Man's Reason is but a feeble thing. Without revelation to aid it, this earth with the sky bending over it, were a dungeon with scarce a beam of light struggling in. And when in God's mercy these walls are rent, and the light of revelation streams in from the world beyond, all things are not revealed. We but know in part. We see through a glass darkly. A thousand anxious questions rise up to which we have no answer. But enough is revealed to Reason to lay the broad foundation of Faith. There is a case which furnishes a good illustration of this whole subject, and in which men are constantly and habitually acting upon and acting out, the principles that have been stated.

Night comes down over a ship at sea, and a passenger lingers hour after hour alone on the deck. The waters plunge and welter and glide away beneath the keel. Above, the sails tower up in the darkness, almost to the sky, and their shadow falls as it were a burden on the deck below. In the clouded night no star is to be seen, and as the ship changes her course the passenger knows not which way is East or West or North or South. What islands, what sunken rocks may be on her course or what that course is or where they are, he knows not. All around, to him, is Mystery. He bows down in the submission of utter ignorance.

But men of science have read the laws of the sky. And the next day this passenger beholds the captain looking at a clock and taking note of the place of the sun, and with the aid of a couple of books, composed of rules and mathematical tables, making calculations. And when he has completed them, he is able to point almost within a hand's breadth to the place at which, after unnumbered

windings, he has arrived in the midst of the seas. Storms may have beat and currents drifted, but he knows where they are, and the precise point, where a hundred leagues over the waters, lies his native shore. Here is Reason appreciating and making use of the revelations (if we may so call them) of science.

Night again shuts down over the waste of waves, and the passenger beholds a single seaman stand at the wheel and watch, hour after hour, as it vibrates beneath a lamp, a little needle, which points ever, as if it were a living finger, to the steady pole.

This man knows nothing of the rules of navigation, nothing of the courses of the sky. But reason and experience have given him Faith in the commanding officer of the ship faith in the laws that control her course faith in the unerring integrity of the little guide before him. And so without a single doubt he steers his ship on, according to a prescribed direction, through night and the waves. And that Faith is not disappointed. With the morning sun, he beholds far away the summits of the gray and misty highlands, rising like a cloud on the horizon; and as he nears them, the hills appear, and the light-house at the entrance of the harbor, and, sight of joy the spires of the churches and the shining roofs which he strives to detect his own.

among

Mystery Reason - Faith; - Mystery is the lowest, Faith is the highest of the three. Reason has done but half its office till it has resulted in Faith. Reason looks before and after. It not only ponders the past, but becomes prophetic of the Future.

At the risk of wearying our readers we would add a few words on a difficulty connected with the foregoing VOL. XIII.-NO. 144.

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subject, and which sometimes does much to cripple the power of Christian truth and motive. The feeling is, that nothing is known till every thing is known. Such minds, one cannot tell why, expect to find every question they can ask, answered in Revelation. And because they can propose questions that God has not seen fit to answer, they grow skeptical about every truth that is revealed. It is sometimes important that men should remember that the certainty of what is known, is not affected by what is unknown.

Christianity was not intended to teach us every thing; but all that is really important to us as spiritual beings has been revealed. And our ignorance as to other things does not affect the certainty of this. What though no dissecting knife lays open to the physician the principle of life, or the nature of the voluntary and involuntary motions in our frames, it does not affect the certainty of the knowledge that the pulses throb through the veins and that the hand will obey the volitions of the mind. Though no mechanic can penetrate into matter and discover the nature of repulsion and attraction, yet this ignorance does not affect the certainty of his knowledge of the laws and application of physical forces. Though the human mind is but a little taper, still all that its light falls upon, we see as plainly as if all the universe beyond that little circle were not covered with darkness. And so in revelation, whatever truths have been revealed, will always remain truths, and will serve to guide us as well as if we saw more of what is now covered with mystery; just as the seaman steers as safely when he sees but a lighthouse or a headland, as if he saw the whole interior of the continent. And these truths are sufficient for us.

They are sufficient to guide us to eternal life. So long as we keep our eyes on them and guide ourselves by them we are safe. We are in danger only when we desert

them and rely on what we cannot know,

What though the sailor, whom we have supposed on the mid seas, knows nothing of the inhabitants that people the sun, or the changes on the face of a planet, this ignorance does not affect what he knows. There is infinite ignorance, but some certain knowledge; and that knowledge is sufficient to guide him to his haven. The sun in the heavens informs him whether he ascends into the latitude of a frozen or a torrid clime; the eclipse of the satellites of a planet enables him to know the shores of what continent he approaches; and a little. trembling needle through darkness and cloud and storm faithfully tells him the course he is taking across the illimitable seas. And this knowledge is enough. It guides him safely and directly a thousand leagues, over the waves where no tract of a preceding voyager lingers. And so on the great sea of human life: There is a star on the front of the sky to guide us; there is a chart, tempest-tost and wandering though we be, that tells us where we are and where is our haven. It is the morning star the star of Bethlehem - that rose over a benighted earth, and still it shines with calm mild light which no clouds hide, no tempests obscure. It is the chart of revelation written out in God's own hand and delivered down to a sinful world.

Much still remains enveloped in mystery. But God in his infinite mercy has revealed in the gospel of his Son enough to guide and support the conscience; enough for resignation in heavy sorrows; enough for trust and peace

to the good man at that time when the departing soul can rely only on the mercy of God. We know as much of spiritual truth perhaps as the general mind could appreciate and profit from. It is not for us to murmur that we have no more, but by faithful lives, to give loudest thanks for the light and hope and mercy proclaimed unto us from God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.