A Bunch of Keys. cality, which no true statesman condescends to consider. When, therefore this Act of Union and the Coronation Oath were solemnly summoned to scare Mr. Gladstone away from his adventurous purpose to move his important Resolutions in the House of Commons, both he and his party treated the interruption with the disdain it deserved. In conclusion, it may be remarked that all political legislation, such as we have noticed in this article, must be determined by public opinion. When public opinion, which is not 135 a sudden creation, but a deliberate growth, has been fully formed on any national question, legislative action must eventually follow. If this action is unduly deferred by party opposition, it may assume the appearance of haste just because it can no longer be hindered. Some streams may be stopped for a time by the construction of dams, but their steady and continued flowing will ere long change them from streams into torrents, which will either break or bury all interposing barriers. A BUNCH OF KEYS. THERE are many cabinets full of treasures which are highly prized by their possessors. These cabinets are generally securely locked, so that we cannot examine the treasures unless the holder of the key be there to shoot the bolt and open the door. There is a bunch of keys we all should possess, for then we should be able to unlock many of the most valuable cabinets around us. I wish to call your attention to a few of the keys on this bunch, hoping that you will be more anxious afterwards to use them whenever you have a favourable opportunity. The first is the Key of Language. You all carry this, and not unfrequently we hear you rattle it in the lock, trying to spring the bolt. With this key we unlock the cabinet of our own mind. The mind of man contains many treasures, such as pictures drawn by the imagination, stores of wisdom collected in the school of experience, nuggets of thought which would be of great service to men if they were worked up into current coin. By speech or writing the owner of these treasures is able to exhibit them to his fellowmen for their inspection and appro priation. Some exhibit these treasures in public, and others prefer to use this key by the fireside, when they can have the assistance of others in the unlocking of the cabinet. Some persons always have this key ready for use, while others have to search for it when they wish to use it. Some have so many ornaments attached to the key that it excites more interest than the treasures themselves. The second is the Key of Knowledge. With this key the linguist unlocks the philological cabinet, and examines the wisdom of the ancients, preserved on stones, or in rolls, or books. With this key another unlocks the botanical cabinet, in which he finds choice plants and flowers unnoticed by the ignorant crowd. With this key the geologist unlocks the mineral kingdom, and enters on the examination of the different strata of the earth, from which he reads to us many wonderful lessons. The anatomist and chemist, the astronomer`and natural philosopher, all carry this key, and with it unlock their respec tive cabinets. This key is made up of small particles of information, collected at different times and in different places. which adhere to each other through the pressure of constant reflection. The third is the Key of Kindness. This is used to unlock the affections of the human heart. All persons have affections and tender sympathies. Children show them in their earliest days. In some persons these affections are kept in lively exercise. In others they are kept in restraint. Those who shut up their heart have a cold and repulsive exterior. We want to open their hearts, to cause their sympathies to flow towards us. If we would accomplish this end, we must use the key of kindness, and then we shall succeed in unlocking these treasures. We cannot force open the doors of the heart, but kindness will make the bolts shoot back, and the doors may then be opened without much effort. We want to use this key a little oftener than we do. Christ always carried it with Him; and Paul requested his friends to do the same when he wrote, Be ye kind 66 one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another." The fourth is the Key of Prayer. With this we may unlock the treasury of God, which is full of riches, and take thence all things which our spirits need. Elijah, David, and Daniel made good use of this key. All good men do, some with more success than others. In order to use it successfully, we must turn it Iwith the hand of faith. A doubting, trembling hand will fail. This key is never to be laid aside. The direction is, "Pray without ceasing." We are constantly in need of blessing; we may always receive what blessings we need. Let us, then, make frequent use of this key. We may use it for the benefit of others, and so become benefactors of our race. These keys should be applied to their appropriate locks, and should be kept bright by frequent use, or they will not be of much service to us. CHARLES PAYNE. THE BEST USE OF THE BEST DAY. The USE not the day which has been given for sacred rest and religious worship as a day of entertainment and amusement.Picture galleries, Crystal Palaces, museums of nature and art, or romantic scenes to which men can be carried in crowds by Sunday excursion-trains, are sought to be