plane of all material existence. Over all the higher and dimmer forms of being that are as if felt lying beyond the borderland of our finite life, the revelation from "the excellent glory" has thrown a luminous meaning. That revelation, however, whatever wider compass of objective truth it may contain, comes to us as a strictly finite revelation, fresh and animate with all the vivid tints and hues even of pure human nature and human life. The Son of God himself assumed our finite form, not because this was in itself, we may believe, the best or the adequate mode of his self-revelation, but because this especially was the form which alone we could most appreciate and understand. Other divine and human reasons doubtless underlie the incarnation of the Saviour; but this form of revelation, beyond all others that we can think of, brings God nearest to our deepest heart, our sympathy and love, is indeed to us the infinitely kindliest condescension to the very limitations and conditions of our finite nature. God does not here speak to us as from amid the unutterable glory of his infinite being, but even clothes himself with those human characters and relationships that our hearts have so learned to love and trust in, and thus comes down to us that we might in this way know and feel his presence.

It is, therefore, not so much along the intellectual, as along the moral lines of thought, that we realize our nearest approach to the dwelling-place of God; and though intellectually we may ever have to unlearn much of our previous supposed knowledge, the lesson of loving trust and faith in him, which the heart has learned through his only begotten Son, it will never be required to surrender. This feeling at least is for us eternally true. The advances of human science may lead to many rectifications of mere intellectual boundaries; but they never need cast one blight or shadow across the feelings of our heart. We may still hear as if the gracious tones of a Father's voice, and feel the warmth as of a Father's heart. While, therefore, it is only finite forms, so to speak, of divine nature and divine truth-or, in other words, finite forms in us representing divine nature and divine truth, that our thoughts can realize, and which, in so far as they are finite, cannot, of course, correspond to, or tally with, the nature and truth that are divine, yet in their moral aspects we would certainly be far from pronouncing our conceptions of God untrue or false; for moral result or moral tendency is a truer measure of essential worth, than mere intellectual knowledge or intellectual completeness. Conceptions that make us feel God nearer to us in his holiness, love, and mercy, must at least have the elements of moral fitness or harmony, and cannot be altogether alien

to the divine standpoint of moral character. It is through the avenue of a holy, loving, self-denying, finite human life and work in the person of Jesus Christ, shading off, as that life and work do, into diviner heights and depths beyond, that our hearts are drawn onwards and upwards toward a God of infinite purity and love; but the last-the absolute goal we never can hope to reach. It is through sympathy of heart and feeling, therefore-not through the forms of intellectual conception and knowledge-that we realize our nearest approach to the God of love and grace.

can

It is unfair and singularly subversive of the truth, for Professor Birks to say, as he does of Mansel's view, that such a doctrine as the one advocated ascribes to God "the desire that his creatures should accept a mere shadow for a reality, because he is unable to give them any genuine revelation." Any such irreverent insinuation is neither explicitly nor implicitly covered by the doctrine Professor Birks is criticising. The question, indeed, cannot fairly be regarded as one that choice or desire has anything to do with. Given a created and finite being, we conceive that God should enable him to know God as God knows himself? or, that such a being can know God in any other way than as a finite being should know? There are thus certain forms of knowledge from which his very creaturehood will for ever relentlessly exclude him. Being created, he cannot realize the attribute of uncreated; dependent, he cannot realize the possibility of self-existence. The meaning of the words he may understand, but the ideas that underlie them must remain to him an eternal insoluble mystery. God in his deepest nature will thus ever remain the "Unknown God." This is not, however, because of two or more possible modes of action God thus chose to shroud his absolute or essential nature in eternal mystery, leaving to man only a few broken and scattered lights to play along the borderland of a diviner world, but simply because man is man and not God, and can think and know only under the inexorable conditions of his created nature. All created things, it is true, are in the last analysis traceable to the will of God; yet a conditioned intelligence appears but the natural and inevitable outcome of creaturehood. Though finiteness is thus ineffaceably stamped on all our positive thought, and on all the conscious feelings and hopes of our heart, there nevertheless remains an absolutely limitless career of progress and advancement as our inalienable heritage. To no department of thought -whether as regards breadth and splendour of intellectual conception, or depth and richness of human feeling-can the doctrine of finality ever apply. The loftier the range of mental

vision, and the richer the stores of knowledge and blessedness that the spirit and heart of man can gain, the wider the circle of possibilities that will still appear beyond. In one sense, therefore, and that a profound one,-the interval between a finite and an infinite nature may thus appear being gradually abridged, while, in another sense, the mediating gulf will remain as wide and fathomless as ever. It is thus only through the holiest love and trust of a Christlike heart that the truest echoes of a divine presence and divine nature reach us from an unseen world. The bearing of this doctrine on theology is fraught with deep and far-reaching interests.

T. W.-G.

REMINISCENCES OF BY-GONE DAYS.

(Concluded from page 297, previous Series.)

