nised. All the faith was not on one side, | Christina of Sweden has left her testimony nor all the chivalry on the other, in the Civil that Cromwell's ambassador could dance Wars. In fact, the grand names of the like any other gentleman of her Court. Anglican succession-the saints like Farrar And we have better evidence of the true and Herbert, who have lighted up the re- nobility which was native amongst men cesses of household life-the stately divines who had ventured to give up all for truth, such as Taylor and Sanderson-and the and were daily looking death in the face. thinkers like Browne and Chillingworth, who Amongst all the horror of the war which could doubt and yet believe-belong to the rough troopers carried on so unsparingly, time when the whole fabric of their Church English women were safe everywhere. Somewas upset by the passionate energy of a times we catch a glimpse of a Puritan family. party not more learned or zealous, but And Montrose's splendid lines to his lady are more distinctly national. The middle classes almost paraphrased in Mrs. Hutchinson's dethen, as now, were obstinately English, and scription of her husband, who "loved her preferred the staple produce of their own better than his life, yet still considered honor, conventicles to European liturgies or tradi- religion, and duty, above her." tional creeds. No doubt they generally lacked the polish which, in days when most men lived on their lands, was best to be learned in a Court. But even fashion was not quite wanting in their ranks. Queen

What we have said, and still more what we have quoted, will, we hope, induce many to consult Wither's Hallelujah. They will find that Mr. Farr has given them an admirable preface and a careful edition.

ON WASTING PALSY. By William Roberts, | it with inconvenient force, yet he could do noth B.A., M.D., Lond. Churchill.

Although a case of "a man which had his hand withered is recorded eighteen hundred years ago, the discase of which this essay treats has scarcely been noticed till the present century; For the last half dozen years it has obtained growing attention from French and German authors, and now, for the first time in England, is considered systematically and is distinguished by a name.

The disease, to which Dr. Roberts is sponsor, rarely attacks the whole body-happily "living skeletons" are rare exhibitions-but wasting palsy attacking one or more groups of muscles is not uncommon, and even when it exists in a very small degree, how terrible its importance! Take one man's very slight case for example:

He is a tailor by trade. The weakness of the right hand dates three months back; about that time he found that the member failed him in its usual service; he could not grasp the needle with sufficient force to use it in his trade, and he was compelled to leave off work. On a cursory examination of the hand it would have been difficult to imagine that it was the scat of so serious an injury-an injury that rendered it as useless to the owner in the practice of his handicraft as if it had been altogether cut off. When I placed my hand in his he grasped

ing with his needle, it turned between his thumb and fingers, or fell entirely from his hold. Perhaps, I thought, the sensation is at fault. No, he could feel as well with the right as with the left hand. I examined the hand more carefully, and, warned by previous experience, I was not long in tracing out the source of the defect which took away from this poor man the power of gaining his bread.

From his own and others' experience, the auyond the workhouse for such a person. thor shows that there may be some resource be

This essay is comprehensive and well digested, and it will not fail to be welcome to Dr. Robtion extant on a disease which spares no age, erts's profession, giving them the best informasex, nor station.-Examiner.

GRIEF.

I felt a sudden tightness grasp my throat
As it would strangle me: such as felt,
I knew it well, some twenty years ago,
When my good father shed his blessing on me:
I hate to weep, and so I came away.

-Joanna Baillie.

BAD ARGUMENTS.-The best way of answering a bad argument is, not to stop it, but let it go on its course until it overleaps the boundaries of common sense.-Sydney Smith.

CAIRD'S SERMONS.*

From The Spectator. in the sense of intelligence. His mind is
observing rather than inventive; he is rich
by accumulation rather than by nature; he
impresses more by multiplying images than
by at once stamping his conclusions on the
hearer. Reasoning in fact is at the bottom
of every thing; be religious and you will
gain by it is the scope of the hortative.
This logic is quite different from coherence
of parts and a consistent soundness of con-
clusion, in which the preacher is apt to fail.
In two very able sermons on the Sufferings
of Christ, the first as regards the solitariness
of those sufferings, and the other our partici-
line of distinction sufficiently clear between
pation in them, he seems not to draw the
the human and divine nature of Christ. For
example, Christ's knowledge of sin and his
disgust at it, must have been just as great
before the incarnation as during its continu-
ance; in fact, according to the arguments of
theology, his sufferings from this cause would
have been greater, because we are told that
his human nature gave him a sympathy with
man by subjecting him to the feelings and
exposing him to the temptations of the human
race. Again, in another sermon on the com-
parative influence of character and doctrine,
the preacher seems, at the outset, to be
addressing the clergy on the importance of
earnest belief in the substance of their ser-
not suffice.
mons, as mere scholarly or literary skill will