substituted for visits to the house of prayer, and for Christian instruction and worship. argument for this insidious and perilous exchange is sometimes put in a kind of religious phraseology, as if these visits to beautiful scenes in nature were only the introduction to another kind of worship, and as if gazing upon the master-pieces of human art in painting, or sculpture, or architecture, exercised a purifying and elevating influence on the mind; and sometimes again it is dressed in the form of a spurious philanthropy, though it is found that those who are the most earnest advocates for the Crystal Palace or the Sabbath excursion-train, generally expect to derive pecuniary advantage from the practice. There never was an argument more triumphantly met by sound philosophy, or more completely refuted by experience. There is no denying, indeed, that visits to high works of art, to objects of curiosity, or to beautiful scenes in the natural world, may at their own time, and in their own place, be beneficial to the busiest and the poorest. But those who imagine that any of these things are capable, in any degree, of being a substitute for the weekly-recurring exercises of Christian worship, and instruction in the great truths of divine revelation, are strangely ignorant of the greatest wants and necessities of man. Who ever heard of looking upon pictures and images, however much they might breathe with genius, transforming the vile to pure, the earthly to divine? It is not Bible Exegesis. by such appliances as these that the heart of any man has ever been made anew. The fact is, it is rather the æsthetic than the moral part of our nature that is influenced by them at all. They refine, but cannot transform. They may "form the capital of the column, but not its base. The city of Munich contains one of the grandest picture-galleries in Europe, and it is also one of the most demoralized and debased of our European communities. The brigands around Rome were accustomed at the Carnival to visit the 137 picture-galleries in that city, and many shewed high appreciation and discrimination in judging of the works both of ancient and of modern painters; but these influences never succeeded in wooing one of them from his life of violence and crime. And if the history of ancient Greece in its decay reads one lesson to the world more loudly than another, it is this, that refinement of taste may be associated in the same individual and people with the greatest debasement and corruption of morals. BIBLICAL EXEGESIS. THE VAIL OF MOSES, WHEN AND WHY HE WORE IT. FROM Exodus xxxiv. 29-35 we learn that when Moses descended from Mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony to give them in commandment to the children of Israel, the skin of his face shone so refulgently "they were afraid to come nigh him." But he called, first to Aaron and the rulers of the congregation, who returned to him, and afterward all the people came near. After they had thus surrounded him he put a vail on his face, and while he remained with them to deliver the commands which had been entrusted to him he continued to wear the vail. When, however, he re-entered the divine presence he took the vail off, and communed with God uncovered. The time of his wearing the vail is thus so definitely marked that no difficulty is felt in determining it, when the narrative of the event is carefully read. But our version of the event, in the Old Testament, is so given as to convey an erroneous idea of the reason of his wearing it. We must therefore have recourse to the original text in Exodus xxxiv., and must collate there with the reference made to the occurrence by St. Paul in 2 Cor. iii. 13. We shall then discover that Moses did not assume the vail to hide the splendour of his countenance, or so far to diminish its lustre as to render the sight of it tolerable to the people while he read to them the law; and that as soon as he finished his reading he took off the vail, and allowed his radiance to beam forth afresh in all its fulness. The correct view of the event is, that he kept on the vail during all the time of his remaining with the people, that he did not put it off until he re-entered the divine presence, and that he retained it up to that moment in order that the people should not see the vanishing away of his glory: or, as Conybeare and Howson state it, "That the sons of Israel might not see the end of that fading brightness." St. Paul treats the matter as an allegory, and draws a contrast between the Old and New Testament ministries, observing that while concealment characterized the one, openness marked the other. Moses, by the symbol of the vail, hid the evanescent glory of his dispensation, so that the people could not see its termination. But the glory of the gospel dispensation is all-lasting. We have no fear of its passing away, so we use no vail in our service, but are open-faced in every part of it. Perhaps the popular idea as to why Moses wore a vail, has been partly based on St. Paul's statement in the eighth verse of the the third chapter of second Corinthians. There, it is said, the ministration of death was so glorious that "the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance." This is all that is said, but as his assumption of a vail is mentioned afterward it is presumed that the design was to soften down the