UNDER the most comprehensive view there are but two principles, as there are but two objects, of human love and duty-love and duty to God, and love and duty to man. But how numerous and how diversified are the particulars which enter into them! The Divine Being, as the object of our love and duty, sustains to us various characters and relations. He is our Creator, our Preserver, our Lawgiver, our Redeemer, our Saviour; and in each of these He is the object of particular affections and duties. Our love and duty to God comprehend all the particular affections which the contemplation and experience of His goodness have awakened in our hearts, and all the particular virtues which obedience to His commandments has wrought into the texture of our lives. Our love to man, in the universal sense, has a similarity in unity and variety to those which belong to the love of God. The whole human race is our neighbour. But humanity, thus comprehensively one, stands towards us in a variety of distinct relationships. And our love and duty to the neighbour include in them all the particular affections which we have ever cherished towards the members of the human family, and all the particular acts of goodnesswhich we have ever performed to them in every relation we have sustained to them. The growth of this principle was designed to begin from the earliest affection, the love of parents, branch out in the love

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of those connected with us in the remoter degrees of relationship, and extend into society in its less and greater divisions of our country and the human race. All these constitute what in the proper sense we call the world, of which we form a part. We contribute to the formation of its character, and we help to shape its destiny; we ought therefore to feel an interest in its concerns, and study how our relation to it can be made the means, under Providence, of mutual use and improvement.

The living and active world is the proper sphere of human life. It is the divinely-appointed school for training human beings for heaven. Our relation to the world is not designed by Providence for our temporal accommodation and comfort only. The Divine wisdom and goodness, which never stops in temporal ends, designed the world to be nothing else than a means for preparing its inhabitants for a better state of existence. The world therefore, in the Lord's sight, is simply a means by which His disciples may be prepared and perfected for His everlasting kingdom in heaven. The affections, the duties, the cares, and even the tribulations and temptations, which are incident to a life of activity in the world, are all necessary to enable us to work out our salvation, or to work it out in that manner and to that extent which the Divine love desires. One of the reasons on which the practice of the Christian Church proceeded, of removing in all possible cases earnest candidates for heaven from intercourse with the world, was that the world was wicked. It was imagined that by being preserved from evil communication and example, persons might more successfully cultivate purity of heart, piety, self-denial, and holiness. But in this there was a fatal mistake. If they escaped evil example and temptation, they lost the opportunity of showing a good example where it was most needed, and of maintaining their rectitude amidst temptation and overcoming in the conflict. If they removed themselves from the labours, the cares, and the anxieties of life, they deprived themselves at the same time of the virtue which is acquired by patience and endurance, and by the exercise of trust and dependence on Him who provides for all human wants. All such ideas and practices are founded in the mistaken notion that if the exciting causes to evil can be removed, the evil inclination may be more easily extinguished or subdued. In such circumstances the inherent evil is rather smothered than extinguished, suppressed than subdued. There is no real virtue except such as can withstand the temptation of vice, and the power to do so is acquired by actively resisting it. It is not

indeed necessary to seek opportunities of acquiring this power. It is not requisite to rush into temptations in order that we may acquire the habit of overcoming them. On the contrary, it is our duty carefully to guard against them, to avoid evil communications, to shun the haunts of vice, to turn away from obtrusive and open wickedness. There is, alas! enough of these in the world to entice or to tempt us without our own endeavours to search them out. Retreating from the world is to be condemned and avoided, because it is opposed to the principle laid down by the Lord Himself, and to the purpose He intended by the active life of His disciples in it. But besides His teaching we have the evidence of His own example. He came as a man to show us how we as men ought to live. His life, after at least the commencement of His public ministry, was eminently a life in the world. He did not labour in any of those vocations by which other men seek the means of temporal support, but He laboured with more than their zeal and assiduity in doing good to His creatures, both with respect to their bodies and their souls. By His actions He showed what should be the end of all human action-the good of others rather than of the actors themselves. There is an appearance as if the pursuits and labours of life had chiefly or exclusively a view to the benefit of those who perform them. They are engaged in to supply the demands or to gratify the desires of temporal life, and no doubt with many this is their only end. But although this is their immediate, it is not of necessity their only or ultimate object. Every use which we perform benefits others as well as ourselves, and human society is maintained by uses, by the performance of which men necessarily seek some personal advantage. But the attainment of that advantage is as necessary to the existence and continuance of the use as the performance of the use is to the attainment of the advantage. The order of Providence is, not so much that we should obtain a reward for our labour, as that the reward we obtain should enable and encourage us to perform the labour. In the natural world and in natural things the labour and the reward are so distinct that they appear to be entirely different things-so different that many seek, and more desire, to obtain the reward without performing the labour. But in spiritual things, and eminently in the spiritual world, the labour and the reward are so entirely connected that they do not admit of separation. There labour, or, strictly speaking, work or usefulness, is its own reward. The satisfaction and delight which are there experienced in the performance of use constitute the reward of the just

