"The thought of goodness in diminished pleasure," says the same writer, "betrays its origin; it arose from putting self first; which perverts the thought of goodness into that of self-restraint -into goodness about self and for its sake. Not a doubt that there has been a value in that error. It has been helpful for man to think that goodness must be in suffering, and therefore to have sought sorrow. Still, not in itself does service mean sorrow; not in themselves are others' needs the ministers of selfrestraint. They forbid goodness to banish pleasant things; they put away self-restraint, by putting aside the self that needs it. Over the whole domain of pleasant things, on which self-regard broods with a sullen blight-making it bare of goodness if pleasure come, or bare of pleasure if goodness put her foot-over the whole domain of pleasant things the needs of others sweep like a breath of spring; and the barren pleasure, all for self, the barren goodness, all for self, alike break forth and blossom into a pleasure that is good.

"And thus, also, we may see a power that God has kept in His hands, to put away from the heart of man that regard first to self that clings so to him. For whenever the regard to self has made men-for their goodness' sake-refuse pleasures, then, by bringing needs of others which demand for their fulfilment that those pleasures be not refused, God makes a call upon man's soul, a new and deeper call. In those needs He says to men: Be different in your hearts; cast out from them that which puts pleasure at strife with goodness; make the thoughts of others first."

DARLINGTON.

FREDERICK A. CHARLES.

"Some monks were eating at a festival, and one said to the serving man, 'I eat nothing cooked; tell them to bring me salt.' The serving man began to talk loudly: 'That brother eats no cooked meat; bring him a little salt.' Quoth Abbot Theodore: 'It were more better for thee, brother, to eat meat in thy cell than to hear thyself talked about in the presence of thy brethren.'"-From "The Words of the Elders."

Germs of Thought.

The Mortality of Human Thoughts.

"IN THAT VERY DAY HIS THOUGHTS PERISH."—Psalm cxlvi. 4.

Do thoughts perish? Nay, does anything perish? No, saith the scientist, not one atom in the whole material universe. Matter is essentially indestructible. Does life, conscious or unconscious, ever become extinct? Has one single spark from universal life ever been extinguished? No, again saith the scientist, not one drop in the ever deepening, ever widening ocean of existence that rolls throughout immensity, beating music into the ear of the Infinite, has ever ceased to be, or ever will. All seems undying and deathless. How then can thought perish? In what sense can you predicate mortality of thoughts? In other words, what are the human thoughts that will perish?

I.—ALL HYPOTHETICAL THOUGHTS ARE MORTAL. Perhaps most of the thoughts of men are of this class; mere conjectures, more or less probable, but not certainties-guesses at things. In sooth, all thoughts that are not in strict agreement with immutable. facts, are of this order. And are not such the overwhelming majority in the case of individuals, communities, and the world at large? To whatever class of subjects they refer-matter or mind, business or pleasure, commerce, science, or religion-all such thoughts must perish. They are perishable in their very nature, and they are perishing every day, not only as they are found in volumes that crowd our libraries, but as they appear in our own individual minds. Some of them we cherish, and these may live a little longer than others. But others come as uninvited visitants and unwelcome guests, and find no lodgement. They are mental fugitives; in rapid succession they chase each other like the fantastic clouds before the strong wind. Or, to

change the figure, such thoughts are like the leaves of the forest, whilst some of them begin to wither and fall ere autumnal winds have touched them, they all fall dead at last. The heaps of dead leaves which the gardener every day in autumn sweeps up from the well-wooded swards under his care, are emblems of these hypothetical thoughts. Do I undervalue such thoughts? No! Each of these rotting leaves had its charm and has its use. At first it quivered with life and sparkled in the sun; and its decay, no doubt, plays a useful part in the economy of nature. Hypothetical thoughts! Do not despise them. Who can tell the quickening impulses, the beneficent sciences and arts that have come out of them, and will come again? Albeit they must all perish as they touch reality. As the grandest billow, when it breaks on the rocky shore, falls to pieces, so the most majestic hypotheses of men are wrecked as the mind touches the stern realities of eternity.*

II. ALL SENSUOUS THOUGHTS ARE MORTAL. In the Scriptures we read of the "fleshly mind," "fleshly wisdom," and of those who "judge after the flesh." How much of human thought is started, shaped, and swayed by the senses! Their springs of movement are in the senses. Their horizon is bounded by the sensuous. These comprehend at least three classes.

