and repent." Perhaps nothing can be more sad to witness than a lukewarm and heartless profession of religion. A very appropriate passage, having reference to this, occurs in 2 Chron. xxix. 11, "Be not now negligent: for the Lord hath chosen you to stand before Him to serve Him," also in Jer. xlviii. 10, "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully," or, as in the margin, "negligently." A lukewarm teacher is one whose heart is not wholly given to the Lord, but who is trying to serve God and mammon, living half for Christ and half for the world. Such service is not willing service; it is heartless and insincere, and will never be accepted by Christ.

"If I love, why am I thus ?

Why this duil, this lifeless frame?
Hardly sure can they be worse,

Who have never heard His name."

God's blessing will never rest on the labours of the indolent; and well would it be were this fully understood by every teacher; "Therefore fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity and in truth" (Josh. xxiv. 14).

God delights to honour a zealous labourer in His cause, but an idle worker produces no fruit and reaps no blessing. There is a wise saying, "Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy." To a lukewarm and indolent teacher the words spoken to Jonah by his shipmates may be well applied, "What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy god; " and again the gracious utterance of the gospel, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life."

We must be diligent in our Master's service if we would be kept from being cold and lifeless; we must be active and earnest, if we would make our calling and election sure. It will readily be allowed that Sunday-school work is not always easy; but let this thought rouse the teacher to battle with the many difficulties and trying circumstances which, it is to be expected, will beset him in the prosecution of his Divinely appointed work: "The night cometh when no man can work."

"Go, labour on while it is day;

The long, dark night is hastening on : Speed, speed thy work, up from thy sloth:

It is not thus that souls are won,'

Children are quick to perceive whether they are taught for mere form's sake, or whether the heart of their teacher is filled with a desire for their salvation. If the words are without that earnestness which heartfelt sincerity and individual experience alone can impart, they will be heard as carelessly as they are uttered, and will fall on the ear of the listener like rain upon the rock, which leaves no impression behind it.

Fellow-teachers, let us seek to have all coldness and indifference melted away in the rays of the Sun of righteousness. Think of the cross of Calvary, and then say if indolence can for a moment find a place in the service of such a Master. If the responsibility of the work is considered, can lukewarmness or indolence exist for a moment? Nor must it be forgotten that a time will come when the question will be asked, "Where is the flock that was given thee? Oh, let it not be said that, instead of guiding the little ones to the Good Shepherd, any have left them to wander unguarded, uncared for, a prey to the evil spirit who walketh about seeking whom he may devour.

May God's Holy Spirit help every Sunday-school worker to put away all careless and indolent feelings while engaged in Christ's service,

"And make our lukewarm hearts to glow With lowly love and fervent will."

The sabbath labourer may have many discouragements and trials in his self-undertaken duties; but the words of the prophet Isaiah should be remembered: "They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."

"Tis not for man to trifle: life is brief, And sin is here;

Our age is but the falling of a leaf,

A dropping tear; We have no time to sport away the hours, All must be earnest in a world like ours."

A TEACHER.

LII. VESSELS OF GOLD AND CLAY.

A COMPANY of pilgrims, faint with the heat, and longing to repose under the shade of a group of palm-trees, arrived at an oasis where a fountain bubbled up amidst the sands of the desert. With eager haste the first thing they did was to run to the side of the well, and dip their vessels in the water. Now I noticed that some of the people were rich, and others poor; and accordingly I saw those who were well-to-do going with golden and silver chalices, whilst their poorer neighbours were obliged to content themselves with earthen cups. At first I was grieved to

think there should be so much difference in their drinking vessels; but when I reflected for a moment I remembered that the water was the same for all, as cool and refreshing for the poor man as for the rich.

What does this parable signify?

It teaches us two things. First: There are some who have the wine of salvation given them in a golden cup, others in an earthen vessel; but each one has the wine of salvation. Second: Jesus the Lord is not a jewelled chalice, from which only a few favoured ones may drink; no, He is a fountain, the Fountain of Living Water, from which every vessel may be filled, whether it be of clay or of silver.

LIII. UNLAWFUL PLEASURES.

"O MY father," said a boy who was suffering the punishment due to his disobedience, "if I am ever well again I will recollect your advice, and never more give way to temptation."

Wisely said, my son; and with you it is possible to be wise in time. Yet remember, there are many who only gain experience when they have lost all hope."

"But I will fly from all pleasure, to avoid every kind of temptation: thus I shall be secure."

"There you are in error again; for you are running into extremes. Distinguish

between pleasures that are lawful and those that are unlawful. Teach yourself to reject the evil, and to be grateful for the good."

Learn from this similitude: unlawful pleasure resembles a bee,-it has honey, and it has also a sting. Grasp it, take its sweets and its pain; but remember the taste of the honey will be gone in a few moments, though the sting and its poison will fester for days.

