drank less than I did, but I was so far under the bondage of it that I found that it would require an amount of self-denial which I almost doubted whether I possessed, to leave it off altogether and become a water-drinker. However, slavery to the habit was unendurable. So one day I took the decisive step, and swallowed half a tumbler of water at dinner. Very insipid it was, but in a week I began to like it; in a month all wish for anything else had disappeared, and in three months I could not bear the taste of either wine or beer. In our mess we paid for the wine which was put on the table every day at dinner, whether we drank it or not, and when my wine-bill came in at the end of every month, I think I never paid a bill with greater satisfaction. But when I had completely got the upper hand of this, as with tobacco, I took my friend into favour again, because, when good, he is a right pleasant math lad the heart of man.'

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which see to serve in them de's Soundless forashought and lavish provision for the happiners of His creatures. And as for thy foaming jug, John Barleycom, or the dasks of rare Falernian, whose generous contents we all know more or less about, they need no praise cf mine. Let us therefore use this world as not abusing it'; let us eat up to the rind what joys God sends is'; and may you, reatu before it be too late for vain regrets has tu.. wit

To catch the moment, a legy

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from the water, kept his eye always on the sea, and was devoured by an enemy creeping up to him from the land; so the young Christian, though on his guard against world, flesh, and devil, may receive injuries from an unsuspected quarter which his young plastic mind will never entirely recover from. I allude to professedly religious books, many of which are far more harmful than beneficial. I remember one that was given to me which inculcated systematic selfexamination, and which counselled the practice of devoting one's self daily to the searching out of one particular form of sin. Monday, for instance, was to be given up to watchfulness against selfishness; Tuesday, against discontent; Wednesday, against worldly conversation, and so on. The most plausible, well-intentioned, and at the same time one of the most diabolical devices ever suggested. However, I was enamoured of it, and followed it out bravely, until my heart grew harder and my mind. darker under the contemplation; and I found that I was intensifying the imperfections that already existed, and, like the self-tormenting ascetics of the early church, was becoming the very opposite to what I wished to be.

The book which I owe more to than perhaps to any other that I ever read was 'Westward Ho!' because, falling in with it at this time of dark delusion, it swept through me like a strong sea-breeze, and blew my monkish fancies to the devil, from whom they came. In that grand romance I read of two opposite sorts of men, the one trying to be good with all his might and main, according to certain approved methods and rules, which he had got by heart, and, like a weak oarsman, feeling and fingering his spiritual muscles over all day, to see if they were growing. The other, not even knowing whether he is good or not, but just doing the right thing without thinking about it, as simply as a little child, because the spirit of God was in him.' I discovered the great gulf fixed between the two, and my eyes were opened.

The business of life with me at that time was to get my own soul saved, which is natural enough as an awakening anxiety, but if prolonged as an ultimate and final object of solicitude is a pursuit that may be, and very often is, coupled with the greatest cowardice, and the most intense selfishness. Worldly selfishness we call a sin, but 'spun out to eternity-celestial pru

dence.' Whereas, a man who earnestly strives 'to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God,'' need and should trouble himself no more about the safety of his soul than about the safety of his body. 'Life is too short for mean anxieties,' and anxiety about either one or the other is a mean thing compared with our duty to God and our neighbour. The engrossing duty to one's self, and anxious thought of each one how to get his own little soul saved, is not the teaching of the Bible, where, on the contrary, we learn that the fear of God, and the keeping of His commandments, is the whole duty of man; and where complete, utter self-sacrifice and abnegation is enjoined from beginning to end. Not by thinking about one's self, but by thinking, about God, can he who waits upon the Lord renew his strength. Therefore, commit your soul into His keeping, and trouble yourself no more about it, and when you wake up on 'that day' you will find that He has kept it for you.

Carlyle deals a grim blow at Methodism with its eye for ever turned on its own navel; asking itself with torturing anxiety of hope and

1 Mic. vi. 8.