THE celebrity of Mr. Caird as a preacher is no doubt owing in a degree to his sermon on " Religion in Common Life," delivered before the Queen, and published by her Majesty's command. He has qualities that would have excited attention apart from extrinsic circumstances, though we cannot say that those qualities are of the very highest order. He has none of that originality which arises from an original feeling as it were on the subject of Christianity, such as distinguishes Maurice and Kingsley; and which though it may lead to some vagueness in matters of doctrine, creates a real religious sympathy with the deadness of the poor, and even with the struggles of conscientious doubt searching for truth, while it barbs attacks upon the conventional virtues and "respectabilities"-the "whited outsides" of modern society. Neither has Mr. Caird the peculiar genius so to speak which gives a personal originality to the sermons of some men, as the scholastic learning and genial unction that characterize the Bishop of Oxford. It does not strike us that the now minister of " the Park Church, Glasgow" has that lesser originality in any high degree which arises from taking a more searching view of existing society and throwing a new light on the doctrines of Christianity by applying them to the actual requirements of contemporary life.

The most prominent peculiarity of Mr. Caird, as it seems to us, is the power of enforcement. We do not trace any remarkable novelty in the choice of his subject-such novelty as would excite attention by the mere statement of the theme. Neither is the theme treated with extraordinary literary skill or urged with that living fervor of mind and style which distinguished the late Frederick Robertson of Brighton. It is not meant to say that Mr. Caird's subjects are stale, or his treatment common. His choice of texts, or more properly the views he deduces from his texts, indicate a thoughtful and experienced theologian; his style possesses that power which arises from well-chosen images closely expressed and ably argued. Indeed logic is the essential characteristic of Mr. Caird's genius; not so much in the sense of comprehensive reasoning, for we think that there is occasionally some failure on this ground, as

Sermons. By the Rev. John Caird, M.A., Minister of the Park Church, Glasgow, Author of "Religion in Common Life." 'Published by Blackwood.

He afterwards speaks of the importance of Christian conduct in laymen in general without distinctly marking his change in purpose. We are not, indeed, sure whether throughout the discourse the difference is sufficiently marked between logical or intellectual subjects, where skill of a certain kind suffices, and matters of faith and feeling where conviction is all in all, as was intimated long ago.

"Si vis me flere dolendum est

Primum ispi tibi."

nance of the logical over the feeling and imIt must not be supposed that the predomiaginative qualities removes the discourses from human nature to mere abstractions. On the contrary, life and its interests are continually present. Even the illustrations of the preacher are mostly drawn from the natural world or the experience of mankind. Take as one instance a short passage from the opening of the sermon already alluded to on the solitariness of the Saviour's sufferings, from the text, "I have trodden the winepress alone."

"There is always a certain degree of solitude about a great mind. Even a mere human being cannot rise preeminently above the level of his fellow men, without becoming conscious of a certain solitariness of spirit

gathering round him. The loftiest intellecApart from any other consideration, there tual elevation, indeed, is nowise inconsistent is something in the mere fact of the gradual with a genial openness and simplicity of na- and insidious way in which changes of char ture; nor is there any thing impossible or un-acter generally take place, that tends to blind exampled in the combination of a grasp of men to their own defects. For every one intellect that could cope with the loftiest ab- knows how unconscious we often are of stractions of philosophy, and a playfulness changes that occur by minute and slow dethat could condescend to sport with a child. grees. If, for instance, the transitions from Yet whilst it is thus true that the possessor of one season of the year to another were more a great mind may be capable of sympathizing sudden and rapid, our attention would be with, of entering kindly into the views and much more forcibly arrested by their occurfeelings, the joys and sorrows of inferior minds, rence than it now is. But because we are not it must at the same time be admitted that plunged from midsummer into winter,-bethere is ever a range of thought and feeling cause, in the declining year, one day is so like into which they cannot enter with him. They the day that preceded it, the daylight hours may accompany him, so to speak, a certain contract so insensibly, the chilly feeling infuses height up the mountain, but there is a point itself by such slight increases into the air, the at which their feebler powers become ex-yellow tint creeps so gradually over the folihausted, and if he ascend beyond that, his path must be a solitary one.

No. 740.—31 July 1858.—Enlarged Series, No. 18.

POETRY.-Sir Robert's Sailor Son, 322. Shadows, 322. The Lilacs, 322. Despondency, 332. Three Horsemen, 332. Translations from the German, 332. Doubting Heart, 332. Night Song, 332. The German Watchman, 335. Puseyite invitation, 336. The Old Sexton, 336. Water Music, 384. Vernal, 384. Ancient Ladies' Pomp, 384.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Louis Napoleon and the Isthmus Canal, 327. Balloon turned Pirate, 328. Quaker Marriage Certificate, 334. Rachel's Children, 334. Fog Signals, 374. Rachel at Thirteen, 374.

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