autocrat. There is the hateful Turkish Empire, occupying Constantinople, Asia Minor, the Holy Land, and Egypt-countries, all of which demand French civilization to rescue them from barbarism, and which would all afford an outlet for the excess of French population and energy. There is that immense Asia, where as yet the French influence has not nearly reached its due climax ; and Madagascar still unoccupied, which belongs of right to its ancient Gallic lords. What is the hinderance to all these conquests? What is the power which, whenever any of these territories are mentioned, either refuses to join in a warlike alliance, or obstinately resists the designs of France? It is England. Yes, it is England which stands in the way of all these glories. And the grand question of the Second Empire is, whether it is worth while to break with England in order to carry out the old Imperial policy in the Mediterranean.

There are several circumstances which indicate an eventual reply to this question in no favourable sense. Of these, the first is the rapid development of a political opposition to the Empire in the great cities of France. The return of opposition deputies in every one of the quarters of Paris indicates a discontent with the Government, among all the wealthy and thinking classes of France, so profound as not to be allayed except by immediate concession and an alteration of the constitution, or else by the diversion of some great war. The strength of the opposition will appear only when the Corps Legislatif shall meet, and then will come a crisis in the Emperor's policy. In proportion to the moderation of the opposition is the probability of continued peace; but if the body of deputies led on by M. Thiers, and strongly supported by Parisian opinion, should insist on a practical deposition of the Emperor by asserting the supremacy of Parliament and the liberty of the press, it is pretty certain that Louis Napoleon will resist, and will drag the whole nation into a war for the remodelling of the map of Europe, thus creating a whirlpool into whose mighty circles England will assuredly be drawn, unless the country shall make up its mind to abandon the world to France.

The Emperor Napoleon is not indisposed to govern for the temporal benefit of his people-always providing that it is he who governs. The empire is peace-but always providing that the French Government may have its own way. When France is satisfied, Europe is at rest. But nothing will persuade the ruler of France that it can be good for his own country that the Imperial Government should make way for constitutionalism; and, rather than concede that vital point, the Bonaparte family would doubtless plunge Europe into a universal war.

Highly satisfactory as have been some features of the domestic and foreign policy of the Emperor, there are others which inspire the deepest persuasion that the government which originated in an

act of violence and wrong is unpurged from its evil character, and may at any moment of pressure exhibit its unscrupulous qualities. The determination to use the Popedom and the priesthood as an instrument of domestic policy, irrespective of their fatal influence on society; the occupation of Rome, notwithstanding the passionate deprecation of the Italian people; the ceaseless intrigues in the Levant; and, above all, the oppression of the press at home, and the employment of those statesmen alone who are willing to connive at the destruction of political vitality in the middle classes, prove that when Louis Napoleon does a right thing, he does it, not because it is right, but because it is convenient, and because it tends to strengthen his position. To this must be attributed his peaceful attitude towards England, and his commercial policy. England, armed and resolute, has kept him on his good behaviour; but it is in the nature of things that he will grow weary of this restraint, and a change in the personnel of the British Government might suffice to tempt him to the mighty venture of carrying out a "French policy" in the Mediterranean. If England should unhappily become entangled with the Americans on the termination of the Southern war, her hour of trial would be Napoleon's opportunity. It seems inevitable that, sooner or later, the long foreseen and dreaded struggle with France must come on. The Emperor may die, but French foreign policy remains unchanged, rapacious, aggressive, and persevering. To overthrow the power of Mohammedanism in the Levant, open the road to Asia, and to take possession of Sardinia, Egypt, and Palestine, can at any time be made to appear to the French nation objects worthy of a great war. It behoves Englishmen to make up their minds during the remaining period of peace for what objects they will fight. No calamity could be greater than to drift, without knowing it, into a war for the dominion of the world, and to be surprised by a casus belli, without having made up our minds whether we will or will not surrender Gibraltar to Spain,-whether we will or will not maintain the Turkish Empire,-whether we will or will not permit the domination of France on the shores of the Levant. Meantime it is the duty of our rulers to avoid all gratuitous offence of the American Federals, to make a severe example of any shipbuilder discovered to be fitting out pirates for the South, and to use all the resources of diplomacy and argument to bring the King of Prussia into union with his people, or to help him off his throne. Our ancient alliances with the German and Austrian peoples may become of more importance to England during the next five years than that union with Louis Napoleon on which he himself reckons for impunity in every enterprise. The union with France is union with the cause of despotism, the cause of Bonapartism, the cause of Popery, the cause of Materialism all over the world-and that is no fitting permanent alliance for Great Britain. An independent and expectant atti

