large amount of evangelical truth; that is, of such truth as, till very recently, only evangelical ministers dared, or wished, to utter. The remark is no less true as applied to the opposite school, who eliminate sound doctrinal teaching from their discourses and writings, and yet invest them with a dim and hazy spiritualism not unfrequently mistaken for spirituality, by which we mean the religion which the Holy Spirit introduces into the renewed mind. Have we been misled on either side? Is the life we now lead really a life of faith in the Son of God, or is it a religion dependent on the excitements of ecclesiastical pomp and music? or is it an intellectual exercise merely, where reason is gratified but the soul starved? Or if we have fallen into neither error, do we crave for public meetings, for novelties, for the stir and bustle of anniversaries? Here, too, there is a snare and a pit in which many a Christian has lost much of his spirituality. It is a sad mistake to confound the accidents of religion with its essentials.

Personal holiness is another point. Can we not cultivate this with greater assiduity? Holiness is a word of copious meaning and of wide extent. It embraces the understanding as well as the affections, and influences both. To grow in grace, is to grow in the knowledge as well as in the love of God. Growth in holiness implies a daily increasing acquaintance with the character of the law of the Lord, as well as a daily increasing delight in his statutes. Many a Christian makes no progress in holiness because he makes none in understanding. His mind stagnates. The old ideas revolve around the old centres of thought. His insipid conversation on spiritual things betrays the fact. New views of divine truth seldom enlarge his mind. He sits in a hollow cave, and imagines the small patch of blue sky above him to be the whole horizon. His intellect is fatigued from sheer want of employment; prejudices thicken; and it is well if spiritual pride in some one or other of its thousand forms does not display itself; and the heart work of true religion be very carelessly performed.

The remedy is in more devotional habits. Cannot these be cultivated more assiduously? Can we not mark the entrance of a New Year in particular, by setting apart more time for meditation and prayer? Under meditation we include the devout, as distinguished from the critical, study of holy scripture. This is the food of meditation. For meditation requires a fixed subject, or else it is soon dissipated, and becomes desultory thought. And no subjects are to be compared with those which the text of holy scripture itself suggests. We would venture to add under this head, that the time proposed to be set apart should neither be so long as to fatigue the mind, nor to interfere with ordinary duties. And further, that the work should be vigorously performed, and the mind rebuked and called home to its task the instant it is found to wander. Somnolent meditations are worse than none. They generate a slothful habit. And then with regard to prayer,

who does not deplore his deficiencies here? His frequent wanderings of thought, and worse than these (for they may be to some extent the result of physical causes, and if so, beyond his power) the poverty of his petitions! Every thing is offered to the prayer of faith, but how little has been earnestly implored. We wander listlessly through the storehouse in which heavenly riches are displayed, and nothing meets our wishes. We have no cravings after the merchandise of God. Well might the Lord rebuke us with those words, not originally meant for rebuke, but rather for encouragement, "Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name." Nor let it be overlooked that if we would pray well, an effort must be made. Even Moses fainted, and his hands had to be staid up by the elders, when he interceded a whole day with God. Even disciples fell asleep while their Lord prayed in his last agony, though their "spirit indeed was willing." Praying work, says Matthew Henry, is hard work. Saying prayers is one thing; praying, whether from a ritual or without it, is another. "Praying in the Holy Ghost" is a gift to be sought of him who has promised to pour out the Spirit of grace and supplication. And thus we must learn to pray before we can ask aright.

There are few of us, perhaps, who will not readily admit that more circumspection might well become us for the ensuing year. And this applies not only to watchfulness with regard to ourselves, our habits, our conversation, our very thoughts; but to our intercourse with society, whether worldly or professedly religious. If we have firmness and address and conversational powers, it may be our duty to go sometimes into the society in which our principles are unknown or even despised. If Paul permits a Corinthian convert, when so minded, to sit at the festal board with idolaters, we cannot altogether approve of the embargo which forbids a Christian sometimes to accept the invitation of a worldly-minded family. Only let him first be sure of his ground. Let him have ready the answer of a good conscience to the question, Why do I accept this invitation? His example, even if it go no further than silence and quiet self-restraint, may be of the greatest use; so may his innocent cheerfulness; but so, above all, will be his fidelity, if an opportunity offer, in bearing testimony to his God and Saviour. For want of circumspection, how many such opportunities have we lost. Nay, how frequently have we returned home conscious of disgrace. We have been carried along with the stream; we have done nothing and said nothing for Christ. We have set no example; or rather, our example has been that of an accommodating, inconsistent professor. We have come back, as Augustine somewhere says of himself, "less a man than I was before I was in the society of men.' This circumspection is scarcely less necessary in our christian intercourse. How frivolous, how desultory, how utterly unworthy of the gospel we profess, are too many of the evenings spent in christian families! How little

pains are taken to redeem the time, to introduce high and sacred subjects, to make the conversation profitable! How much is there of merely religious gossiping, even if this do not degenerate still lower into foolish contrasts or idle comparisons between different preachers, or absent friends and brethren, their various gifts or perhaps infirmities! And how far is all this removed from those "idle words" for which an account is to be rendered at the judgment seat? Here is a wide field on which many of us may bring our christian influence to bear; and if our efforts should be blessed, the consequences may be such as only eternity can unfold.

