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shifting sand, not the wet and heavy clay. It is true that the sand and the clay, when disintegrated from the rock by the chemical and mechanical agencies of nature, and mixed in due proportion, constitute the basic soil of all vegetation. But something more is needed for luxuriant growth. It is the rich, black vegetable mould, the accumulation of centuries, and even of ages, in which the plant and the fruit-tree can take root, and produce abundantly. This mould consists of decomposed organic substances. When the stony structure of the coral reef has risen from the ocean, minute vegetable organisms first appear on its surface. These minute denizens of the vegetable kingdom decay perhaps in countless generations, till a thin covering is formed capable of receiving larger seeds, conveyed to the rock by various methods. These, in their turn, give place to higher and yet higher organisms, till, from the gradual increase of decayed vegetable matter, a depth of earth is produced sufficient to support the graceful palm, which forms one of those feathery circlets which appear to float like garlands on the placid surface of the tropical ocean.

As to the question, Whence the first soil? it may be answered by the following quotation from an article in the Quarterly Review of 1829:"When the surface of a rock becomes first exposed to the atmosphere, it is at once attacked by agents which operate mechanically and chemically. Light calls into activity the latent heat; the pores become by that means sufficiently enlarged to admit particles of moisture, which gradually abrade the surface, and produce inequalities; upon these inequalities the seeds of lichens are deposited by the atmosphere. These forerunners of vegetation take root, and the fibres by which some sorts of these diminutive plants adhere to the rock conceal a vegetable acid peculiarly adapted to corrode the substance with which it comes in contact, and increase the inequalities which heat and moisture had already formed."

A recent work by an American lady (Mary G. Ware), entitled "Thoughts in my Garden," contains some interesting remarks on the same point:—

"Vegetable growth and decay seem to have been the means whereby the Creator has produced fertility over the whole earth. A little moisture on the barren surface of a rock causes it to become clothed with lichens, one of the lower forms of vegetable growth. After a while these decay, and leave particles of soil upon the rock, sufficient to sustain the life of mosses, and these, passing away in their turn, leave a little deeper coat of decayed vegetable substance, which suffices to support some small flower-bearing plant. Years roll on in this way, till enough of soil has been eliminated by successive plants, acting upon the decaying rock, and decaying in their turn, for a stately tree to find abundant nourishment where once there was nothing but hard bare stone. This process goes on slowly in our climate, too slowly for a great result to be observed by any one man; but in tropical climates a very few years suffice to change barrenness into fertility,

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whenever water, moistening mineral substances, causes the minute seeds floating in the atmosphere to cling to them; and they are afterwards stimulated into growth by heat and light. Desert sands, reefs of coral, fields of lava, are transformed by these agents into fertile fields and stately forests. Geologists are led to believe, by their investigations of the earth's strata, that all vegetative soil was produced in this way, by the gradual decay of mineral and vegetable substances. The plant devours the rock, and the animal devours the plant. Thus the inorganic substances of the earth become organised, and fit for the support of the material life of man."

What is there analogous to this process in the formation of the ground of our minds?

Sand, we are taught, corresponds to natural truth, or truth in its lowest manifestation, existing in the memory alone, having no cohesion, and little adaptation to the higher uses of life; and clay, to natural goodness, or such goodness as is manifested in mere natural kindliness of disposition. Both are unproductive. Vast regions of sand, accumulations of scientific truth, may exist in the memory; but unless bound together by some suitable principle of goodness, they leave the mind barren and desolate. Like the vast moving columns of sand which overwhelm the caravan in the Sahara desert, knowledge, moved by the gusts and hurricanes of passion, may suffocate and bury under it the remains of spiritual life. Natural good also, to which clay corresponds, when uninformed and undirected by truth, is often as mischievous in its effects as truth alone. How many evils are attributable to the mistaken indulgence of parents? How many good intentions are profitless, from the want of knowledge how to direct them? It is only when the two are combined in some degree that living vital truths, represented by seeds, can be inserted and be multiplied. The third requisite for luxuriant growth, represented by the vegetable mould, is gradually formed as we receive and cherish the least of all seeds, till their remains form a soil in depth sufficient for the support of principles of a higher order, as circles and cycles of growth and decay have increased the faculty of producing. When once organic life is introduced into any previously barren spot, there are various means by which the Author of Nature carries it on and exalts it.

In the Essay already mentioned, it is asserted that one of the most important functions of the rain is to wash the air from the impurities it continually receives from animal exhalations. These impurities, conveyed to the roots of plants, form their nourishment" to us poison, to them they are food." The carbonic acid, destructive to animal life, to them a means of growth, whilst the oxygen they give out supplies to the atmosphere a necessary element for the support of animal life. The