LIV. THE AQUEDUCT.

REHOм, the just and merciful king, was ill, and seemed to be drawing near to death. So he ordered his servants to send for the bishop who had discoursed to him of the truths of religion. "I would fain see him," said the monarch, "for perhaps he may be able to bring before me some truths which will dispel this gloom that enshrouds my mind."

When the bishop arrived he saluted his sovereign with respect, and asked him if he were able to appropriate to himself the words of promise which the everlasting Saviour has given to His disciples.

"Not so fully as I could wish," answered the king. "I dread most of all the break in the spiritual life that takes place at death."

"But the course of life is not broken," replied the bishop; "it only flows for a while out of our sight."

"Is it so ?" asked the king. "I have always thought of it as a stream that suddenly leaps over a precipice, and is dashed into drops of spray, before it arrives at the ground below and again flows onward as a brook."

"Think of it under another figure," said the bishop, "and thou, O king, wilt perceive that it brings the truth more clearly before the mind. Look upon yonder valley: thou seest the aqueduct running through it, raised upon a chain of arches, that brings the water from the hills of Akbera to supply the needs of this thy city. The streami is not broken by rushing down into the

valley as it were according to the course of nature; but the artificial way carries it at once to the doors of our homes. Thus it is with our spiritual life. The

Lord Jesus is the aqueduct that bears it from the hills of the world, over the dark valley, even up to the gates of the Holy City."

H. B.

RICHARD

Al

THE distinguished author of the famous "Eight Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" must ever hold a foremost position in the ranks of the religious worthies of England. though living at a time remarkable for the number of its great theological writers, Hooker stands out distinctly from the rest of his fellow-labourers by a strongly marked individuality. Personally, he was characterized by great simplicity, goodness, and Christian resignation; loving study, he yet was desirous of freedom from the controversies which were likely enough to trouble him as a result of that study. As he himself says, "God and nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness." As a writer, Hooker is without a rival in his particular line. There is a dignity, gravity, and correctness about his style which none of his religious contemporaries could approach. "So stately and graceful is the march of his periods, so various the fall of his musical cadences upon the ear, so rich in images, so condensed in sentences, so grave and noble his diction, so little is there of vulgarity in his racy idiom, of pedantry in his learned phrase, that I know not whether any later writer has more admirably displayed the capacities of our language, or produced passages more worthy of comparison with the splendid monuments of antiquity." Such is the criticism of a learned and eloquent modern writer. How gratifying is the reflection that such talents were devoted to the service of the Highest of masters!

Richard Hooker was born at Heavitree, near Exeter, about the year 1553. His parents, although holding an humble position in life, were respectable and of good repute; but, not having the

HOOKER.

requisite means to pay for the education of their son, he was placed at school at the expense of a relative. Here he displayed such aptitude for learning, and was at the same time so noticeable for his agreeable and gentle disposition, that, having been recommended to, and, after a short lapse of time, proving his worthiness of, the patronage of Bishop Jewell, he was sent to Corpus Christi College, Oxford; the generous Bishop of Salisbury promising to supply the means for his support. Hooker studied with such ardour and success at the university that, after his kind benefactor's death, he met with much patronage from other and no less influential quarters. The son of Sandys, bishop of London, and George Cranmer, a grandnephew of the great archbishop of the same name, were two of the pupils that were placed under his care to receive the benefit of his instructions. While

at Oxford, Hooker's skill in the Oriental languages secured his appointment for a time to the deputy-professorship of Hebrew; and, at length, having taken orders, he was presented to the living of Drayton Beauchamp, Bucks.

About this time the subject of our sketch was entrapped into a marriage which was the fertile source of much future misery and many trials. The manner in which this match was brought about deserves rehearsal, inasmuch as it shows the simplicity, trustfulness, and honour of the man who fell a victim to the snare. Coming from his residence in the country to preach a sermon in London, Hooker put up at an inn usually frequented by preachers. Walton tells us that he here received such kindness from the hostess, that he thought himself bound to believe all that she said, and so was persuaded into the idea that, being a man of delicate

constitution, he must require a wife to nurse him. This wife the hostess proposed to find. Hooker, free of guile or suspicion, and believing all that the woman said was true, assented to this; and thereupon she produced her own daughter, spoken of as a silly, clownish woman, and a Xantippe, but whom Hooker felt himself bound to marry according to his promise. The life he led with this person will be best understood by the account handed down to us of a visit by two of his friends to his residence in Drayton Beauchamp. On first entering, he could not be seen, but was afterwards discovered looking after some sheep in the midst of a field, with a copy of Horace in his hand. In the house itself such small entertainment as was afforded the visitors was repeatedly interrupted by Mistress Hooker requesting her husband to perform certain domestic offices which, in any other household, would have been postponed till a more befitting occasion. Hooker's friends condoled with him under his painful position. His reply was indeed such as might be expected from the man: "If saints have usually a double share in the miseries of this life, I, that am none, ought not to repine at what my wise Creator hath appointed for me, but labour-as indeed I do daily-to submit mine to His will, and possess my soul in patience and peace."