More love to God, expressing itself not only in the closet, but openly in more love to man, in greater zeal for the honour of Christ, and in zealous efforts for the extension of his kingdom upon earth,-this, again, is earnestly to be desired as we enter upon another year. We cannot-and far be it from us, if we could,— but, for ourselves, we cannot restrain the hope and expectation of a brighter day soon about to dawn upon the church of Christ. If our hopes be well founded, the symptoms of the approaching blessing will distinctly show themselves. The voice of controversy within the precincts of the church will be hushed. Ephraim will not envy Judah, Judah will not vex Ephraim. However dark abroad, the skies will be serene where the families of Christ abide. They at least will have light in all their dwellings, the light of peace and of the Spirit of God. There will be, too, such a zeal for the salvation of sinners as the church has never experienced since her apostolic days. It will show itself in larger gifts to those religious institutions which have most at heart the eternal welfare of man, and which seek his welfare by proposing as his only remedy the salvation that is in Christ Jesus. Prayer will be multiplied, privately and in public, for the gift of the Holy Spirit to our beloved church, our sovereign, and her subjects; for Papists and Mahomedans; for heathen tribes who sit in darkness and the shadow of death; and for God's antient people, the harbingers of mercy to the rest of the world when the "times of the Gentiles" shall come in.

Should such a spirit of holy zeal, of unity and godly love, be poured upon the church, who can tell with what blessings the coming year may be fraught to a distracted world. And if not, if the expectation should be premature, still how blessed the results to those who shall thus gird up the loins of their mind and address themselves, in the strength of the Great Captain of their salvation, to the duties of another year. If life be theirs, it must needs be a year fraught with blessings to their souls; if death should come, it will be no surprise. All things are theirs ; life or death, things present or things to come, for they are Christ's. But sooner or later they will reach the prize of their high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Years revolve, and the

world itself moves on in obedience to his will, and ultimately to promote his glory; and in that glory the humblest of his followers will have their share. And so the travail of the Redeemer's soul shall be satisfied, and his intercession, when he cried, "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory," shall have its blest accomplishment. Even so.

Amen.

THE NEBULAR THEORY: ARAGO, ON POPULAR ASTRONOMY.

Popular Astronomy. By François Arago. Translated by Admiral W. H. Smyth, and Robert Grant, Esq. 2 Vols. 8vo. London: Longman and Co. 1859.

It has never been our practice, nor is it our intention, to notice works of science, simply as such. Had Arago's astronomy been intended only, or chiefly, for scientific readers, we should have left to them the task of admiring its truths or refuting its errors. But the prefaces of the author and the translators declare the object to have been of another kind. The declared design was to furnish "an exposition of the entire superstructure of astronomical science in a form adapted to the comprehension of persons who are debarred by their pursuits in life from acquiring a knowledge of its sublime truths by the stricter process of symbolical reasoning." It is obvious that such a work is intended for those who must receive its dicta without dispute or question; and who, if it contain errors, are unable to refute them. And if, in such a work, an attempt be made to perpetuate the baseless dream which all later scientific discoveries have tended to dispel, but upon which nearly every modern system of infidelity has been founded, it is the duty of the christian watchman to raise the note of warning. Such an attempt is here made; and made, too, in a manner most calculated to have weight; that is, without any appearance of controversy, or the least indication of the theological results to which the reception of its principles must lead.

With any other portion of M. Arago's work besides Books XI. and XII., forming some fifty pages in the middle of the first volume, we have little or no ground of quarrel. But the popularity of his style, and the clearness with which he writes, render only the more dangerous his covert attack upon the Christian faith. By the aid of the so-called " Nebular Theory," unnumbered assaults have been made upon the Old Testament; and we were

assured, a quarter of a century ago, that it would soon be exploded altogether. Nor has the struggle for truth been so easy as to permit of the more advanced discoveries, which have thrown infidelity into the shade, being wholly ignored. Too many wounds were received in that conflict to allow of its results being disregarded, or cast, for the sceptic's convenience, into the regions of forgetfulness. Feeling himself impregnable while standing upon that theory for his basis, the "Inductive Philosopher" very confidently asserted "that there never had been such a thing as creation, in the generally received sense of the term ;" and transferred us from the dominion of Jehovah to that of some unintelligent and inexorable "law," or of some oriental boodha, who, having called the principles of nature into existence, and set them a-going, retired into quiescence for ever. That "nebular theory" it has been the unvarying tendency of all later astronomical discoveries to dissipate; one after another, men of science, who once received and built upon it, have given it up as untenable, until at length it was scarcely maintained by any one of them. And yet in the work before us the mere surmises upon which it was founded have been ranked among established facts; as though nothing had occurred to invalidate them, and show the whole system to be visionary.

In order, however, to place the merits of the question clearly before our readers, and present the less scientific among them with better insight into the accordance of astronomical truth with truth revealed, we will now give a brief outline of the progress of nebular discovery, compiled partly from M. Arago, but chiefly from other sources.

From the earliest ages, the milky-way, with its deep background of varying light, attracted the attention of mankind; and numberless speculations as to the nature and character of that light have from time to time been indulged. The more widelyprevalent opinion among the best disciplined and most rational speculations in ancient times, appears to have been, that the radiance, which thus at once dazzled and baffled the mind, resulted from the commingling of the beams of those luminous bodies, whose aggregation was more close within the bounds of that mystic ring than in any other quarter of the heavens. The comparatively rude and inefficient telescopes of early astronomers appeared from age to age to corroborate this opinion with their discoveries; but yet, in the progress of improvement, engendered a lurking suspicion that there might be something more, a sort of spectral light of the unobserved-that undiscerned stars mingled their rays with the beams of those which the eye could distinctly see, or that there existed nebulosities, luminous clouds or tracts of vapour, having light in themselves, independent of any light which could possibly be drawn from adjacent stellar bodies.

The group of the Pleiades, lying a little on the outside of the