stances and, in that, is a right sagaman. To the man who has such a friend, it can never strike twelve; there is always hope at the bottom of his Pandora's box.

It is said of Campanella that he could so abstract his thoughts as to suffer very little pain from the rack itself. Scarcely anything is more important to be remembered by persons in trouble, about the means of living, than the lesson taught by such facts. There are, assuredly, situations in life in which one can only stand and wait,' as far as all action bearing directly upon the exigency is concerned; but there is no situation which leaves a man only his misfortunes to think of and to busy himself about. It must be owned, however, that many troubles, when present and pressing, are peculiarly unfavourable to activity of all kinds. Not merely in the case of debt,-which is not the thing chiefly in hand in these paragraphs, but in that terribly common case among the lower ranks of the mesocracy,-living from hand to mouth. Still, for my own part, I am so thoroughly convinced of the medicinal and protective value of employment, that if I were to be in a situation which at once tied my hands behind me and worried me as if they were free, I would rather learn columns of words out of a foreign dictionary, or do mental arithmetic, than eat my heart out in moping idleness. There are always tangible little things to be seen to, besides. Books and papers want arranging; a shelf wants nailing up; or, better still, there is some small act of mercy ready to one's hand which will cost nothing but the doing. There is no obvious connexion between performing such things and getting ready for the landlord next quarter; but who are we that everything should be obvious to us? and how do we walk, by faith or by sight? A friend of mine assures me, that his best and lightest days were when he was under the necessity of cleaning his own boots every morning; that somehow the 'preparation of the heart' and mind for duty came to him on that operation as it has never come to him since. Now, I recommend no man in money (or other) trouble to go out of his way to clean his own boots, but I do recommend him to do whatever lies next to his hand, and if nothing lies next, to find out something that must be done to save time, and antedate its performance, rather than be idle.

But do the means of life constitute a difficult problem to nearly everybody, so that, in sitting down to write about them, one slides naturally into the assumption that all the world is puzzled to make both ends meet? It would indeed appear so. It seems to be so all over the world, from the fastness where the savage watches for his game, to the civilized' hothouse, where the coddled trader in his embarrassment asks, What is a Panic?' I am one of those who entertain strong opinions about that; who think that it would be a good thing for us if an inaudible fiat were some night to sweep our tills and purses bare of every coin, and teach us by main force on our awaking that a pound' is only an abstraction. But difficulties in providing the means of life lie deeper than the currency, whether the 'medium' be corine-shells, coins, or paper. To the aboriginal difficulty of production, human error and greed always add superincumbent difficulties

of distribution. We have all our own private crotchets in political economy, which are neither here nor there in a discussion of nonsectarian character like this; but one thing is certain to all men of insight, that the principle of competition' and the principle of coneert' may, and some day must, kiss each other. And much more may be foreseen, that will make the means of living easier to get in civilized society. And what then? If the human voice will never become good by (what Foster called) the hopeful process of exhausting its own competitors,' will it ever become happy by the hopeful process of exhausting its inconveniences? We shall all agree that the worst part of our monetary difficulties lies in their moral ramifications.

With one consenting voice teachers and observers maintain that the happiest and most favourable position as to money matters is that of a servant, using the word in its widest sense-an employé. There must be some deduction to be made from this in a society in which the 'flankey,' liveried or unliveried, is the type of all unmanliness, and the 'governess, the image of slighted poverty. But after all such deductions (and even after allowing space for the query whether one human being performing menial offices for another for money or out of any motive for love or reverence is not an abnormal position, which must deteriorate his morale) it remains most true that a servant who is paid fixed wages is, among those who earn their bread, the happiest, the healthiest, and the most likely to live long-unless there be something specially unhealthy or galling in his occupation. It is a great thing to know positively that one may reckon on a certain sum at certain times; it diffuses a feeling of security and steadiness over the whole character, which is favourable to all the soberer virtues.

