ber that the discipline of the present is prefatory to the glory of the future. The Church is 66 a means of grace;" the kingdom is a means of glory and grace too. May it be ours to use the former so as to secure the latter, “ giving thanks to the Father, who maketh us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, and who delivers us from the power of darkness, and translates us into the kingdom of his dear Son." J. CAMERON. 4, Melville Terrace, Edinburgh. Literature. Christ and the Sects. An Address Delivered in Albert Chambers, Paradise Street, Birmingham, Nov. 9, 1873. By H. Brittain, Birmingham. London: Kellaway & Co. MR. BRITTAIN, in a few appropriate words, rebukes the spirit of proselytism and sect-building, directs attention to Christ as the only source of the religious life, and states that if a man be a Christian he is in the army of Christ, whatever the Church of Rome, the Church of England, or any other Church may say to the contrary. Here are a few good seeds of truth, on account of which we hope the tract mey be widely scattered. The Mystery Finished; or Prophecy Explained by the Bible. By A. Winter, Esq. With Introductory Remarks by the Rev. C. Swete, D.D. London: Wil liam Macintosh. MR. WINTER is a thoughtful, earnest man, and, although there are some few things in his book which we are not prepared to endorse, it is a contribution to a great subject for which we thank him. He sees clearly that the conversion of the world by the Church is not the doctrine of Scripture, and that the coming of the Lord is our great and blessed hope. For these reasons the volume is well timed, and we hope will find thoughtful readers. Lonely Queenie, and the Friends She Made. By Isobel, Author of "Days at Millgate." London: E. Marlborough & Co. "ISOBEL" has written one of the most touching stories for children we have read for some time. It is really an art to write books of this description, so as at once to interest and instruct the little ones, and our fair authoress has that art. Poor little "Queenie" in her lonely island, except when her 66 grumpy father was present, is a picture to make one weep. New Facts Upon All Subjects. By the Author of " Enquire Within." London Kellaway and Brown. Of course it is impossible to criticise this book. Enough if we say it contains some 330 pages of small type, with a good index to the multitudinous assemblage of useful facts of which it is made up. The Guiding Hand: or Authentic Records of Providential Deliverances. By H. L. Hastings. London Kellaway and Brown, 78, Newgate Street. SOME of these anecdotes are truly remarkable. How an infidel could account for them is more than we can tell. But we can, because we believe in our Father's care. THE RAINBOW: 3 Magazine of Christian Literature, with Special Reference to the Bebealed Future of the Church and the World. FEBRUARY 1, 1874. WHEN OUR FATHER'S BUSINESS. WHEN the Divine Child was asked why he had not joined his friends, in their return to the country from the metropolis, he said, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ?" Much, very much of that business was of a character which he alone could undertake and perform. He had a work given him to do which could be entrusted to no one else in the universe. When we think about the nature of that work, it grows before the mind until it fills heaven and earth, time and eternity, with its marvellous and glorious results. To make reconciliation for iniquity and bring in everlasting righteousness; to introduce life and immortality into the region of sin and death; and so to arrange all legal and moral and material things that, as the issue, it will be said, "The tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God;" required qualifications which could be found only in him whose name is "Wonderful." But one part, at least, of his magnificent work was to call, from darkness and bondage into light and liberty, a people who should find it their constant privilege and joy to imitate him in devotion to the "Father's business." He did what no one else could, that his followers, thus qualified by him, may do in the world a work which none other of its inhabitants have either the will to undertake or the power to perform. It is perfectly clear that "the natural man" can have no sympathy with Christ in his consecration to his "Father's business," and therefore can have no wish to undertake any share in the subordinate work assigned to Christ's followers during this dispensation of testimony. He does not understand the matter at all when presented to him under the aspect of an "eternal purpose" carried on through all ages and generations, the ultimate result of which will be the manifestation of God to his creatures, and, of course, as an absolutely certain consequence of that, a perfectly happy universe. And when you add E that the "business" of Christ's friends is to bear testimony by life and speech to this revealed purpose of their Father in heaven, the natural man is, if possible, still more perplexed. His idea is that the business of the Church-that is to say, as he thinks, priests, clergy, or ministers, which you please-is to make men "good Christians ;" and as Christianity is a valuable thing for honesty, sobriety, and virtue—in fact a sort of Divine police agent, to whose influence the State is greatly indebted :-he is quite willing to contribute to the salary of the preacher, the erection of a church or chapel, or-although he is not quite sure about that the support of a missionary to the savages of islands whose very names are uncouth upon the lips of civilisation. But the man enlightened by the Holy Spirit sees all things differently. To him there is something more in the "Church" than an order of professional teachers, a helpful auxiliary to national virtue, a number of buildings for public worship, or an organisation for missionary purposes. That it is the best channel of morality and virtue, no argument is needed to prove; for Christianity, of which it is the living embodiment, contains the purest and loftiest ethics ever made known to the world; but the other things could all be dispensed with, and yet the Church, as seen by the eye of the man who has caught a glimpse of the divine ideal of that body, continue to exist and discharge the functions which belong to her présent state of being. It is no complaint wrung from the heart by bitter disappointment, no cynical utterance of a man to whom all the beautiful things of life have assumed shapes of deformity, and no desire to wither the laurels of social distinction which may be legitimately won and worn by others, that dictates these remarks. A higher motive calls them forth, and they are intended to serve a nobler end. We are grateful for our lot in life it has a thousand blessings, and its troubles are-blessings too! The beautiful things that God has made, as ornaments to the dwellingplace of his human family, have, to us, all the divine poetry of early years, when the