will remain dormant. The mind, say some philosophers, is like a blank sheet of paper, on which you may inscribe anything. Not so; you can inscribe nothing that is not there written in rudiment; you can plant nothing that is not there in sleeping germ. All it requires is the quickening and unfolding conditions. This is what the true school has to do. The agriculturist knows those elements which are adapted to develop his grain, and he plants his grain amongst them. The school should act thus: understand the elements adapted to educate,-draw forth into vigorous growth the soul, and bring them to bear upon its sensibilities and powers. Soul education, then, is growth. Not the growth of anything imparted to it, but the growth of itself; not the growth of any of its particular faculties, but the growth of its entire self, simultaneously and symmetrically. Etymologically the word education means drawing out, and what is growth but the drawing out of our latent energies into higher forms of life. Instruction is not education. Instruction means something put into the mind, but unless what is put in helps to draw out the soul, it is rather a bane than a boon. It buries rather than fructifies. 66 II. Soul education is growth in CHRIST. "Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." These two words represent the two great elements by which alone the human soul can be educated. "Love and truth." And these as found in connection with Jesus Christ, by whom grace and truth came into the world. There must be growth in the love of Christ-the love which He had for us self-sacrificing, religious, unconquerable; and there must be growth in the knowledge of Christ. He is the truth, the truth in relation to God, the universe, and humanity. I may make two remarks here: First Christ is the ideal after which the soul is to grow. Paul, speaking of the soul's growth, says, "Speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things." He is our ideal; we are "to grow up into Him." All growth proceeds on some plan-" every seed has its own body." In every grain there is, as it were, an archetype or map of all the stages of its future growth; its dimensions, form, and foliage, are all determined. The same is true in relation to animal growth. The psalmist seems to have had this idea in relation to himself; and hence he states, "In thy book all my members were written, when as yet there was none of them as if he had said, "My physical being has been proceeding on a plan, even from its first stage of growth." This is a general truth. All the million forms of life and beauty that I see around me, are but the filling up of certain plans that existed before the universe was; they are but the tangible embodiment of ideas which the Infinite admired and loved, and "with His vital smile unfolded into being." All this is true in relation to soul-growth. Minds in all worlds go on to develop and strengthen their powers after some ideal. There are two great ideals prevalent on this earth, the worldling and the Christian. The former often associated with greed, sensuality, impurity, and superstition; the latter standing always as clear, universal, and beneficent as the sun: it is the light of men. Secondly: Christ's character is the element in which alone the soul can grow. His "grace" and his "knowledge" furnish the only atmosphere in which the human soul can healthfully live, thrive, and grow. The soul that does not live in His "grace" has an atmosphere too cloudy to enable it to see things as they really are too stagnant to inspire its energies with a vital breeze. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; and he who knows not God, knows not His universe. Selfishness is a lens that reduces to the smallest speck the truly great, and magnifies to immense dimension the puerilities of existence. It throws all in the moral domain into false shapes and fictitious proportions, and tinges all with hues untrue to fact. The man who looks at truth through a selfish heart, is like the man in some dreary wilderness, with the mists of the mountains hanging over him, whilst looking out upon nature. His horizon is contracted and clouded; the azure roof above, and the meads and the mountains around, are shut out from him by the shadows of the wilderness, and the haze of the atmosphere. And even the few things which fall under his eye are but dimly perceived. They appear not in the just proportions of nature, nor in the blush of beauteous life. On the contrary, the man who looks at truth through the other moral medium-the "grace and knowledge of Christ” —is like the man who on some cloudless day looks forth on nature from some Alpine height. The horizon is vast, and all things stand out in just proportions, and form one magnificent landscape to entrance the soul. CONCLUSION.