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lungs receive impure blood from the heart, and return it purified and vivified to the heart again. The plants perform a similar office. The vegetable kingdom may be called the lungs of the great organic body, of which the animal kingdom is the heart. As the vegetable and animal substances which have performed their use, by enabling the vital principle within to manifest itself, and to perform its appointed use, are cast off, the soil becomes enriched by their means. "Every truth which the Word contains, though in its origin Divine, comes to man clothed in appearances. By this covering it is adapted to man's apprehension. It is embodied, as it were, in something of the comparative grossness of his own conceptions and feelings. Progressive improvement in the regenerate life implies a putting off, as well as a putting on." This putting off consists in the rejection of the coverings of truth derived from our own imperfections. We are permitted in the beginning to think that God is angry and wrathful, and that we may derive merit from our own good deeds. These appearances of truth are rejected when we rise to higher state; we no longer need them, their use is past. As with the understanding, so with the will. "Every action of our lives may show us something in ourselves which requires to be removed;" some selfish motive, perhaps, or desire of approbation, alloying what appeared on the surface fair and honourable. This rejection or removal, this succession of growth and of decay, must be very gradual. The minute lichen upon the rock is almost invisible, but it is doing its appointed work. As regeneration advances, evil in ourselves becomes more apparent. In the degree that we reject it or abstain from it, we are capable of receiving, in the spiritual ground of our minds, truths of a higher order. The true and sure ground for advancement in the life of heaven, is humility-the heart-felt acknowledgment of our own evils. The more clearly we see these, the more deeply we feel our own utter worthlessness and impurity, apart from the Divine Source of life, the more perfectly can the Lord, by His life-giving spirit, eliminate from these convictions the elements which shall bless us with new life, and which shall be fruitful to eternity. The more interiorly that we perceive that nothing good and nothing honest can proceed from our own natural dispositions, but that every "good and perfect gift" cometh from Him alone, in that degree, and that only, can be formed in our minds the good ground, in which the seed shall spring up and bear fruit an hundred-fold.

E.

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BISHOP COLENSO ON THE PENTATEUCH.

To the Editor.

Rev. Sir, I have been much interested in the reviews which have appeared in the last two numbers of the Repository of the Bishop of Natal's remarkable work on the historic value of the first books of the Old Testament. In considering the work, and reading your notices of it, a few ideas have occurred to me, which, as suggesting another line of thought, may not be uninteresting or useless, if they tend to excite inquiry and elicit thought on a subject which, I am persuaded, has not received from the New Church generally the serious attention it deserves and requires.

Every New Churchman, in reading the account of the Last Judgment in the 24th chapter of Matthew-"the wars and rumours of wars," "and earthquakes in divers places"-sees in it an account, not only of the external conflicts and convulsions which disturb the surface of society on the natural plane, but the conflicts and convulsions which took place in the spiritual world, and specially in the world of spirits, on the accomplishment of the predictions by the Lord; and from thence, as an effect from its efficient cause, he sees an account of the conflicts and convulsions which are taking place, and will take place, in the minds of men on earth before there can be brought about an approach to that state of order and freedom which is to be the effect of the state of order in the whole spiritual world, and that state of freedom in the heavens and the world of spirits which it was the chief design of the Last Judgment to accomplish.

Causes precede effects; and had it pleased the Lord to make known the exact nature of the causes which were set in motion at the time of the Last Judgment, a hundred years ago, it would have had all the power of prophecy, both for the present time and times yet to come. But it did please the Lord to make known the general nature of the primary and special causes which then began to work, and to descend by the immutable gradations of His eternal order into the natural world, and to manifest themselves in the thoughts, feelings, and actions of men. And one of the mightiest and most sublime effects of the workings of these causes, was the gradual manifestation of the spirit of freedom. Showing itself at first in the blood and savagery of internecine revolutions, the wave of national freedom was set in motion, which will never rest till it has swept over the earth, and hurled down all the despotisms by its resistless power. But another manifestation of this spirit of freedom, beginning to show itself more slowly, there is reason to believe has not yet reached the full range of its influence-freedom of

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inquiry, of thought and reason, of belief. This development of mental freedom is opening out upon the present age with a celerity as astonishing as its effects are unlooked for. The independent progress of scientific discovery and induction, the cold and destructive mythicism of Strauss, the penetrative discernment and critical sagacity of Bunsen, are instances of a spirit of free analysis and induction which has before been scarcely known upon the earth. And even when this spirit has been manifested before, it has been exhibited in a few only of the mass of mankind; but now it is manifestly active in the minds of almost all individuals of any education—a fact which has caused the "Essays and Reviews," and later the work of Dr. Colenso, to be circulated and read throughout the land with so much earnestness and attention, and has enabled them to take so deep a hold upon the public mind.

A Christian, therefore, looking upon the world around with that enlarged philosophic insight which impels him to trace the workings of Divine causes in all the effects which pass before him, will see in such works as these the principle of freedom exerting itself. He will see many human errors and inconsistences, inseparable from human effort; but underneath he will note the great principle at work, and will be content. He knows that the human mind can only attain the path of truth, when once it has been educated and entangled in the mazes of error, by successive failures and successive defeats. As I have before had occasion to observe, "his Christian charity will not permit him to stand on the sun-lighted side of the cloud (the cloud of the letter) reproaching those intellectual giants who are waging Titanic warfare on the darker side, painfully striving to fight their way up to the light." He will see that their progress in the work they have set themselves to do involves the progress of truth. They are manfully endeavouring to do what every earnest thinker within the pale of an extinct theology must do, to clear away the obstructions that stand in the way of the truth. They are pulling down the pillars and supports ("Essays," p. 375.) of sophistry, fallacy, and prejudice, that held up the erections of human dogmatism which had gathered round the temple of God, and marred its eternal beauty. In this ungrateful task, for which the times to be will have to thank them, what wonder if, in the midst of the crumbling ruins they have made, their minds should be too much blinded and excited by the dust and heat of controversy" (Professor Jowett, Interpretation of Scripture, "Essays," p. 376.) to perceive that precisely at the point where they have stopped short, the fair edifice of truth begins to stretch onwards its unassailable walls, and raise its protecting arches!

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