Dr. Johnson noted the true heroism there must be in a poor widow who struggles to keep a family of orphans on the profits of a little shop. There is, one doubts not, heroism behind counters as well as at the cannon's mouth, or tied to the stake; and that poor widow in particular, and such as she, will not miss their crowns. But the career of a tradesman does seem very unfavourable to the growth of a noble character. Perpetually looking after gain, picking it up bit by bit, as a small shopkeeper must do, is unhopeful for him; and then there is the degrading superstition that the receiver of money is always the obliged person, and bound to touch his forelock to the customer. The Christian life may be lived everywhere-it is its glory-and it is in fact lived everywhere,-over the till and the string-box as well as in the closet; but, though I have known some noble souls in trade, I never knew one that succeeded in it, to the length of laying by much money. And while the small trading population of a country is the stronghold of the party of order,' it seems to be always the refuge of the most obstructive forms of sordid ignorance.

It is otherwise with those whose means of living are the wider forms of commerce. Their temptation is not to sordidness, but to that laxity of practice which always dealing with abstractions seems to generate. The whole system of discounting, advances, 'hypothecations,' &c.,

tends to puzzle the boundary lines of 'mine and thine' in average natures, and, alas! it does puzzle them as we see.

I do not think attorneys, barristers, and medical men seem to exemplify individually, so much as men in other walks of life, the characteristic dangers of their pursuits. Medical men are so often not materialists as you might expect; neither are lawyers commonly heartdried men of the world. It is among young barristers and young surgeons that we find the most touching struggles with circumstance when they begin to apply their means of living; but the moral atmo. sphere of the professions seems on the whole healthy, judging by the men they turn out.

There remain those who live by voluntary teaching-ministers, schoolmasters, literary men. Schoolmasters are, in share-list language, 'looking up,' and as their profession does not expose them to any great moral temptations that we know of, and they can make definite bargains, we have not much sympathy for them. It is otherwise with ministers and literary men, whose bargains never can be honestly made definite, and whose relations with the taught are of a much more delicate order. Whoso undertaketh to teach adults, and at the same time to keep himself, his wife, his children, and a conscience, undertaketh a great work. His moral temptations are peculiar. Two, in particular, are not commonly taken into account: 1. The necessity under which such a teacher lies to vary and adapt his matter forces him to watch his own moods, in order that he may seize and transfix their productive tendencies for the purposes of the hour; and this (which need not include insincerity-a danger that must be crushed) inevitably leads to habits of undue introspection. And what does that lead to? Ask, if you so please, those the worst part of whose daily struggle no one denies; but do not rely upon being answered! 2. Men who are 'apt to teach,' are men under the dominion of Ideas, and pro tanto inapt for the commonplaces of social relationships. Wives of men of Ideas find this out, unless they are women of Ideas, and can deal with their husbands as their peers. It must often appear to overlookers that the artist uses everything and everybody in a very ruthless fashion

'Into paint will I grind thee, my bride !'

And so I have dreamed with the philanthropist and the 'devoted' minister. When I was a child I used to think I should dislike above all things, if I were a woman, to be the wife of the minister. Now, to the natural tendency of even the most affectionate Idea-man to absorb everything unto himself, apply the screw of impecuniosity! You have then a peculiar style of tyrant, at war with himself and the whole frame of things, whose best kindness a loving woman will find cold unless she have larger brains and better education than most

*Hawthorne has illustrated this in the Blithedale Romanec.'

women, or unless she is one of those (rare) creatures who can worship a man, and believe in him for what he does, comparatively regardless of what he is. Well, it will not do to say that paid teachership in every form is bad; but it is certainly full of danger. It is a most deadly thing for a young minister to feel himself under an implied bond to supply a certain article in exchange for his salary; it is nearly as deadly to the literary man to be bound to write at certain times whether he will or no. It is some comfort to reflect that teachers of religion and imaginative writers are, as a body, long-lived, and usually retain their cheerfulness and faculties to the last! Yet, it is they who, of all others, have to offer up the necessary hawk over and over again not always, let us hope, without acceptance by the powers which will take the man without the riches, but not the riches without the manhood.'

