There are appearances, too, of consolidation and concentration in the heavens; their matter through which you can see the stars, is gradually condensing, and bodies fully formed are crowding in as it were upon the centre. What the ultimate effect of this inconceivable pressure of stars, converging and as it were closing in, it must be left for after ages to discover; suffice it, that there is through this principle taken in connection with the fact, that stars appear already to have passed from the bright heraldry of heaven, and the "angels now miss them travelling the air," not only a possibility, but a probability, of the present system of things coming to a close. This tendency to unification was observed long ago by Newton, who actually wept over the prospect of his home, the earth, being one day re-involved into the sun, and who prayed in his blind agony, that he who alone could, would, by his eternal word, avert the impending doom. Others since him have seen that not only the earth, and her sister planets are tending to re-merge into their sun, but that

the sun himself is hurrying to be re-absorbed by some greater sun, that firmaments are crowding inward towards their centre, the whole starry heavens are pressing towards some general meeting-place and sphere of union, and that it is not impossible that by the further and final operation of this law, the heavens shall pass away even without a great noise, with no shivering of the blue dome, or shattering of the fair worlds, but gently and stilly sink to their repose, like a little child folding itself to sleep. There may not even be a convulsion, but merely a pause, and then all has ceased. And then another Word may be spoken, and there may be a new universe diffused round the Godhead, even fairer and brighter than the former: with stars still in the majesty of a yet mightier motion; suns concentrating with a more earnest intensity the lightnings of the uncreated eye; low, far streaming, fire-written, sphere-music, hushed in its eloquence of adoration; swifter and brighter prophet-comets obeying laws of wider significancy, and telling tidings of profounder import; new heavens, and a new earth, so passing fair, that of these present it is written, "they shall not be remembered, nor so much as come into mind.”—Gilfillan on the Christian Bearings of Astronomy.

THE OLD PHILOSOPHERS.

WE smile at the astrologer now, great in our faith that the stars have nothing to do with us except to be pointed out by our telescopes and become eloquent topics for divines and astronomers. We scout the men who think they can possibly rule and regulate human life, yet it becomes us not. Here is an age debating to this moment whether the moon affects men in their lunacies or not. How are you to settle it? You call people lunatics to this day. It is a moot point whether lunacy is affected by states of the moon, and yet this is a generation that sniffs contemptuously at the old astrologers. Those who cannot tell, even yet, the doctrine of tides and lunacies and idiotcies with regard to men, will undertake to sneer at these men. We may do it, perhaps, legitimately in some things which they attempted to do, but the idea of them was true.-Dawson on "Things not Seen."

CONSCIENCE.

THE saint has always been peculiar in the earth, because he walked by faith. Look at any of the fathers. Take the life of Abraham for instance. Here is a man who regulates an earthly life by a heavenly pattern, who has no belief that morals and justice, and right and truth are simple notions, but looks upon them as certain great awful impersonal matters to which he has to become obedient. So with the saint in every age and his conscience. He looks upon Conscience—the most strange unseen thing about you and me—not as we may do with our modern logic, as a curious chemical result of "Conscientiousness well developed;" of morals rightly taught; of honesty picked up properly out of a book—some tertium quid which rests in none of the things which went to make it up: a curious result of a ledger well balanced and totalized. No! To him, Conscience was the awful voice of God in the soul of him: in the making of its laws he had no part and no lot, for he remembered that strange thing about their consciences-that they sinned not. A man turns his eye inwards, and he finds his Conscience in him never was a sinner. Holy, impeccable, always pure, the Conscience never took part in our guilt yet. You will sin, sense will have its way, lust will conceive and bring forth sin and death, but whensoever it is determined so to do, like a holy vestal, the Conscience goes weep and be quiet. You never sinned yet and your Conscience was in at the sin; you never do wrong, and the Inward Thing consents. It withdraws into silence until after you have sinned; it wakes up afterwards to do its second work. You would not hear it as a counsellor : you shall hear it as a judge you would not have it as a friend, then you shall have it as a foe. What you call Remorse is but the preaching of a law that has been broken-for there are two preachings of the law to every soul of us-one is before we sin, the other afterwards: one is a holy warning, the other is an awful revenge: for what a difference is there in the sound of the law, the day before we have broken it and the day after! How calm to me seem the laws of this land to-day: to-morrow, if I break them, how strange they sound! What new meaning comes into them the moment they are broken. Now, these men took this view of that great unseen matter, Con

science. It was to them a preaching of a law that was impersonal; and here is its great office for us all; for what you and I mainly need in life is a deliverance from our personalism -a feeling that somewhere we are beaten.-Ibid.

BLANKS AND PRIZES.

You have read of a painter who, after he had finished his work, drew back to admire it. He was at the edge of a fearful cliff; a friend rushes forward, and over the head of St. Peter puts a brush, and spoils it all. What was done then? The visible was marred; a blank was made; but the painter rushed forward, and was saved. Such, to the mystical eye, is the interpretation of many troubles. There is that visible thing you gloried in so- —that achievement or acquirement. God comes, and, like the painter's friend, dashes over the visible thing, in order that through the blank we may get insight into the invisible.

There is that child of yours dropped out of the circle, and what was done for the soul? The visible—the light of the eye and the joy of life-was hidden, gone, a blank; and over the blank place, as it were, in life, there come at last such visible teachings of the invisible world. The blanks of life are often hand-writings on the wall. They become places through which the eternal glory streams. For as long as the visible is apparent, I look to no invisible thing. God makes blank the invisible in order that through it there may come the glories of the heavens. It is in life sometimes as it is with those old manuscripts and paintings. Some inferior hand has put some paltry picture over an old and glorious one. There comes a blank, a scratching-the appearance of the picture is disfigured. I look through it, and see I have got a real picture, and that I might by care and trouble have a great divine work. They have written some trumpery messes over a glorious old classic page. A blot comes—an erasure happens-the fair manuscript is spoiled, and I gain sight into a beautiful palace, into the holy things underneath. So goes it with life. You have got some poor trumpery shares marked on your soul-some matter of life. Then come losses, railway panics, crises, falls of railway