selves; and they looked, and they saw the horrid creature gnawing his way into the very core of the sun! At last one of the company, more curious and more sceptical than the rest, suggested an examination of the instrument, and lo! a fly jammed in somewhere between the glasses. So men, and men of philosophic mind too, have fancied that they saw the monster sin in the Sun of Righteousness; but what does the discovery amount to? It is only a fly in the telescope! Shine on, thou Sun of Righteousness; thou who art the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person, shine on, brightening and beautifying and cheering all things by thy beams; let the whole earth be filled with thy glory; thy challenge, "Which of you convinceth me of sin ?" has lain before the world these eighteen hundred years, and it remains unanswered to this day, because it is unanswerable.

If, then, you want to know what manliness really is, I ask you to consider these three facts:-That virtue and manliness are etymologically identical; that God created man in his own image, after his likeness; and that Jesus Christ, in his human nature, is the all-perfect pattern of what every man, who wishes to be a man indeed, should ever aim and strive and pray to be. Man is manliest when he is most virtuous, man is manliest when he is most like God; but since virtue is a somewhat abstract term, and since God is a Spirit indescribable, incomprehensible, infinite, it simplifies the matter to say-man is manliest when he is most like Jesus Christ.

Adopting these principles, then, as the basis of our theory and practice of manliness, let us proceed to consider some of the manifestations of a truly manly character. I shall endeavour to ascend from the smaller to the greater, and therefore I shall begin with this-Manliness in our Amusements. I confess that I regard those famous games of

ancient Greece with feelings of admiration. Perhaps too much was made of them when the Greeks, in their intense nature worship, considered the swiftest racer and the most skilful wrestler as the happiest and most honourable of mortals, and worthy of a place among the gods. Still those games were manly; they favoured the expansion and full development of the human frame in all its symmetry, its beauty, its activity, and its strength. Fine, too, was the moral effect of that abstemious training; for of those competitors it could be said, "Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things." Yes, those games were manly. But where is the manliness of many of our amusements? what is there in them calculated to promote either physical, mental, or moral development? I should only insult you if I asked you seriously, what is there of a manly character in being either a party in a prize-fight or a witness of it? I have heard horse-racing described as a manly sport; but I want to know wherein its manliness consists. Not surely in taking your place upon the grand stand, and watching the splendid action of the splendid animals upon the course? Nor can you say that there is anything distinctively manly in the process of betting and book-making; for these arts, it is well known, are neither more nor less than transactions which take place between blackguards on the one hand and blockheads on the other! I can understand the manliness of a yacht race, of a rowing match; here there is something for men to do, something that exercises both mind and body; but on the turf-I do not see that there is any opportunity for the manifestation of any one manly property; the most manly creatures there are the horses, and next to them the jockeys. Nor does it appear to me that there is anything very manly in theatrical entertainments: to sit there for two or three hours watching a performance; you comfortably recline upon soft

cushions; you have an opera-glass in your hand. Is it a tragedy? You are filled with a mawkish sentimentalism. Is it a farce? You are convulsed with laughter. Is it a melodrama? It makes a baby of you, and you laugh and cry by turns. Nothing, surely, in all this that the most enthusiastic playgoer will pronounce manly. Dancing, too, is an amusement which I think can scarcely be pronounced manly. Granted that it is very graceful, very fascinating, very pleasing-it may be all this, and yet not be manly. To see a company of male bipeds in pumps hopping and skipping and capering and whirling to the scraping of a fiddle -I think it is not a very manly spectacle; nor is it the exercise best calculated to develope the physical frame; the intellect can scarcely be much improved by it; and as to its effects upon morals (in some cases) I would rather not venture to give an opinion. Perhaps you will say that the same harsh rule applies to musical entertainments! Well, scarcely; for a musical entertainment of the right sort has an eminently humanising influence. It has the tendency to smoothe down some of our asperities, or (as we say in Lancashire, though in a somewhat different sense) to dress the knots off us; and some of us are so knotty and so gnarled that we much require an occasional dressing of this kind. Music has power to soothe us when we are irritated, to compose us when we are agitated, to animate us when we are languid, to cheer us when we are sad. It is well for our manliness that we should have such recreation as is afforded by the concert, the oratorio and the cheerful song. After a day of toil and anxiety it will greatly refresh our hearts let us have it then by all means;—

"And the night shall be fill'd with music,

And the cares that infest the day

Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away."

But let me appeal to your good sense-Is it not true, and most miserably true of many of our amusements, that they are far from manly? On the one hand, there are brutal pastimes; on the other, recreations of a silly and effeminate character; and besides these, there are many which, while neither brutal nor effeminate, are extremely demoralizing. All forms of gambling belong to this class, if, indeed, gam bling be not a far too terribly earnest thing to be catalogued among amusements at all. The sporting world! In truth, there is no world in which there is less sport than that which arrogates this title to itself. There is not much sport perhaps on the area of the Exchange, but there is far more there, even on the dullest day of mercantile depression-more real cheerfulness and pleasure than among the bookmakers at Newmarket and at Epsom; and if on the Exchange there be much gloom, anxiety, and despair, they are mainly traceable to the fact, that the men on 'Change have introduced into their speculations so much of the spirit of Newmarket and Epsom. Let me ask you, as men of business, what is the most rational account of the present, I am afraid I must say, disastrous state of things? What was the cause of the panic of 1847—what the cause of the present disturbance of commercial equilibrium? Cannot both these painful events be traced in a large measure to the fact that the commercial world has so closely imitated the sporting world, and in its mad haste to be rich at any risk, adulterated the high morality of genuine commerce with the accursed immorality of the turf and the betting-room? Under these three heads, then, the brutal, the effeminate, and the demoralizing, we might classify a very great number, I am afraid, the majority of our amusements. Still there are some manly sportsfencing, wrestling, skating, curling, cricket, shooting, coursing, hunting, fishing, yachting, rowing; and there are some

splendid games, which, if they were thoroughly dissociated from the spirit of gambling, deserve to rank high amongst manly amusements. Chess is comparatively free from the infection; but the noble game of billiards has, I am afraid, become hopelessly enslaved to the betting spirit. It ought not so to be. I should rejoice to see it liberated. I do not see why it, any more than chess, should be a snare and a source of evil! The billiard balls are as innocent as the chess men or as the balls of a bagatelle board; the evil is in the betting; whenever this spirit enters, it causes, to say the least, an unhealthy excitement, which soon puts an end to the amusement derivable from the game. In fact, there is an end of sport the moment you stake a crown-piece on the results of your playing! There is, then, it must be admitted, a deficiency of manly amusements, especially in our great towns, and among those who cannot enjoy the luxury of the truly manly sports of the English country gentleman. I think it would be well if all who are interested in social science, if all philanthropic men would deliberate on this question among others, whether it is not desirable to promote, as widely as possible, the establishment of public gymnasiums and public parks, in which our young men might exercise themselves betimes in a variety of modes, calculated to develope their physical powers. And you, young men, you, Christian young men, do you take up this question; do not imagine that the consideration of it is at all inconsistent with your religious profession. When I consider the effect which manly. exercise has upon physical health, the effect which physical health has upon a man's temper, and therefore upon his happiness, upon his working power, and consequently upon his usefulness: when I consider how many men are snappish, melancholy, languid, who by means of good physical training might be amongst the most amiable, cheerful, and active of