The natural relation of the human soul towards God, which sin, and sin only, can break up, and for the restoration of which God was manifested in the flesh, is that of trust. Simple, naked trust,-not that this shall be given, or the other, bread and water, or meat and furniture, but the undifferentiating trust of a child in Him. A confidence which does not splinter off into expectations and doubts, but lives and moves, and has its being in Him. This is not playing upon words. There is an enormous difference between a trust that analyses, and a trust not in or for things, but simply in Him. This is the mood which should underlie firmness in action, and submission in suffering; the mood which alone can carry the weak through the struggle for the means of life. And it is not pitched too high. There was a time when we said, Now, my heart is fixed. Once for all, for ever and ever, I trust. I shall never be confounded.' And there we must keep, for life and death. We are sure to have plenty of dark times, without reckoning for them; but we are the children of the light: the clouds are accidents, the sun keeps his place.

How the Canon of the New Testament was formed.*

THE form and type of the New Testament collection, as well as its immediate point of historical connexion, are to be found in the Old Testament canon. The Old Testament, as testifying of and completed in Christ, was given by God as the basis of the doctrines of Christ and his apostles, and of the Christian church. The lessons read from the Old Testament in the synagogues were, in all probability, retained during the Apostolic age. This would readily lead to a similar use of the New Testament lesson, and to the formation of a New Testament canon. Let us see whether we can find any traces of this in the New Testament itself. In Colossians iv. 11, Paul directs that his Epistle to the Colossians be also read in the Church

* Abridged and revised from Herzog's Protestant Encyclopediæ.'

it

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of Laodicea, and the converse. Other adjacent congregations seein to have made similar exchanges, especially after copies of the originals were multiplied (Polycarp, Ep. ad Philip. c. 13.; Eusebius, H. E. III. 36, 37; V. 25). But it cannot be shown, and seems improbable, that the Apostolic Epistles were regularly read during public worship, in the same manner as the Old Testament lessons (Thiersch, Versuch d. Herstellung d. hist. Standp. fur d. Kritik d. N. Test. Schriften,' 345). The Apostles assert the divine authority of their doctrine upon their possession of the Holy Spirit, and prove what they teach partly by the Old Testament, partly by authentic traditions concerning Christ (1 Cor. xi. 23; xv. 3-7). If, therefore, occasional references are made to their own epistles (1 Cor. v. 9; 2 Cor. vii. 8; 2 Thess. ii. 15, &c.), they do not mean to declare their writings, as such, sacred, or, by desiring them to be read, to have them placed in the same category with the Old Testament writings. Thiersch, indeed, thinks --though upon internal grounds-that the natural activity of the early churches and their leaders led to the formation of the original canon, during the first century, by a simple unanimous recognition of the authenticity of the several books, not by a synod or formal law. But whilst we concede that the Apostolic age was productive and constitutive as compared with the more conservative period which succeeded, it does not necessarily follow that the canon was then formed, or that may not rather have been the work of the more conservative period. This now, as far as possible, is to be proven. We first turn to what is said in the Writings of the Apostolic Fathers' in reference to the use of the New Testament in the congregations. The assertion, that those writings often allude to a New Testament collection, and its normal character, needs limitation. Citations from New Testament epistles mostly occur without marks and without the name of the book, or the author, and cannot always be identified as Scripture quotations. Clemens Romanus (Ep. I. ad Cor. c. 47) mentions Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians; Polycarp's epistle to the Philippians alludes to Paul's to them; Ignatius to the Ephesians to Paul's to them. In other cases we find, ordinarily, only a silent use of the quotation, or an indefinite form of citation; the most remarkable that of Polycarp, in which a passage from Ephesians is quoted according to the Latin translation. Gieseler's inference that the Apostolic Fathers in these cases cite merely from oral tradition, seems natural. But, if even written sources be assumed, we cannot certainly affirm that any particular passage is quoted from our present canon; or, if even that were claimed, the existence of a collection, or canonical dignity for it, cannot be assumed. The most that can be ascertained is, that the collocation of Old Testament with New Testament passages seems a bridge, over which the idea of canonicity passed from the Old Testament to the New Testament Scriptures.

But we have seen that the Apostolic Fathers furnished positive evidence of the existence of a New Testament collection. That a complete collection-with canonical authority-is not to be thought of, is confirmed by the fact that Justin quoted other Gospels as canonical.