In

soul is still free to withdraw, is a more generous and self-denying sacrifice than an act which allows no recall, which is done once and forever. There is no doubt a seeming attractiveness in the thought; but it is difficult to understand what is meant. regard to a material offering, external to oneself, such a course would be simply impossible. We can not give while we yet retain. To retain the power of continually giving, we must be really still holding it in our possession. We have not given it from the very fact that we have still the power of giving it. Can there be a difference in the case of giving oneself? If we continually offer ourselves, we have at all times the power of withdrawing the offering; and this very freedom, which is supposed to be deliberately retained, really makes it no gift. While it is still in our power it is still We may give, or not give, the very next hour. It is not that the vow constitutes the gift, but the conscious acceptance of the call of God necessarily, if it be true, involves the future equally with the present. It is of God, and partakes of His eternity. There ought, indeed, to be the utmost caution, forethought, and deliberation, embracing both inward dispositions and outward duties, a spirit of self-distrust and fear, in the lowliest dependence on the leadings of grace and the

our own.

providence of God; and all this, moreover, accom panied with such assistance as can be attained through the guidance of those to whom the care of the soul is rightfully entrusted. But these considerations, though they greatly affect the wisdom and rectitude of the decision, are but conditions of its character, not the constituent elements of its life. It is the following of Jesus, and the being united with His life in the form which He wills to impress on the soul, which constitutes its reality; and to leave any reserve of self-choosing in the future, is but to "keep back part of the price.”

REV. T. THELLUSSON CARTER,

The Church and the World: Essays on Questions of the Day. By Various Writers.

CELIBACY.

EVER since the beginning of Christianity there hath been two orders or ranks of people among good Christians.

The one that feared and served God in the common offices and business of a secular worldly life; the other, renouncing the common business and common enjoyments of life, as riches, marriage, honors, and pleasures, devoted themselves to voluntary poverty, virginity, devotion, and retirement; that by this means they might live wholly unto God in the daily exercise of a divine and heavenly life.

This testimony I have from the famous ecclesiastical historian Eusebius, who lived at the time of the first general council, when the Church was in its greatest glory, when its bishops were so many holy fathers and eminent saints. "Therefore," saith he, "there hath been instituted in the Church of Christ two ways or manners of living. The one, raised above the ordinary state of nature and common ways of living, rejects wedlocks, posses

sions and worldly goods, and being wholly separate and removed from the ordinary conversations of common life, is appropriated and devoted solely to the worship and service of God, through an exceeding degree of heavenly love.

"They who are of this order of people seem dead to the life of this world, and having their bodies only upon earth, are in their minds and contemplations dwelling in heaven, from whence, like so many heavenly inhabitants, they look down upon human life, making intercessions and oblations to Almighty God for the whole race of mankind; and this not with the blood of beasts, but the highest exercises of true piety, with cleansed and purified hearts, and with a whole form of life strictly devoted to virtue.

"Christianity receives this as a perfect manner of life. The other is of lower form, and suiting itself more to the conditions of human nature, admits chaste wedlock, care of children and family, of trade and business, and goes through all the employments of life, under a sense of piety and fear of God."

If Truth itself hath assured us that there is but one thing needful, what wonder is it that there should be some among Christians so full of faith as to believe this in the highest sense of the words,

and to desire such a separation from the world that their care and attention to the one thing needful may not be interrupted?

If the chosen vessel St. Paul hath said, "He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord"; and that "there is this difference also between a wife and a virgin: the unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy, both in body and in spirit"; what wonder is it if the purity and perfection of the virgin state hath been the praise and glory of the Church in its first and purest ages?—that there hath been always some, so desirous of pleasing God, so zealous after every degree of purity and perfection, so glad of every means of improving their virtue, that they have renounced the comforts and enjoyments of wedlock, to trim their lamps, to purify their souls and wait upon God in a state of perpetual virginity?

And if in these our days we want examples of these several degrees of perfection; if neither clergy nor laity have enough of this spirit; if we are so far departed from it, that a man seems like St. Paul at Athens, a setter forth of strange doctrines, when he recommendeth self-denial, renunciation of the world, regular devotion, retirement, virginity, and voluntary poverty, it is because we