made perfect, the happiness of the kingdom of heaven. And it is possible that this may be the case essentially even in the duties and labours of temporal life. There is a satisfaction in the duties and uses of temporal life, distinct though not perhaps entirely separate, from temporal reward. But the true satisfaction which every one may derive from the performance of temporal uses comes from higher than temporal aims. This satisfaction arises from the love of the neighbour, and still more from the love of the Lord. One who loves his neighbour as himself, especially one who loves the Lord above all things, feels a disinterested delight above all interested feelings in the performance of the most ordinary labours and uses of life. To him also life is a continual opportunity for exercising himself in those high principles of righteousness and judgment, which are not only the means of the stability of human society in the world, but are the habitation or support of the throne of God itself, that is, of the Divine government and kingdom. The exercise of these virtues is one of the great purposes and advantages of an active life in the world. These are the principles which form the foundation and support of love to God and love to the neighbour. It is in consequence of its affording the means of cultivating these essential elements of order and goodness that the world is a place and state of preparation for heaven. On no other principle can we suppose the world to be constituted and its affairs to be ordered as they are. The place and state of preparation must have a resemblance to those to which they are designed to lead. This resemblance is that which is grounded in an analogy, rather than a sameness, of nature and circumstances. The principles of life are the same, they are only manifested in a different way. In each world true happiness consists in usefulness, in feeling, and thinking, and acting in harmony with the laws of eternal order, those laws which all tend to the grand and blessed result so strikingly expressed in the prayer of the Lord"that they all may be one: as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us." How important and sacred does our life in the world become when viewed in this light! We do not regard it as a state of toil, from which we seek relief in the tranquil contemplation of God and heaven, and long for emancipation by the termination of our pilgrimage; but we look upon it as the wiselydesigned means of bringing into actual existence all the affections and perceptions and active operations which are to be the very life and delight of our souls in heaven. How consistent in connection with this view does the life of our Lord when in the world appear.

He came, it is true, to suffer and die, but He came also to live, and to rejoice in the results of His life as well as of His death. And He chose to live a life of beneficent usefulness, that He might teach the Divine lesson that it is more blessed to give than to receive. We are further to remember that it was by His life in the world, including, it is true, all that He suffered as well as all that He did, that He became Righteousness itself, and the Author of righteousness to His creatures. This righteousness is communicated, not imputed; and, like the reward of which we have spoken, it is inseparably connected with the performance of the uses of active life. It is the principle of rectitude which the Lord imparts to the faithful while they are living in the performance of acts of the same character, though not necessarily of the same kind, as those which He Himself performed.

But while a Christian life is an active life in the world, it is a life separate from its evil. To live in the world, and yet avoid the evils of the world, is to live to God and heaven. It is such a life that enables us, after the example of the Lord, to overcome the world—that is, to overcome the world in ourselves. For, strictly speaking, it is not the world without that seduces us, but the world within. It is not the evil around us that contaminates us, it is the evil within us. If there were not in our own hearts those very evils that we see practised in the world, these would have no power over us, they would have no charms, and would excite in us nothing but aversion. In resisting the evils of the outer world, we are in reality at the same time resisting the evils that are within us; we are opposing our selfhood, and endeavouring to obtain a triumph over our own corrupt nature. These are the labours of life from which we obtain rest in heaven, where our works follow us, and where we reap the fruits of our exertions in this life, whether in resisting evil or in doing good.

EDITOR.

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF.

IV.

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In the introduction to one of the orations of Cicero, Professor Ramsay says, A young scholar who takes up what is called a complete critical edition of a Greek or Roman writer, one, namely, in which the various readings supplied by MSS. and early editions, or derived from conjectures, are enumerated and discussed, when he observes that there is