a comfortable chair, to an angle of about two hundred degrees, allegories of content-incarnations of plenty ! Are such happy? O yes! you may know that by benevolence beaming from their eyes in all directions, like light from the sun; and what is odd, these peculiar phenomena in the social system are idolised. The secret is, they let the public have their own way. But to return from this episode to the Tinker. As the case happened, the tremendous blows dealt by revealed truth at the door of the Tinker's conscience, aroused the whole inner man, and the deep slumber of the faculties and of the imagination was broken for ever."

There is a sad oppressiveness in that sense of human littleness, which the great truths of astronomy have so direct a tendency to inspire. Man feels himself lost amid the sublime magnitudes of creation—a mere atom in the midst of infinity; and trembles lest the scheme of revelation should be found too large a manifestation of the Divine care for so tiny an ephemera. Contrary blasts of doctrine winnow man's faith, and prevent abnormal cerebral developments. In Wesley's lifetime, the government of his society was a sui generis patriarchal despotism-worse than Moses, because it was a later era. "Brother was changed into father" and all the congregations lifted up their voices, and wept. Since his death, the government has assumed the form of an oligarchy. But it is the infusion of the democratic spirit which has knitted Methodism together; the encouragement of the imperium in imperio; and it is well known, it is the struggle of the democratic and aristocratic elements which has caused breaches in

the society. The humblest may be a ruler in Israel. Our Master's examples and words are biting satires upon most of our pietists. When He rebuked His two zealots, His pungent words are still applicable to some of our neighbours, "Ye know not of what manner of spirit ye are of."

The worst of all schisms is the schism of hearts-worse than the liberty of the libertine. Good, however, generally ensues from controversy; it is the safety-valve of religious zeal; sometimes an intellectual steam engine worked at high pressure. A dead calm assuredly is to be dreaded as much as hurricanes and tempests. All sections are in movement-error and truth swim together, like the iron and the earthen pot in the fable; but error will be broken by truth in the collision. We have not gone to the root of theology and morals; small filaments of nerves only have yet been touched; the masses are still morally bewildered; the deepest recesses of the hearts of men are not penetrated. In our passage through the boundless ocean of disquisition, we often take fogs for land; and after having long toiled to approach them, find instead of repose and harbours, new storms of objections, and fluctuations of uncertainty. The difficulty arises, "in proving all things," to know what emanates from God, and what from dark, fallible, and short-sighted man. Belief, like a young puppy, is born blind, and must swallow whatever food is given to it; when it can see, it caters for itself. Good-natured credulity, like every-thing else, must bide its time. "Knowledge," says Lord Bacon, "is power:" he does not say it is either wisdom or virtue. It augments

the influence of opinion upon mankind; but whether it augments it to good or evil purpose, depends upon the character of the information which is communicated, and the precautions against corruptions which are taken. Alison, the historian, well says,-"As much as it enlarges the foundations of prosperity in a virtuous people, does it extend the sources of corruption in a degenerate Unless the moral and religious improvement extend in proportion to their intellectual cultivation, the increase of knowledge is but an addition to the lever by which vice dissolves the fabric of society." "It is the soul which is the man." What the poet says is perfectly true

"the guinea's worth is in the gold, and not the stamp upon it." What is wanted? Love on earth,-an echo of love from Heaven. This love dethrones the usurpers, wields the sceptre by unrivalled royalty, and subordinates all the claims of this world into their proper secondary places. Does not the world love the world's judgment, and hollow rites, more than truth?

Knowledge is, or ought to be, progressive. Galileo, disdaining to be tamely and slavishly led by such opinions as were then predominant; Galileo-no Proteus for shape, or Roscius for tongue-first questioned, and then denied on bended knees their correctness. His recantation was a deep blot on the brilliancy of his fame. In the 19th century how many (GoD only knows) are submitting to the dictation of blind and bigoted guides! How many great bullion truths are being buried in obscurity, smothering in bosoms which are the palaces of all noble and true aspirations, because they are un

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fashionable, exceptionable; because in advance of the times. Ignorance may be compared to a barren country of which all are natives, and from which all are emigrants; a serpent which men foster, because they suppose it to be harmless. Ignorance is a dark place, where poor people are allowed to grope about till they hurt themselves, or somebody else. We shall have a few words on revolutions, "births of Providence," hereafter. A rational excise would be to take all taxes from knowledge, and place them upon ignorance; because, in the present state of popular education, they would certainly be very much more productive. There is much force and truth in Pope's well-known lines :—

“A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.”

Who has not experienced that peculiar-indescribable feeling which accompanies the process of intense thought, whilst engaged in the study of some abstract subject? We feel, during the. first process, that the brain seems, as it were, to be scarcely at all acted upon. By degrees we become sensible of the operation of some power; or, we are conscious of an intensity of the perceptive power, until at length, we are enabled to overcome the difficulty by which we were so long baffled. And this result comes frequently-almost invariably-with a startling suddenness; the truth flashing upon the mind with the velocity of light; and we then begin to wonder at the tedious perceptive process which the mental faculties went through,

before the mind's eye was thus enabled to see more distinctly. The electro-physiological theory affords a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. During the first efforts, but a small portion of the electric fluid is transmitted to the brain; gradually the ganglions become charged with it, until the accumulation is such, that the brain is then immediately and intensely acted upon. Hence the result as above described in the increased perceptive faculty. We must not forget, however, that the power of creating depends upon the power of remembering; invention is little more than a new combination of ideas already acquired, and he who has most stored his mind with the riches of nature and of art, will always have the most fertile and the readiest invention. The observation of Grotius, to demonstrate the necessity of study is not inapplicable-"Ex nihilo nihil fit." "Nothing can come of nothing." It must not be expected that the power of creating will come to an artist by instinct; ideas must first be laid up in the mind, before the ability of selecting and combining them, so as to give them the appearance of novelty and the powerful attraction of interest, can reasonably be expected to show itself.

may wait long for inspiration, if there be no stock to draw upon for the display of it. Thought engenders thought. Place one idea upon paper, another will follow it, and still another, until you have written a page. You cannot fathom your mind: there is a well of thought there which has no bottom. The more you draw from it, the more clear and plentiful it will be, providing you attend to our preliminary pioneerings. If you neglect to