-It will be seen from this that all true education must be essentially religious. You may instruct man in the art of reading and writing, and in the elements of general knowledge, but this is not education. This may develop certain faculties, such as the imaginative, linguistic, and mathematic, but these faculties will be like the green branches which are sometimes seen springing out of a tree that has been cut down. The tree is dead, and the branches are only feeding on its rottenness. Nor can such instruction make the dishonest honest, the corrupt virtuous; it may help men to do with dexterity certain mundane business, and thus serve their temporal interest during their short stay on this earth, but it does not develop their nature, nor promote them to the destiny of true manhood. You may as well endeavour to bring out the life and beauty of the landscape without the sun, as to bring out the deepest and divinest powers of man without the idea of God, and His blessed Christ. Alas, that there should be men in England so unphilosophic and so profane as to endeavour to shut out the Bible from public schools. As for sectarian dogmas, I care not for them—the sooner they are extinct the better. But the biography of Christ, the heart of the Bible, I hold that to be everything to human souls. Shall the name of Him who has created the difference between civilization and barbarism, between Christendom and Pagan lands-who has given to humanity whatever freedom and purity, noble aspirations, holy loves, it has, be excluded from the public schools of England? Nay, ought there to be a single instructor employed for our young whose antecedents fail to furnish the most conclusive evidence of his love and devotion to Him, who is "the Light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of His people Israel." Homiletic Sketches on the Book of Psalms. OUR PURPOSE.-Many learned and devout men have gone philologically through this TEHILIM, this book of Hebrew hymns, and have left us the rich results of their inquiries in volumes within the reach of every Biblical student. To do the mere verbal hermeneutics of this book, even as well as it has been done, would be to contribute nothing fresh in the way of evoking or enforcing its Divine ideas. A thorough HOMILETIC treatment it has never yet received, and to this work we here commit ourselves, determining to employ the best results of modern Biblical scholarship. OUR METHOD.-Our plan of treatment will comprise four sections:-(1.) The HISTORY of the passage. Lyric poetry, which the book is, is a delineation of living character, and the key, therefore, to unlock the meaning and reach the spirit of the words, is a knowledge of the men and circumstances that the poet sketches with his lyric pencil.(2.) ANNOTATIONS of the passage. This will include short explanatory notes on any ambiguous word, phrase, or allusion that may occur.-(3.) The ARGUMENT of the passage. A knowledge of the main drift of an author is amongst the most essential conditions for interpreting his meaning.-(4.) The HOMILETICS of the passage. This is our main work. We shall endeavour so to group the Divine ideas that have been legitimately educed, as to suggest such thoughts, and indicate such sermonizing methods, as may promote the proficiency of modern pulpit ministrations. Subject:-THE GOD OF THE WORLD AS SEEN BY THE GOODA SHEPHERD AND A HOST. "The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me In the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me In the presence of mine enemies : Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."-Psa. xxiii. HISTORY.-That David is the author of this Psalm is a fact generally accepted by all acknowledged expositors. It is like him. Its imagery reflects a part of his history; its spirit has the aroma of his genius and heart. The occasion of its composition is not known. Was it written before he entered on public life, when he kept his father's flocks in the quiet pastures around Bethlehem? In some shady wood, amid green pastures, and beside quiet waters, with the flocks around him and under his care, did the idea of God as the Great Shepherd of His people inspire him with the spirit of poetry and devotion? It is so thought by some, but the reference in the last verse to the "house of the Lord" is fatal to this idea, for the temple was not built when he had the charge of his father's flocks. It was undoubtedly written at a time when God had signally interposed on his behalf after some special season of great trial and anxiety, for he speaks of Jehovah as “restoring his soul," as bringing him back to the "paths of righteousness." What was this special season? Some say that no period of his life agrees better with the allusions in the Psalm than the death of Nabal. This event he considered a signal mercy; hence he exclaims, "Blessed be Jehovah, God of Israel," he said to Abagail, "who sent thee this day to meet me and blessed be thy advice, and blessed be thou, which hast kept me this day from coming to shed blood." (1 Sam. xxv. 32.) And on hearing of Nabal's death he exclaimed again, "Blessed be Jehovah, that hath pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal, and hath kept His servant from evil." This view, it is admitted, is sufficient to account for the imagery, for the flocks of Carmel were feeding around him, he was daily mingling with the shepherds, and the gloomy horror of the neighbouring defiles sufficiently accounts for the strong expression, "the valley of the shadow of death." Others say that it was composed on the same occasion as that of the 42nd; viz., when David had taken refuge from Absalom amongst the vast uplands which encircled the city of Mahanaim. Stopford Brooke, who takes this view, says that these images were suggested to David in the country over the Jordan. "He had crossed," he says, "the river, and ascended the slopes till he came to Mahanaim. All round about the city lay the great pastoral land of Palestine. Wide, rolling down, cut by deep gorges, where Jabbok and his brethern had cleft their paths to the Jordan; great patches of forest, where the vast herds of cattle wandered at will, made it a country of enormous parks. With Moab, |