having been previously laid in free and rational convictions of truth, they cannot be laid then; and consequently, for want of a moral and intellectual foundation on which to ground them, religious impressions made during sickness on the irreligious, must needs pass away, as stated by Mr. Ford. The fear of punishment, by taking away the free exercise of the judgment, takes away the power of laying the foundation in a rational judgment of the truth, of a rational and sincere faith, trust, and hope. Fear of punishment can no more constitute a basis for Christian character, or for believing, that is, for understanding, the whole tenor of Scripture teaching,-than it can constitute the groundwork of a philosopher or a mathematician.

W. M.

THE ATMOSPHERE, AND ITS CORRESPONDENCES.

EQUAL in importance to heat and light, equal in energy, simplicity, and purity, is the health and life sustaining AIR, in repose the atmosphere, in movement the wind. Heat is the material expression of the love of God; light is the expression of his wisdom; the air is the expression of the spiritual influx with which he nourishes and preserves the worlds. Every sublime attribute, accordingly, which God has revealed concerning his holy spirit or breath, may be found dimly imaged in the physical air surrounding us; whatever fine qualities we discover in the latter are emblems or sensible manifestations of something in its Divine prototype.

These noble truths are established partly by the philosophical consideration of the properties and uses of the air, and partly by the spon taneous utterances of language. It is from the properties and uses of material things that their symbolic meanings are always to be best learned; and when those uses are varied, as in the present instance, nothing is more instructive and delightful to contemplate than their harmonious concurrence as expositors of the spiritual thing signified. The first and noblest, and most obvious function of the air, is to support life. By it "we live, and move, and have our being." No organized existence can bear to be wholly deprived of it. Even things that are inanimate, spoil, mildew, and decay, if shut up from its free access. Health confides in the air as its most faithful friend. The weak it invigorates; the weary it refreshes. What is more grateful than to go from a close room into the pure, blowing breath of heaven, even if it be but on a barren highway? What more animating and delicious than to exchange the hot, perspiring streets for the breezes of the hills or of

the sea? In these sweet gales we have the exact image of the breath of God, on which the soul rests no less truly and completely for health, vigour, and enjoyment, than the body does upon the air, for its own wellbeing. What the one is to our animal economy, the other is to the affections and the entire spiritual nature. Hence the beautiful designation of the Lord's advent to the spiritually weary, as 'the times of refreshing,' literally, the times of the blowing of the cool wind.' (karpoì ȧvayúέews, Acts iii. 19.) The poets for their part, are never more at home than when the wind becomes their subject. Eschylus enumerates among the blessings of a highly favoured land, the gales of the winds blowing with clear sunshine.' (Eumenides 903, 904.) Pindar gives them to the islands of the blest, where shine the golden flowers.' (Olymp. ii. 72.) Shakspere's allusions are more rich than either:

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By his lov'd mansionry, that the heavens' breath

Smells wooingly here.-(Macbeth i. 6.)

So with the sweet South' of Orsino, and the incomparable lines in the Merchant of Venice,

The moon shines bright in such a night as this,

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise

As a description of the wind, there is nothing in the whole compass of poetry to rival the lines in Festus,' beginning

Air! and thou, Wind!

Which art the unseen similitude of God

The Spirit, His most meet and mightiest sign;--
The Earth, with all her steadfastness and strength,

Sustaining all, and bound about with chains

Of mountains, as is life with mercies, ranging round
With all her sister orbs the whole of Heaven,

Is not so like the unlikenable One

As Thou.

The wind is necessary even to the vitalizing of the aspects of insensate nature. Scenes dull and uninviting in its absence, become pleasant when we visit them under the inspiration of a breeze: the loveliest lose in charm if the winds be asleep, though viewed by the light of summer. For this is not merely because the zephyrs temper the too fervent heat of the sunbeams, and by their physical action on the lungs

and system generally, give buoyancy and elasticity to the limbs, and thus enlarge our capacity for enjoyment. Nature never shows so lovely when still as when in movement, and it is by the wind that all her charms of motion are produced, whether of the clouds, or the trees, or the cornfields, or the delicate stalks of the harebells. An instance to the same point is found in the exquisite pleasure with which we view the sea when trembling under the moonlight, a form of beauty which Lord Bacon elegantly cites as the parallel of the shake in music. The grandeur of the unceasing roll of the sea, though partly owing to another cause, proves in itself how mighty an ally to whatever is competent to become beautiful or sublime is this viewless and marvellous visitant. Motion embellishes nature thus largely, because it is the emblem and characteristic of life, to contemplate which, is one of the soul's highest pleasures, by reason of its own innate vitality. It loves to behold its immortality pictured in the outward world, be it ever so faintly; and if it meet no reflex in its surveys, feels defrauded and unsatisfied. The correspondence of the forms of nature with the particular elements of our spiritual being, encourages this secret love of movement so strong within the soul. For the soul not only sees in external nature, the counterparts of its elements and qualities, but reflections likewise of its activities and deeds. The swaying of the trees, the bending of the flowers, the waving of the corn, severally picture occurrences in the inner life, the one kind promoted by the wind of nature, the other by the Spirit of God.