earth seemed a temple, with heaven for its glorious dome. We see unholy feet treading its floor, and hear harsh sounds instead of the harmonious and hallowed psalmody that should ascend to its roof; but for all that we cling to our ideal, fortified in this faith and hope by a certain poet who sings of a time coming when "every thing that hath breath shall praise the Lord!" And we have no envious thought regarding the men who storm and take the citadel of “fortune," and make to themselves names of renown in the land. Society is a thing of many units, and must, we suppose, have its princes and millionaires as well as its peasants and paupers to make the social pyramid complete. An enforced socialism would be the ruin of society, and an equal distribution of property would be universal poverty. With this "confession of faith" we cannot be misunderstood. No! we have nothing to say against professional teachers, buildings for public worship, and organisations for missionary labour; no word to depreciate commercial activity, diligence in business, and the cultivation of ennobling literary tastes; and no wish to suggest to the man who seeks social distinction at the bar or in the senate, that his energies are wasted or his reward worthless. To us the world is not a howling wilderness, but a vast material platform upon which Infinite Wisdom is solving problems worthy of itself; and to us the human race is not a tremendous mistake from which its Creator can never derive either the love of sons or the loyalty of subjects, but a multitude of intelligent beings under discipline to fit at least some of them for the employments and honours of the new age. Therefore, let us be about our Father's business, with joy thrilling the heart and beaming in the eye! To wait for the realisation of some Utopian dream, or to wish for some impossible conditions of society, before we earnestly gird ourselves to the hallowed work, is not the way to honour our Father and to act in harmony with our vocation. The time is fully ripe for INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIANS, members of the Church of Christ, men born from above and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, to come forward with their testimony respecting their FATHER. Let them not wait for clergyman or minister; but, considering their individual responsibility, upon it. If "the elders of the congregation" are slow to move, let the men and women who compose the congregation, each for himself and herself, bear witness to their neighbours. The delusion that “ ordained" men only are to speak on religious subjects, must follow the other delusions which, in the name of him to whom we belong, it is our privilege to expose. Priestcraft and paganism in unholy alliance have, for more than a thousand years, blasphemously slandered the name of our Father, making him a tyrant as much more fearful and inexorable as eternity is longer than a few short years of time. act Brethren! we are HIS "SONS "-shall we not redeem our Father's character from this awfully infamous reproach? Blessed be God, who is "Love" and "Light," and in whom there is no darkness at all, the thick cloud begins to break at last! Long, long has it brooded over Christendom, as the dark region in which the prince of the power of the air has carried on his policy-his object being to prevent the light of the glorious Gospel from shining on the hearts of men. Darkness has covered the earth, and gross darkness the people, involving in fearful obscurity the ineffably attractive attributes of God. But the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations, must be rent some day; for the holy seers have said so, and their word cannot fall to the ground. If it is not for us to accomplish a work so gracious in character and vast in extent, surely we may herald the day when it shall be accomplished; and, if we mistake not, that day comes with swifter motion than even those who long for its light deem probable. Be this as it may, in the infinitely wise arrangements of God, surely those whose blessed privilege it is to see the truth should feel themselves called, as if by an audible voice from heaven, to declare that truth to their fellow men. Let the Churchman and the Nonconformist plead each for what he deems ecclesiastically best; let the merchant devote his energies to commercial pursuits; let the barrister, with all the subtleties of forensic rhetoric, plead for his client: and let the party politician, with all the arts of political oratory, plead for his party; but let us plead for GOD! Gratitude for what he has done for us requires this service at our hands; the divine relationship he has graciously formed between himself and us demands it; and compassion for our fellow men strongly urges it upon our hearts. By the misrepresentations of his character and government which have been handed down through many generations, they stand afar off from One whose matchless goodness would attract them if the truth were delivered from the errors which "the world-rulers of darkness" have mingled with it. Indeed the arguments for earnest devotion to this grand service multiply as we think of it. A healthier tone in the churches, a more vigorous and intelligent piety, and a loftier platform for the culture and exhibition of the Christian life, would certainly be among the results, if divine truth were presented in its own sublime attractiveness, unencumbered with the repulsive paganism which has clung to it for more than a thousand years. And we ourselves, if faithful to this holy work of vindicating our Father's character, and trying to redeem it from the terrible reproach which has made more infidels and atheists than anything else, would find an ample reward in an enlarged acquaintance with truth, and a firmly established conviction that all the revealed purposes of God will shortly vindicate themselves before the intelligence of the universe. Fidelity in stewardship qualifies for enlarged trust. To him that hath shall be given. One truth luminously seen and lovingly proclaimed, though all the churches should label it "heterodox," will prove the herald of another and another, until things new and old from the boundless treasury of God shall enrich the faithful servant. "Them that honour me I will honour," is not a mere general sentiment intended to convict Eli of priestly and parental negligence, but a profound and durable law of the Divine government. Times without number it has been illustrated, and God acts upon it to-day as he did in the years of old; for the blessed MASTER has perpetuated the law by setting it in beautiful Gospel light thus: "If any man serve me, him will my Father honour." And surely it is serving him, and attending to the Father's business, to believe and declare that he is the Light, without which men must walk in darkness, and the Life, without which immortality is impossible. Men do not light a candle to cover it with a vessel; neither does God, |