present time may not be wholly destitute of such power.
Science reveals an eternal all-pervading Power, capable
of performing miracles, whose action in ordinary course
we deem natural; and whose operation unveiled by
special act we term supernatural. In striving to obtain
knowledge, or use of the supernatural, ideas, like plants,
spread out and are fruitful in proportion to the size of
the vessel enclosing their roots. Faith is known to have
so much power, even in mere earthly things, that let a
man be firmly persuaded he is born to do that which
now seems impossible, and the impossible is well-nigh
sure to be done. Of such men it may be said-possunt
quia posse videntur.
Let things not much better even
than vague aspirations and self-conceits be bound to-
gether by practical necessity, or be elevated into good
resolve, and some grand labour will be wrought in the
world. Ages of faith do great things, grotesque some-
times and exaggerated, yet striking, picturesque, fruitful
of good. The days of unbelief may be strong in worldly
sense and prudence, inventive of arts of comfort and
luxury; but there is sure to be a want of what is noble
and generous. Every man of faith knows that all lives.
are a wonderful poem-every page in a different language,
and is sure that some lexicon, older than the confusion of
tongues at Babel, interprets the universal language-the
language of the heart: for

"Multæ terricolis linguæ, coelestibus una.'

Observe that swart ill-visaged man at the dock for trial, witnesses depose that he is a wretch, a horrible murderer; but the advocate rises, lifts the veil from that assassin's heart and mind: "Lo! he is Othello the Moor."

That man excites general sympathy. We know that his appeal lies with the Righteous. How is it, moreover, that nature is as we ourselves interpret? Joyous are we, then the sun seems Life-giver. Hope for fame, the stars are its promise. If when we mourn and say to the earth, "I have done with thee;" and to life and time, "Ye are nought;" sun, stars, all space, cry to the truly faithful—“the earth is a speck, the true inheritance is infinite, time is the priestess of eternity." Life seems dull at times now; but take away faith in the Supernatural-how utterly flat and unmeaning and purposeless would it be the beginning of it a delusion, the middle of it a striving in vain, the end a lame and impotent conclusion! Spiritual yearning-whether of savage or sage, the discontent of every mortal, is the instinct that proves immortality, and thrills our nature with the sense of divinity; a miracle is wrought every moment, and must be; what would be left of life were it bereft of the miraculous?

In some sad lives, past--present-future-seem to blend in one desolation, as a land after a flood, a field after a day of battle, is the scene of distress. Another strange thing, all time converges into the burning-glass of a moment. There are foresights of that last view of life in which some say our whole life is visible to the glazing eye. Again, men do great Promethean things that work new worlds in nature, change well-nigh all human life, blessing or cursing future generations: some are angels, others-very devils. A grand thought was that, "Matter is the gigantic slave of Mind." Thought? what a mys-tery is thought! It seems the real of man, and a miraclepower. There are moments in which wastes of misery,.

or vast scenes of joy, seem a whole existence—as if to warn us that to memory, always active, time will never be done. Sometimes we feel that if the path be chosen, fate is decided: yet, we have excuses. Lord Lytton said that to other people, "Our life is somewhat like those skeleton abridgments of history which we give to children "—thoughts and emotions, the men of our heart; gain, loss, success, failure, the inhabitants of our inner city; are utterly unknown to all outsiders. Events and passions hurry on, from epoch to epoch in peculiar idiosyncrasy, to frustrate or effect our purpose; and, in defiance of fate, to that purpose we resolutely cling. Then we have gleams of some strategic policy by which the pain and humiliation are directed against our pride, our folly, our sin, our want of love and faith: a policy overruling all things to create, develop, and adorn virtues -while covering the faults of which sorrow makes us conscious. Take the case of any man, is he not, in some respects at least, Heaven's favoured son? Affliction centres its work within the secret heart; and the wisest does not always know why, or by what means, God is admonishing and persuading that weeds may be drawn from the ground of a soul that ought to be rich in flowers. The sacrifice of earthly happiness, of worldly repute, may be ordained: for, if warning chastisements do not avail, slowly but pertinaciously, quickly yet justly, the Holy One proceeds to develop our true nature. Men, so wrought upon, are of heroic deed and self-sacrifice. They justify the ways of God to man. Their life, in its essence, is miraculous; rounds itself off from all other, yet with all other is joined. All ordering of Providence, whether general or particular, national or individual, is a miracle.

We talk of the spirit of the age. The phrase does not explain the meaning, nor how the age has a spirit, nor why it is not the same in one age as in another. Spirit of the age is but the momentary life in our fellowship of clay, a pulsation of the great organism-human existence. Amalgamated peculiarities stamp the eras with speciality, are particles in continuous flow through the arteries of being from generation to generation. As dew-drops contain the mysteries which, aright understood, reveal the rise, decline, and fall of worlds; so the specialities which distinguish the lives of individuals -the grovelling of one, the awaking to venturesome romance in another, the passionate flow of zeal in this, the calm intelligent but often selfish aim at utility in the culture of science, are the tiny streamlets which unite to form the river of existence. Conjoined peculiarities create the spirit of the age: dark times, crusades, revivals of literature, worship of science, sensuous culture, display the hopes and fears, sins and sorrows, joys and worships of humanity. The poor and low labour with the small mean aims of mechanical insect life; the rich feast-the grave opens, and their paradise perishes. If God did not see the many frailties in both, He would not be so gracious to the small virtues of each. A true philosophy of human events and actions shows that the spirit of the age is but individual aim writ large; and this, so far as it is good, connects itself with that marvellous co-operation which, in essence, like Providence, whether general or particular, is miraculous: a

operation in which our mind compares what the Spirit suggests, and human meditation and labour are added to divine assistance and gifts. Our voluntary misuse of

those gifts is the cause that we are not always good, and by use of them it is that we are not always com-, mitting crimes, and one age is not so depraved as another. The puritan who expects his fellow-creatures to be models of virtue, will condemn them as monsters. of vice. The least exacting is most forgiving. The individual Christ-Life, manifested in Palestine, is the germ of God-life in all, and the seed of perfection in each. We give the whole vigour of our intellectual faculties to investigate the truths of Christianity; we inquire, we reason, we argue, and work out our own faith with the same energy of humility with which we work out our own salvation, and for the same reason too: it is God who helps, and renders every man equal to the task. We should sicken, parch, burn, for divorce from the vile herd, from the tyrannical and cruel, whom we think mercy should seek to bring nearer to the tomb; did we not look at the wisdom and might of the All-Gracious Saviour. In faith we wait for the perfect work that we are sure to behold at last. Thus, individual intelligence and passions are the levers which move society; and as they separate, or predominate, or combine, they form, specialize, or antagonize, the spirit of the age. Specialities of advance, startling retrogressions, mental and emotional crises, eras of prodigy amongst men, have analogies in the varying flow of cosmic energies, in the sports of plants, and in those divergencies which lead to variety of species. Not one is purely mechanical, or perfectly uniform; all manifest spontaneity and variety—a process of enigmas propounded by Wisdom. A process, not impelled by merciless, dark, impenetrable, incomprehensible fate; but an in