National Gallery, is a doubted work. The "Mona Lisa," at the Louvre, is one of the most genuine of his portraits; but the most masterly in execution is, doubtless, his own portrait, in the Gallery of the Uffizj at Florence.

Of the celebrated "Last Supper" there are several good engravings by Frey, Morghen, Wagner, and A. L. Dick. Leonardo's principal scholars and imitators, and the painters who constitute the Milanese school in its most marked development, are Bernardino Luini, Andrea Salai, Marco d'Oggione, Francesco Melzi, and Gaudenzio Ferrari; and many of the works commonly attributed to the head of the school are the works of these painters. They are chiefly distinguished by their soft and elaborate light and shade. The compositions are simple; but the drawing, though large in style, frequently betrays a very evident timidity of execution. R. N. W.

SEED TO THE SOWER AND BREAD TO THE

EATER.

ONE could imagine a globe like the earth so constituted that its whole bulk should be matter fit for food to its human inhabitants. In that case no man would be obliged to do more than go to the end of his own cottage in the morning with a sack and a shovel, and quarry as much as would satisfy the wants of his family for the day. But although, in the estimate of your real savage, a jovial life, this would have been a far less perfect world than the one we occupy, where, by giving "seed to the sower," and so supplying "bread to the eater," the Creator exercises and developes the bodily and mental powers of the inhabitants,their strength and industry, their ingenuity and forethought. Philosophy and religion combine to declare that seed is

the gift of God. It is true we see it produced annually by a process of nature, without a miracle. But in all the examples that we have ever seen or heard of, the grain grows from a seed. If, in one case, it should grow without a seed, we should pronounce it a miracle. But the first seed did not spring from a seed; so that the existence of a single grain of wheat is evidence altogether resistless, that a miracle has been wrought.

Not only must grain have been miraculously created at first, but each species must have been created separately. "God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.” (1 Cor. xv. 38.) Philosophy countersigns this announcement. Species and genera do not interchange in nature. We can no more make barley spring from wheat, than we can make it spring from nothing.

But though the grain has been formed with all the capabilities of growth and reproduction in its own nature, it could not grow and reproduce itself, unless it met with influences external to itself, fitted to call forth its powers. It must have earth, air, light, and moisture; wanting any one of these, all the inherent capabilities of the grain would

go for nothing. It would never grow. The grain is wonderfully prepared by its internal structure for sending forth a bud, and that bud charged with the germs of new grain an hundred-fold. Yet these would lie dormant as a stone unless the earth were moistened with rain. Wheat has lain beyond reach of air and moisture, in Egyptian tombs, without germinating, probably two thousand years; and as soon as it was committed to the humid earth, it sprang and reproduced itself, as if unconscious of its long slumber. The internal structure and the external appliances are both necessary alike to reproduction, and God provides both in fitting time and measure.

Thus food is the gift of God, but it is also the produce of man's labour. He does not give a continent of food to

human animals; he gives seed to the sower, and according to the sowing, so shall the eating be scanty or plenteous. The whole arrangement of nature is like a huge piece of machinery, that would go round, in exquisite harmony indeed, but with an empty clank and producing nothing, unless men stood before it to feed it. The Creator's preparations would not feed men, without men's foresight and labour. This is no defect in providential arrangements: it is their perfection.

Man literally sows that he may eat, and eats that he may sow. By his labour and care from spring to harvest, he is enabled to eat in plenty during the succeeding year: and in the strength of this food he goes on during the many days of labour and watchfulness necessary for bringing the next harvest to perfection.

All the main features of this process have their counterpart in the kingdom of grace. There, also, we have both God's gift and man's labour.

The seed is the word. That word is God's gift. Men could not make a gospel, any more than they could create a grain of wheat. In both departments the permanence is secured by a process of sowing and reproduction in which the hand of man must be; but in the origin of both God acts alone. He had no creature in His counsel when He gave to the seed of grain and the seed of the word "a body as it pleased Him."

The administration by the Spirit for giving effect to the word of grace, is also all His own. As the rain cometh down, so the word is accompanied by the ministration of the Spirit to make it effectual. Grain, after it is created by God and sown by man, is not more entirely dependent for growth on rain from heaven, than is the word preached on the ministry of the Spirit. It is the Spirit that quickeneth. Like floods on the dry ground is that Spirit poured out. God had the power in His own hand when He first gave the Gospel, and He keeps the power in His own hand still, even

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after the seed is committed to earthen vessels; for the seed will never and nowhere spring until it get those showers of blessing which He only can give, and which He has specifically promised to bestow at the request of His people.

But man has a part in the administration of the Gospel -a part given to him by God. It is like the part assigned to him in the processes of nature. Here, too, man must sow and eat eat and sow.

He must sow. We have gotten the Gospel through the sowing of those who went before us. The seed of it has not been created in our days. God has given no new word to men for many generations. The law has not been spoken from out the mist on our mountain-tops. The man Christ Jesus did not go out and in among our villages in the days of our youth teaching the kingdom of heaven. The Gospel was sent to another part of the earth; and thence it was brought to this land many ages before we were born. It was faithfully sown by our forefathers. They often sowed in tears, and it is because of their sowing that we now reap in joy.

In some countries where the Gospel was early planted and where it flourished long, there is now an entire desolation. If there is a breach in the sowing of one generation, the generation following perish for want of food; and this whether the cessation be due to violence from without, or indolence within. If the fathers do not sow, from whatever cause, the children cannot eat. Physically and morally each generation of mankind is dependent on the generation preceding. This is the constitution of the universe: this is the will of God. It is foolish to forget or deny it. The growth, and even the continued life, of the child, is absolutely made dependent on the care of the parent. The child's life and health are at the mercy of the parents at a time when the child is no more capable of judging or acting than before he was born. In a similar way, intellectually and morally, the generation rising up is moulded by

the generation before it. One person and one people grow up with Christianity for their religion, and European philosophy as the staple of their intellectual education; another person and another people grow up with Brahminism for their religion, and Asiatic fables for their education,―under the sovereign dispensation of the Eternal, no doubt,-but instrumentally altogether, because their parents in one case sowed good seed, in the other bad. Each generation of mankind is like a link in a hanging chain. It hangs on the link above it, and bears up the links below. If the one above it give way, itself and its successors fall.

Why should men stumble so much at the doctrine of the Fall in Adam? It is no new or strange thing. That sin should come into the world by one man, and that we are all made sinners, and so sufferers, by the fall of one who died long before we were born,-this is the doctrine which in revelation becomes a stumbling-block to men. It may be too deep to be thoroughly explained; but it is too common to be capable of denial: we are surrounded by the same thing in providence every day.

In Asia Minor, where John poured forth the love of Jesus, and where generations of disciples fed upon the truth, the children are now taught and trained to believe in Mahomet, because many hundred years ago there was a breach in the sowing of the seed. It would be as vain to deny the doctrine as to kick against the fact. It may be too deep for us, but there it is. Contact with these facts and these doctrines is not fitted to gratify our pride. May it increase our humility. What we enjoy we did not make. We have it by God's gift at first, and through the faithfulness of our forefathers. Let us not be high-minded, but fear. Let us sow the good seed for our children's sake-for the world's sake. Let us sow the word that it may spread over all the world, and go down to latest generations. Let us sow it that our children's children may call us blessed.

W. A.