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sistent aims and desires. Oh, yes," he seems to say, "you want to be good, want it quite sincerely; but then you want many other things as well. At times you want them more. You shrink from the effort which goodness involves. You know it is wise and right, the true wisdom, the one duty, to serve God and your neighbour, and you wish to do it; but at times you shrink from the trouble of leaving your room and your book to serve a neighbour, or from the thought and emotion without which you cannot worship God. You sincerely desire to carry your religion into your daily life; but you cannot always be at the pains to control your temper, or you have not the courage to discountenance a dishonest custom, or to refuse a profit which can only be obtained in doubtful ways."

This, and such as this, is what the Apostle means when he reminds us of our instability, our two-mindedness, of the fickleness of our hearts, of our divided wills. Elijah had the same thought in his mind when he upbraided the Israelites with the challenge, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" or, more exactly, "How long halt ye between two paths?"-one foot on the higher path and one on the lower, so that they made little way, and were thrown into a distorted and ungainly attitude.

We all know what the Prophet, what the Apostle meant, for we have all limped on Elijah's two paths; we have all been as waves on St. James's sea, now rising toward heaven, now sinking toward the abyss. Or, only slightly to change the figure, we have all wavered on the waves, as Peter did when, no longer keeping his eyes on Christ, he began to sink. Like him, we have had our minds distracted between trust and fear, between love for the Master and self-love. "Wherefore didst thou doubt?" said Christ to Peter; i.e. "Why become a man of two minds? Why suffer your thoughts to be drawn in two opposite directions -toward Me, and yet away from Me?" And to us St.

James says: "Do not doubt; do not suffer your minds to be distracted by the contending claims of flesh and spirit, of heaven and earth, of time and eternity: or, though you ask for the best things, you will not, because you cannot, receive anything of the Lord. He will give you wisdom if you ask it, for He gives to all; but what will you be the better for wisdom if you do not use it?"

What we want, in order to attain decision of will, unity of character, is faith, or more faith, in the spiritual and eternal realities, to have our hearts more fully set on them, to be quite sure that they are worth more than all the goods of time, and that we may possess and enjoy them, even in these fleeting hours of time. And therefore it is that St. James bids us, if we lack the true wisdom, ask for it in faith, nothing doubting. The fact is, that we do doubt, that we do not fully and heartily believe. We get weary and ashamed of limping awkwardly on our two paths; we grow sick of being tossed to and fro between our better and our inferior desires; and we ask God to give us wisdom to choose the better part, to take and keep the higher path, to maintain a settled and onward course. But even as we ask, even when we are in our best moods, do we quite want to break once for all with the world? do we see no flower we long to pluck which blooms only on the lower path? Alas! we ask for decision itself with an undecided heart, not expecting, nor altogether wishing, to receive a full and immediate answer to our prayer, not braced and prepared for the effort it would take to grasp that answer, should it come.

Is there no remedy, no real help for us? Will nothing induce or compel us to choose God and truth and goodness with all our hearts? Will nothing persuade us to make the formation of a noble and harmonious character our supreme aim, and to follow it with a single and an undivided will? Shall we never make it our chief and stead

fast endeavour to be true and upright and kind in all we do, and with all our strength? Many of us are so sick of our indecision, of being divided in will and aim, that we say we would willingly make any sacrifice in order to have done with it, that the sense of unity may be brought into our hearts and lives, that we may always be doing one thing, and that the best. And sometimes God takes us at our word. He sends the divers tribulations which make us feel how unable the things of sense and time are to satisfy the soul, how uncertain our hold of them is. He convinces us, by arguments which rend our hearts, that we cannot rest in any earthly good, however pure and sweet it may be; or that, if we could rest in it, we cannot be sure of having it long. And thus, painfully yet most graciously, He teaches and constrains us to seek first the things which lie beyond the reach of change, and which can satisfy us, even though we should lack all else. Truth, righteousness, charity, fellowship with the Father and with His Son, the hope of becoming one with all the wise and faithful and good, and of meeting all whom we love in a world in which there will be no change, save the changes which will bring us nearer to each other by bringing all nearer to Godthese now become our aim, our strength, our joy. The very sorrows we most dreaded have made us men of one mind, and will in due course make us perfect and entire, lacking nothing. We still love the beautiful world around us, and the friends who have long been dear to us, and the necessary or honourable tasks assigned us, and the pleasant recreations and enjoyments permitted us. We love them more than ever: but we love and value them most of all, not for what is outward and visible in them, but for what is inward and invisible; for the help they yield us to become brave and true and gentle, for the opportunities they afford us of helping others to walk after the spirit, and not after the flesh. We love this beautiful world most of all

when it speaks to us of the beauty of its Maker. We love our common and public tasks, not so much for the gain we make by them, as for the good we may do by them, the contribution we tender to the general welfare. We love our friends, not so much for any personal comfort or ease we may get out of them, nor because they cast back on us a softened and flattering reflection of ourselves, but rather because they are helping us, and we are helping them, to live the true life, to pursue the chief good. And, imperfect as we all are, there are many of us who really do value our friends in proportion as they aid us to be our best selves, and invite us into those upper chambers of the soul in which we find it so hard to abide.

Shall

When we pray for wisdom, then, wisdom to guide our lives toward high spiritual ends, we may be sure that God will give it. But we may be sure too that, with the wisdom, He will send the trials which will constrain us to accept and use it. When the trials come, we must bear them; for who can escape the hand of God? But shall we not also take the wisdom they bring with them? we not suffer them to redeem us from our indecision, from halting and wavering between the supreme eternal good and a good that is only temporal and will change with time? Shall we not count it all joy if by these trials we are made men of one mind, and have that mind fully and wholly bent on God, and on the joy and peace which are to be found in Him, and in Him alone?

There is but one way to escape the trials which are so painful to us. And it is this: To make them unnecessary, by an instant, voluntary, and entire devotion to the true aim, the supreme good, of life. Because God loves us, and will make us perfect and entire, He must and will send us any sorrows, losses, pains necessary to detach our hearts from the inferior objects and aims on which they are too apt to settle. His very love for us compels Him to compel

us to choose the better part. If we would avoid the pain of compulsion, we must freely choose the better part for ourselves. So long as we halt between two, and waver this way and that, we must not expect, we dare not hope, to escape the trials which will make us of a single heart and an undivided will. When those trials come, let us remember for what they come, what an end of mercy, that so we may be able to rejoice in tribulation itself, knowing that by tribulation God is constraining us to bring forth all the peaceable fruits of righteousness and love.

GENESIS AND SCIENCE.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

S. Cox.

THREE eminent men of science1 have, at my request, furnished me with their opinions as to the possibility of establishing an agreement between the statements in the first chapter of Genesis and the certain and well-ascertained results of modern scientific investigation.

I am glad to say I have their permission to publish the papers and letters in which these opinions are expressed, and they now appear as an appendix to the "Notes on Genesis" in successive numbers of THE EXPOSITOR.

J. J. STEWART PEROWNE.

PROFESSOR STOKES ON GENESIS.

DEAR MR. DEAN,

I.

Some of the questions you ask me are rather for a theologian to answer than for a scientific man, especially one who does not know Hebrew. I think perhaps I had best, in the first instance, mention what on scientific

1 Sir G. G. Stokes, M.P., F.R.S., President of the Royal Society; Rev. C. Pritchard, D.D., F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Astronomy in the University of Oxford; Rev. G. Bonney, Sc.D., F.R.S., Professor of Geology in University College, London.