radiance which was too strong for the people to gaze upon. This, however, is pure presumption, and is shown to be un WALTER SCOTT AND MARJORIE FLEMMING. IN his large green morocco elbow- In a moment, a little eager bright-eyed child of seven years leaped into his arms, he kissing her face all over. "Come in, Wattie," the mother would say. "No, no, I'm going to take Marjorie home wi' me, and you may come to your tea in Duncan Ray's sedan, and bring the bairn home in your lap." "Tak' Marjorie, and it on-ding-a-snaw!" said Mrs. Keith. "Hoot awa'! look here!" said Sir Walter, and he held up the corner of his plaid, sewed up so as to make a bag. "Tak' your lamb," said Mrs. Keith, laughing at the ingenious contrivance; and so Marjorie, well wrapped, Scott strode off through the snow with her, the great dog Maida gambolling after. When he reached his own "den," he Tweedle-um, twoodle-um, twenty-wan; You are out." He pretended great difficulty in saying it, and Marjorie would rebuke him with comical gravity, treating him like a child. Then Sir Walter would read ballads to her in his glorious way, till the two were wild with excitement. Then he would take her on his knee and make her repeat Shakespeare, which she did in a most wonderful manner. Scott used to say that he was amazed himself at her power over him, and that these recitals of hers affected him as nothing else ever did. One night, in Edinburgh, little Marjorie was invited to a Twelfthnight supper at Scott's. All his friends had arrived except this little dearest friend of all; and all were dull because Scott was dull. At last he exclaimed, impatiently, "Where's the bairn? What can have come over her? I'll go myself and see!" And he was getting up, and would have gone, when the bell rang, and in came Duncan Ray, and his henchman, Tougal, and the sedan-chair, which was brought right into the lobby, and the top raised; and there in its darkness and dingy oil cloth, sat bright Literature. little Marjorie, with her gleaming eyes, dressed in white, and Scott bending over her in ecstacy. "Sit ye there, my dautie, till they all see you!" he cried, calling out to his guests. Then he lifted the child, and, perching her on his shoulders, marched with her to his seat, and placed her beside him; and then began the night -and such a night! Those who knew Scott best said it never was equalled. Marjorie and he were the stars. gave them all her little speeches and songs which Sir Walter had taught her, he often making blunders on purpose, while showing her off, for the fun of hearing her grave rebukes. She One year after this, when Marjorie was eight years old, she went to bed apparently well, but suddenly awoke her mother with the cry, "My head! my head!" Three days after this she died of water on the brain. Scott's grief may be imagined when those deep set brooding eyes were closed, 139 and the sweet mobile mouth, so like his own, had, for the first time, for him no smile of greeting. It may be that Sir Walter Scott thought remorsefully afterwards, that the delightful hours which he passed with the gifted child, and which brought such delicious rest and refreshment and vitality to him, were the exciting cause of disease to her little brain. It is more than fifty years since she was laid in her little grave; but her childish poems, yellow with time, are still preserved, in her little cramped handwriting, by those who held her dear. All who read this, and have known such children, know how great is the temptation to hasten the blossoming of such a bud of promise, instead of waiting for nature's own safe, sweet, and gradual unfolding. Many a mother has wept her heart out over a little grave where she has learned too late this lesson. Literature. SUNDAY VERSES. By Joseph Truman. London: Macintosh. By those who, as Tennyson says, "set the how much above the how," this little book will not be highly estimated. It contains but ten short poems; nor are these spaced out by the printer, as they might have been, so as to make up a volume of goodlier proportions. To those, however, who value pure and tender Christian thought expressed in choice words of sweetness and beauty, this collection of the author's more recent verses will nevertheless be a source of much pleasure. We say more recent" because a few years ago he published a little volume which at the time was favourably noticed by competent judges, and excited hopes of something further from his pen. We presume that the book now before us is called " Sunday Verses" from the fact that all the poems are more or less religious in character. One of them, entitled "The name of Jesus," though the verses strike us as of unequal merit, 66 O'er the myriads of departed ages It has wielded its mysterious sway, Humbled, melted, soothed, exalted, softened, Strengthened, gladdened, as it does to-day." The short poem entitled " Going away," founded on the gospel story of the young man whom Jesus loved who went away sorrowing, is affecting and solemn. Another piece, very much to our taste, is called "The Pilgrims." Altogether, lovers of poetry cannot do better than invest a shilling in the purchase of this little book; and though it is diminutive in size, and its pages are enclosed in paper covers only, there is this compensating advantage, that through the post it can be easily and cheaply transmitted to one's friends. W. R. S. |