tude is that which becomes our dignity, our principles, and our power. Our national allies are in the North of Europe the Swedes, the Danes, the Prussians, and the Protestants of Germany; but that which would serve England better than any alliance would be a knowledge of her own mind, a definite principle of foreign policy, and a unanimous determination to overthrow the French Empire as soon as it commences the execution of its Mediterranean schemes. Lord Russell does quite right to reserve the force of England for some other occasion than the assistance of the French in advancing towards Central Europe.

AIDS TO REFLECTION.

I.

age

Those who persist in a life of ceaseless company on earth, will find themselves in a fearful solitude when they die. No other elements of misery are needed to ensure being in an agony, than for such persons to be shut up in darkness with their own thoughts, and to be cut off from the material world by the death of the body. The pressure of sense being removed, the memory and the conscience must combine to inflict perfect wretchedness. There need be no other "tormentors" than the faculties of the soul, which was "alienated from the life of God," which would not "turn at His reproof," and "through pride would not seek after Him." There is no greater temptation in this of great cities," than to fly from the solitude where alone God reveals Himself as the self-existent fire and life of the universe. Men live in gay company till they lose the sense of the difference between jest and earnest; their religion becomes a superficial externality resembling the rest of their life; and they pass through the world with the black veil in their faces, by which the "god of this world" blinds the minds of them that believe not to the reality of the invisible realms which await them beyond. The body will never make time for the soul. If the soul would be saved, it must vanquish the sloth and the appetencies of a body whose innumerable factitious demands, in sleep, food, clothing, furniture, and amusement, will otherwise absorb all thought, all time, all energy, and leave only leisure for a remorse which is the prophecy of the "many sorrows of the wrath to come.

II.

In perhaps the greater number of sermons there is no room for the vigorous exercise of the understanding. The understanding cannot act when the difficulties which occur to every mind in connection with religious statements are systematically avoided in the discourse. If the principal thing which is "understood" is, that you are not to reason on divine things, or to inquire too nicely into evidence, but are to yield assent to the doctrine of the pulpit without more ado, people may still continue to go to church, but the truth will take no hold of their minds, and therefore will not exert much practical influence on their lives. For when reason is paralysed, man becomes the slave not only of superstition, but of sense. The masses of English Protestants are every whit as afraid of inquiry in religion as the Papists; slothfulness of intellect being a disease not of the Papists only, but of mankind. It is an evil case when the earnestness and honesty of a nation in religious thought is found chiefly among its "infidels." When orthodoxy becomes five hundred years old, and dies, Scepticism" is the glorious phoenix which rises from its ashes, and buries the old bird in the sepulchre of its fathers. Every orthodoxy, however, has been a scepticism in its youth. If we must have the Pharisee, then let us have his antagonist, the Sadducee; but rather than either, let us have that Christian truth which is the glorified synthesis of both.

III.

Those who do not glorify God with the body, do not glorify Him with the spirit. All genuine thought and feeling is demonstrative. All living passion seeks for utterance and form. God's own ideas are expressed in matter an motion. When He revealed Himself in His Son, he "prepared Him a body." To refuse, therefore, to adopt the outward signs of reverence in worship-to persist in sitting at prayer, instead of kneeling or standing-only proves that the "heart is far" from that God before whose throne in heaven the elders "fal down," while they cast their crowns at His footstool. There is nothing more detestable in Popery than the irreverence of many extreme Protestants; and they deserve the sharpest rebuke for their sin, for they know better. The finite, in approaching the Infinite, ought to recognise the position of the atom in relation to the Everlasting Reality. But, indeed, "free prayer" has almost de stroyed the sense of the Infinite Majesty of God, among those who exclusively us it. The custom of uttering a prolonged and confused babble of petitions and ignobly expressed meditations instead of "common prayer," has produced a state of mind which, apparently, nothing less than God's judgment will reform If "Nonconformity" consists in being irreverent, because the Church of Eng land is decorous and devout in outward form, then let the "old religion prosper. How is it that the Dissenters are so perfectly enslaved by their evi customs, that no congregation can venture on the originality of a reverent pos ture?

IV.