First: Those which refer to personal happiness. They connect the enjoyment of man with the senses, as something that streams into him from without, rather than that wells up within, as consisting in the titillation of the nerves, the gratification of the appetites, the indulgence of the passions. Such thoughts are embodied in sensational literature, in songs and plays, in the comic and the tragic, in sensuous sermons and ritualistical observances. Ah, me! much of the religion of Christendom is the embodiment of "fleshly" thought! Such thoughts seek for happiness in the fleshly and the earthly.

Secondly Those which refer to personal wealth. These regard the worth of a man as consisting not in intellectual and moral excellence, but in material possessions. Such thoughts, to

* See an essay on the "Vanity and Glory of Literature," by Henry Rogers, in Edinburgh Review, Vol. II., Page 206.

a great extent, work the brains and the muscles of the men of

this age.

Thirdly Those which refer to personal greatness. These identify greatness with an ancient ancestry, often renowned for villainy, with high-sounding titles, with magnificent attire, with dazzling pageantry. Dives going in pomp to hell is their great man, not Lazarus winged by angels into Paradise.

Now such sensuous thoughts as these are mortal. They must perish. They are dying by millions every moment, and they must all die at death. At death the conviction will seize every man that happiness is not to be found in the human body, but in the holy soul: that wealth is not to be found in material possessions, but in spiritual virtues: that human greatness is not to be found anywhere but in moral conformity to Christ; that he only is great who is good, and he only is good who is "created anew unto Christ Jesus in good works." "In that very day his thoughts perish."

III. ALL MERCENARY THOUGHTS ARE MORTAL. By mercenary thoughts I mean those thoughts that are taken up with the question, "What shall I eat, what shall I drink, and wherewithal shall I be clothed?" Thoughts that are concerned entirely with man's material interest in this world, and are limited entirely to time. The worldly schemes and plans of men are all perishing and perishable. Were all the wrecked purposes of all the business men in London, for one day, fully registered, we could almost say the world itself would not contain the books. What a host of enterprises are breaking down, undertakings destroyed! The shores of memory, often black as erebus and frigid as the arctic zone, are crowded with the wrecks of worldly schemes. At death all worldly purposes fall to ruin, nevermore to be reconstructed.

CONCLUSION-We learn from this subject

First: The amazing productiveness of our thinking faculty. The thinking faculty is the distinguishing glory of man. All the other sentient tenantry of our earth have the susceptibility of receiving impressions from the external; but their impressions are fleeting, and over them they have no control. They can

neither retain or expel, weaken or strengthen one of all their countless sensations. Like hailstones in summer, they melt as they fall. But man by his thinking faculty can arrest them, hold them in his grasp, analyse their elements, trace out their relations, magnify or minify them, work them into a science, or bury them in oblivion, crush them in embryo, or nurse them into glorious deeds. All human beings have this faculty, though not in the same measure; yet all think, even the weakest, and that by necessity of nature. This faculty is always busy, and amazingly productive. True, the productions differ widely: those of some as compared with others are as grass seed to the acorn, as the egg of a wren to that of the queen of birds. Men's thoughts are more in number than the hairs of their heads. Wave does not succeed wave more rapidly than thought succeeds thought. We might well tremble in awe in the presence of this wonderful facultyit is that in truth which creates for us the world we live in. We learn

Secondly: The urgent necessity for rightly controlling our thinking faculty. "There is nothing good or bad," says Shakespeare, "but thinking makes it so." When the thinking faculty runs riot, and is uncontrolled by an enlightened conscience, it fills the mind with the vile and the perishing. And what a calamity this to any man! The world in which a man lives, is in truth the thoughts that fill him. If these thoughts perish, his world falls to pieces, it vanishes as a vision of the night, and he is homeless and desolate, a vagrant and a pauper in the universe. And if his thinking faculty is not rightly controlled, perish they must. All his ideas, however gorgeous in aspect and melodious in sound, grand and musical as the productions even of Milton himself, must perish. Let us, therefore, control this faculty of amazing productiveness. Let not sensuality, selfishness, ambition, or a lawless imagination stimulate and sway it, but let right be its master, let conscience rule it, and then it will produce thoughts that will never perish. "Thoughts," to use the language of Wordsworth, "whose very sweetness yieldeth proof that they were born for immortality."

LONDON.

DAVID THOMAS, D.D.