In 1585 Hooker was made Master of the Temple; and here he became involved in a controversy on Church discipline, which led him to write his "Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity." To secure the requisite leisure and peace for the performance of this task, the subject of our sketch gave up the brilliant career that lay open before him, and retired to Boscombe, in Wiltshire. In seeking to be relieved from his post of Master, Hooker thus concluded his letter to Archbishop Whitgift: "My lord, I shall never be able to finish what I have begun unless I be removed into some quiet parsonage, where I may see God's blessings spring out of my mother earth, and eat my own bread in peace and privacy-a place where I may, with

out disturbance, meditate my approaching mortality, and that great account which all flesh must give at the last day to the God of all spirits." It was at the last-named place that Hooker wrote the first four books of his great work; and, removing to Bishopsbourne, in Kent, he there concluded it. At Bishopsbourne also was it that he died. Walton's biography of Hooker thus concludes: "Bless, O Lord, bless bis brethren, the clergy of this nation, with ardent desires and effectual endeavours to attain, if not to his great learning, yet to his remarkable meekness, his godly simplicity, and his Christian moderation; for these are praiseworthy, these bring peace at the last." In these few words is given a high tribute to the estimable qualities of this great and good man; and to this testimony we will not venture to add anything.

Hooker's admirable treatise in defence of the constitution and discipline of the Church of England is marked by great learning, acute reasoning, and unusual eloquence. To the reader unaccustomed to his style, it may, perhaps, at times, appear somewhat rigid; but passages full of sublimity occur so often that this fault which, if anything, due more to the reader than to the writer, will readily be forgotten. Pope Clement VIII., in speaking of Hooker and his work, said, "This man indeed deserves the name of an author. His books will get reverence by age; for there are in them such seeds of eter nity, that they shall continue till the last fire shall devour all learning."

The following extract will give some slight idea of Hooker's literary style :

The God of Nature.

The world's first creation, and the preservation since of things created, what is it but only so far forth a manifestation by execution what the eternal law of God is concerning things natural? And as it cometh to pass in a kingdom rightly ordered, that after a law is once published it presently takes effect far and wide, all states framing themselves thereunto, even so let us think it fareth in the natural course of the world;

since the time that God did first proclaim the edicts of His law upon it, heaven and earth have hearkened unto His voice, and their labour hath been to do His will: "He made a law for the rain, He gave His decree unto the sea, that the waters should not pass His commandment." Now, if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should, as it were, through a languishing faintness, begin to stand and to rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the year blend themselves by disordered and confused mixtures, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine as children at the breasts of their mother, no longer able to yield them relief: what would become of man himself, whom these things do now all serve ? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?

Notwithstanding, with nature it cometh sometimes to pass as with art. Let Phidias have rude and obstinate stuff to carve; though his art do that it should, his work will lack that beauty which otherwise, in fitter matter, it might have had. Which

defect in the matter of things natural, they who gave themselves to the contemplation of nature amongst the heathen observed often; but the true original cause thereof, Divine malediction, laid for the sin of man upon those creatures which God had made for the use of man, this, being an article of that saving truth which God hath revealed unto His Church, was above the reach of their merely natural capacity

and understanding. But, however these swervings are now and then incident into the course of nature, nevertheless, so constantly the laws of nature are by natural agents observed that no man denieth but those things which nature worketh are wrought either always or for the most part after one and the same manner. If here it be demanded what this is which keepeth nature in obedience to her own law, we must have recourse to that higher law whereof we have already spoken; and because all other laws do thereon depend, from thence we must borrow so much as shall need for brief resolution in this point.

Forasmuch as the works of nature are no less exact than if she did both behold and study how to express some absolute shape or mirror always present before her; yea, such her dexterity and skill appeareth, that no intellectual creature in the world were able, by capacity, to do that which nature doth without capacity and knowledge, it cannot be but nature hath some Director of infinite knowledge to guide her in all her ways. Who is the Guide of nature but only the God of nature? In Him we live, move, and are. Those things which nature is said to do are by Divine art performed, using nature as an instrument; nor is there any such art or knowledge divine in nature herself working, but in the Guide of nature's work. Whereas, therefore, things natural, which are not in the number of voluntary agents (for of such only we now speak, and of no other), do necessarily observe their certain laws, that as long as they keep those forms which give them their being they cannot possibly be apt or inclinable to do otherwise than they do, seeing the kinds of their operations are both constantly and exactly framed according to the several ends for which they serve, they themselves in the meanwhile, though doing that which is fit, yet knowing neither what they do nor why, it followeth that all which they do in this sort proceedeth originally from some such Agent as knoweth, appointeth, holdeth up, and even actually frameth the same."