The three parts of a sermon are, in general, the explanation of the text, the demonstration of its truth, and the application of its doctrine. Of these, the first usually awakens some interest, if not too long; the time occupied by the second is devoted by the generality of hearers to private meditations; and the third is most commonly hurried over, because the service must be ended; bu while it lasts it is more listened to than either of the two preceding divisions o the discourse. Does not this teach us that the application should often occup as large a space as is devoted to the demonstration; and that the demonstration should be shortened? For men do not so much dispute the essentials of re ligion, as sin against conscience and conviction; and it is the application a principles to human life in its detail which arouses the moral nature, excite the affections, and subdues the will. But to be good at application, a preache must know himself, his Bible, his fellow-creatures, and his God; and this is description of knowledge that comes only with time, sorrow, and experience.

V.

The secret of catechising young people is to tell them the right answer befor you ask them the question. Catechisms ought to be constructed in a ne fashion. The pupil ought to ask the question, and the teacher to give th answer. Then the process might be reversed. Instruction by question an answer is of first-rate value; but then it must be rationally conducted. E nihilo nihil fit. Ignorant people ought not to be expected to reply wisely o topics which have not first been made to appear interesting to them. The larg majority of Sunday-school teachers would be far better occupied at home! the improvement of their own minds. They have no faculty for making spr tual truth interesting or real to the young. Indeed, until Sunday-schools ar conducted on the principle of committing the process of teaching to those few persons who are qualified for it, and in much larger classes in consequence, w cannot anticipate much real benefit from the institution. Nothing hinders the belief and influence of religion more than the "teaching" of it by those wh have no religion; and this is true both for children and adults.

VI.

That which science has done for the intellect in relation to the material world, revelation will do for the soul when the mystery of God shall be finished. Plato invented the intelligible world to satisfy the intellect, which found no rest in the region of apparent forms. Modern science has shown that the world of ideas pervades the world of sense, and is its substratum. Thus, too, the spiritual world shall at last be revealed in the midst of human life. The New Jerusalem shall come down from God out of heaven. Body, soul, and spirit shall be one with God, and the fabulous pantheism of Europe and Asia shall be exchanged for a state in which God's living will is "done on earth as it is done in heaven."

VII.

Christianity is addressed to men's unspoken thoughts. It is a "word" from the Unseen to the unseen-to that inward spiritual existence which, as much as possible, society refuses to acknowledge. It is a draught of living water for the tongue which is burning with a spiritual thirst. It is a voice of divine comfort addressed to the sense of guilt, of want, of degradation, and of death; and those who have received it "know in themselves" that we have "not followed cunningly devised fables," but that God "has spoken to us by His Son." Is not this the reason why the external evidence has been so much neglected by Providence, that the decisive proof of the divine origin of Christianity is in its inward practical effect, and that no logical completeness of external proof could avail to afford the satisfaction which is designed for penitents alone, and which comes through the spiritual nature when it turns to the Lord?" Mary standing at the feet of Jesus requires no prolonged argument to convince her that she has found the only Saviour of the world.

SHORT NOTICES OF BOOKS.

The British Quarterly Review. July, 1863. Jackson, Walford, & Hodder. This review holds on its way with wonderful vigour. This is an excellent number. The paper on the "Moral Aspects of the American Struggle will repay the careful attention of the English "Federals." But perhaps the most remarkable article is one on recent French Literature, by one who appears to have sounded its dark depths in every direction. There are many persons to whom it is no recommendation that a literary periodical should be pervaded by an acknowledgment of the truth and authority of the sacred Scriptures. But, for all that, such literature is the salt of the life of any nation. The British Quarterly ought to find a place in every Nonconformist reading society in the kingdom. It is sad that our better writing should all be read by Churchmen with more zest than by Dissenters themselves.

Principia Hebraica; or, An Easy Introduction to the Hebrew Language: comprising, in twenty-four Tables, the Interpretation of all the Hebrew and Chaldee Words, both Primitives and Derivatives, contained in the Old Testament Scriptures. By HENRY CRAIK. Bagster & Sons. 1863.

Any man who makes the Bible interesting to us deserves our gratitude. Mr. Craik is well known for his efforts to do this, especially by stimulating to the study of the languages in which the Scriptures were originally written. When it is considered how greatly our enjoyment of an author is increased by reading him in his own tongue, it is surprising that so little desire prevails among us to deal thus with the sacred oracles. We have lately heard even a bishop tell his clergy that he could answer Colenso if he only knew, among the rest, Hebrew; and it has