WITHIN ten minutes' walk of Old Surrey, there is a solid and commodious chapel in an out-of-the-way street, which was brought under our notice by another incident. Speaking to a cautious Aberdonian one day about the London churches, he said he had been induced by a friend to go to a Baptist chapel in the borough to hear a young man of rare promise who had just come to London, and that he had been very much startled with the odd and, in some respects, the irreverent way in which he preached and prayed. But, as it might have been said of this brother as John Angel James said of Dr. Burder, a finically exact man-viz., that he could well pray that God might permit the Doctor to commit a blunder, we were not much put about by our friend's estimate of the young preacher, and therefore went to hear him, and were agreeably surprised. There he was a somewhat uncouth-looking youth, about twenty years of age, with round head on broad shoulders, small but well set eyes, and a freedom of deportment anything but clerical. But his voice was full, round, and musical; and his way of handling his subject anything but logical. He was evidently a genius. Besides he could employ analogy, epigram, anecdote, and history, with ease and point, while the doctrines he set forth were thoroughly evangelical, bating a tendency to go into a siding of Calvinism now and then. Yet he got always back to the main line, and not only made you feel that it was the only one in the world where there is safe travelling and good ending, but made you happy in his companionship. We felt that he had a great future before him; and we are now in circumstances

to speak from book on this point, for he has developed into the Rev. Charles Spurgeon of the Tabernacle of Newington! Causeway has now taken the place of the old brick building. Speaking with his father one day, we enquired when Charles became decided in his religious views and convictions, and also how, while he (the father) was an Independent, as well as the mother, the son had become a Baptist? Charles himself, we have heard, answered this question one day, by saying that, though a man was born in a stable, that was no reason why he should be a horse; but we got a better reason than this for his Baptist preferences. The father said that, when Charles was a youth, he went one Sunday morning to hear a Primitive Methodist preacher in Colchester, where the family lived, and where they all worshipped in the Independent Church. The preacher had for his text the words, "Look unto me, and be ye saved all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else;" and he applied it with such force and personal discrimination, that the heart of the young man was deeply moved. In the evening, he went with the nurse to hear a sermon from a Baptist minister, with whose church she was connected. He was preaching from the text, "Accepted in the beloved," and presented such a view of the believer's privileges and prospects, that not only had the burden which had been laid on the young man's mind in the morning, from a sense of sin and danger, been taken away, but he had come to enjoy, besides, the peace which "passeth knowledge." That night, after family worship, he gave an account of the experience he had passed through; and having been led to adopt the Baptist views of church doctrine and polity, he afterwards followed them out. He had the advantage of some brief theological training, and then came out for the ministry, his first charge being a small Baptist church in the little town of Wisbeach, in Cambridgeshire. With years, Mr. Spurgeon has become more mellow; and no one who heard his great sermon, preached for the London Missionary Society, in Surrey Chapel, on Wednesday, May 7th, and especially the prayer which followed it, can too earnestly thank God that he has raised up such a minister. His Calvinistic views, we have some reason to believe, are modified; at all events, we heard him say one day, "I have done with the hypers," and that is a move in the right direction. Mr. John Spurgeon, the father, is also an Independent minister; but the only other son in the family is, like Charles, a Baptist minister, while the mother and all the members of that family are Christian workers. Mr. Spurgeon is often laid aside by severe rheumatism; but, as he comes of a fine healthy

stock, and inherits a sound constitution, there is reason to believe that he will be long spared in the vineyard.

As a contrast to Mr. Spurgeon, we must now wend our way across Waterloo Bridge, walk up Wellington Street on the north side of the Strand, pass in front of a very large, very ugly, and very prison-looking building, covering a large area of ground. Turning the corner to the right, we get into Covent Garden; but whatever may have grown here at one time, you get only dingy working houses, and must go to the left and find the market, where in fruit, flowers, and vegetables you have the best and the worst of everything. Walking alongside of the old brick house we get to a court, called Crown Court, leading out of this narrow street; and while we stand here looking up, we find ourselves in Drury Lane, with " Old Drury," as this theatre is called, on the one hand, and Dr. Cumming's "Scotch National Church" on the other. Yes; that is where the Doctor has held his ground well for forty years. It is a fine old fashioned church, with the pulpit on the side, made of old oak, and all the wood work around is of the same materialsome of it black as ebony, some more modern in colour, not a little of it carved; while the aspect of the whole, as the light comes through the fine memorial stained-glass windows, gives an ecclesiastical tinge to everything. When we made the acquaintance of this good brother, he was in the meridian of his popularity, and sometimes the carriages of the nobility were as numerous at his church as at any Episcopal Church door in London. Even now a few of the old families cling to the place, amongst whom are the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, who are Presbyterians; and it was paying no small compliment to the Doctor when the Duke once said that he was a better preacher than a prophet." Conversing one day, not long since, with the Bishop of Crown Court, he told us that when he went to London he had only £150 a year of salary, and might have had twice that figure at home; but he felt that he had a work to do there, and made up his mind to do it. His preaching was attractive, and deservedly so, for it was simple, clear, and eloquent; but it was a course of lectures on Popery which brought him to the front. Finding that these lectures were popular, he was induced to re-deliver them and extend them in Exeter Hall. They were published by a Scotch publisher in penny numbers, and reached a wide circle of readers. And thereby hangs a tale. Bent on getting two new stained glass windows into the church, the cost of which would be £150, the Doctor made up his mind to devote the profits of his penny lectures to this end. His publisher coming to know this said to him one day that, if he were agreeable, he would give him