required to bring to the surface the elements needed to regenerate the country. The same things are true in the case of the religious ferment of which I spoke last Sunday and in the seething midst of which we live. Look boldly into it, and you will see that it tends to two things especially,-the claiming by men of their personal rights as sons of God and brothers one of another, independent of all religious systems which assert a divine right to peculiar privileges; the claiming by men of their duty to pursue after truth whithersoever it may lead them, without any limitation being fixed on the work of their intellect and conscience except that which is supplied, not from without by command of a church or a sect, but from within, by the intuition and feelings of their spirit. But he who makes these claims must expect to get into troubled water. It is a very different thing to seek after God for yourself, and to take your God upon authority. You may have a comfortable life of it, though a degrading one, with the latter; you will have a very hard life of it with the other, but it will be the ennobling life of a warrior. And if you choose the noble life, there ought to be no continued complaining. Moments of depression there must be, moments when the noise of the contest and the confusion of doubtful thoughts bring with a sense of despair a passionate cry for rest, but we must not loiter long in that sickly state. If we have chosen to be free, we must act like freemen; we must not be slaves to our fear of catastrophe, or slaves to our spiritual sloth. We must go forward into the strife, uplifting our souls to God in prayer, trusting in the promise that though the stress is hard, He is with us always. Let no man or woman think, who is still young, on whom the necessary calm of age has not fallen, that they will have a quiet life, if they are in earnest, for many years to come, either in the world without or in the world within them. Development must have its rude shocks, evolution its transient earthquakes, progress its backslidings. Accept the necessity, count the cost, make ready to take your part in the things which are coming on the earth. Be true to the vast Christian principles of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man; steadily go to war with every opinion and system which tends to limit them and to enslave men. But in fighting against systems and opinions, do not be betrayed yourselves into intolerance of men, into inability to see the good in the evil, into any statement or action which may practically deny that the men whose views you oppose are children of God and your brethren in Christ. Constantly keep your temper in the battle; guard jealously your power of looking on all sides of questions; watch over yourself that you may be above all things just to men and their opinions. Clear your minds from narrowness-the narrowness of religion, the narrowness of scepticism, the narrowness of intellectual vanity; keep yourself apart from particular sets of men and opinion. They tend to fix you down, to limit your life, to fetter your thought, to make you wise in your own conceits. See that you mix with men your brothers, with those who differ from yourselves, who oppose and contradict you. Do not ride at anchor in a safe and landlocked bay, in cultured comfort of thought, having put aside all troublesome questions of the unknown. You cannot quench the spirit within you, without making the intellect one-sided and the conscience intolerant or dull. Rather tempt the ocean paths and sail on to a boundless horizon, gaining strength from trial of your skill, wisdom from the storms of life, tenderness from its sorrows, love from assisting others, and faith in the final issue from the clear inward consciousness that you are growing up into all that is best in human nature, into all that is of Christ. Progress is the law of the world, it is the law which ought to rule our lives. See that you are an active part of the great evolution of the race. What matters after all-the catastrophes, the convulsions of heart and intellect which you must suffer, the shattered sail, the midnight watch in the hurricane, the loneliness of the midocean? It is life at least, it is more, it is moving with the movement of the world, and the world is moving in Christ. We look forward, then, with a joy which trembles at itself and with a hope which is inexhaustible for man. The proper Man is with us; the ideal Mankind walks hand in hand with the imperfect mankind. The spirit of universal freedom and truth and justice is moving in the ages. He moves the world on slowly-slowly to us ; but what are a thousand years to Him ?-and consider, He has to save not a sect, or a church, or a few favourites, but all mankind. The wider your view of Christ's salvation, the more reconciled you will be to the slowness of progress; the slower you see progress to be, the more rational becomes your hope that all are to be made perfect, even as their Father. Therefore, because the future is though mysteriousfull of divine will towards good, go forward with a cheerful countenance. God keep us faithful to Him, true to one another, and universal in spirit, in the time to come. Take these thoughts with you for the year; go down into the valley with your brothers, and work them out in life. We cannot tell our fate, but our fate matters but little if Man be going on to good. The mist sleeps over the valley beneath, but it is transparent to the eye of faith, and through it we see the river of progress Roll o'er Elysian fields its amber stream, and the notes of a great harmony fall upon our ears, sweet and world-compelling as the voice of Christ, when He said, 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.' THE PRESENTIMENTS OF YOUTH. 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.' Do any of us remember the hour, when leaving home and school and the boy's life behind us, we came to the great university with an eager heart? The first night in the antique place, how wonderfully we were stirred by it! As we looked out of our window on the still quadrangle, the moonlight poured out like water on the grave buildings and the grass, and heard the bells answering one another in the vocal air, it seemed as if the place were alive with all the dead. The thousand forms of famous men who thither came with unborn thoughts within them, which born, should move the world to passion and to power, appeared to thrill the air with their unseen presence. A strange low crying, as of souls who had died here in their enthusiasm and never seen their hope, slid by upon the wind. The silence was eloquent with those secrets which are told to hearts that listen in the hour of presentiment, secrets which, though they seem our own thoughts, are, it may be, impressions from that silent world of souls of which our intellect knows nothing but our heart so much. As we dreamed our dream, hope and fear, enthusiasm and |