Were it not for the atmosphere we should be strangers to the light of the sun, for the atmosphere is the vehicle of the sunbeams, transmitting and reflecting them by means of its innumerable particles. Under this admirable law, the light also has a wide diffusion given to it, such as would not otherwise exist; and this even though the body of the sun may be obscured by clouds. However overcast the skies, there is yet produced sufficient illumination by the reflecting properties of the atmosphere, to constitute day. From the same circumstance we enjoy the solar light for a long time before the sun actually rises above the horizon, and for as long a period after its setting. In the evening, when by the rotation of the earth, the sun itself is made to disappear,

* Advancement of Learning. Book 2nd. The trembling of the sea under the moonlight is best noticed in the well known passage at the beginning of the 7th Æneid.

Splendet tremulo sub lumine pontus.

Under her trembling light the ocean shines. Perhaps the next best, as to poetical merit, is that in Ovid, where Leander describes his passage across the Hellespont.-(Epist. Leander Heroni, 59-60.)^*

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beams of light are still passed into the higher regions of the air, and thence diffused downwards to the surface of the earth, so that for a while we are unconscious of the loss. In the morning, by a similar process of irradiation, the atmosphere receives and sheds abroad beams which are not yet visible. Were it not for the atmosphere, the world would likewise be incapable of receiving the sun's warmth, which is received and communicated after the same manner as the light. Orpheus, with the instinct of a great poet, finely alludes to this in his epithet of rupitvoos, fire-breathing.' (Hymn to the Air, 3.)

How sublime is the correspondence unfolded by these incomparable phenomena! But there is another splendid fact to notice first. Air, in all probability, could not have existed without the previous existence of heat, and was probably brought into being by its operation. Chemistry, if it cannot yet affirm so, allows it at the least, to be a safe and consistent doctrine. The elasticity and expansibility of the air, two of its most vital qualities, are due without doubt, to the presence of its latent caloric... Revelation, for its part, teaches that light, (which implies heat) was antecedent to the firmament.' Possessed of such powers, and originating in such a cause, the atmosphere thus again presents itself as the direct image of the spirit of the Creator. Except for the medium of that spirit, the infinite love of God, (which he himself repeatedly calls warmth and heat) would be unable to reach us. Except for the same medium we should never know anything of his wisdom and truth, which are spiritual light. For though nature may illustrate, it cannot unfold them, and natural illustrations, like the phosphorescence of certain curious plants and animals, are after all, only the unveiling of an impress originally received from the same hand. While the holy spirit is the medium or instrument of these divine gifts, it exists likewise as the result of the Divine Love. The correspondence is further illustrated in the beautiful philosophical fact that it is to the sun we are sindebted for the wind, which is produced by the sun's action upon the atmosphere, causing portions of heated air to rise, and colder portions to rush forwards and take their place. The activities of the spirit originate in like manner in the actuating influences of Infinite Love. Without, this there would be no inspiration, as without the sun there would be no breezes. The atmosphere brings daylight though the sun be invisible. le. Here we are shown that however thick may be the clouds which rise up to interpose between God and our hearts, he himself is ever shining steadily beyond them, and in his infinite benevolence transmits to us sufficient for our needs. For God never deserts any one, not even the most wicked. He is kind even to the unthankful

and the evil;' and though man, like the earth sending up its dense vapours, may shut out the direct sunbeams which descend towards him, he is still provided with a diffused light of aid and protection, brought by the all-pervading and all-penetrating Spirit. Whither,' says the psalmist, shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence?'

Again. Except for the atmosphere we should be unable to see and to hear. No sound would exist in nature if there were not an atmosphere sensible to vibrations; nor would the manifold objects of creation be justly beheld, save for the air investing them with light. The sense of smelling requires the atmosphere no less than sight and hearing, because it is the vehicle of all odours, and because it is only by inhala tion that we distinguish and enjoy them. In these functions the air reflects the indispensableness of the spirit of God to our perceiving and enjoying all those higher truths and charms which lie on the divine side of nature, art, philosophy, poetry, science, language, numbers, music. All men more or less recognize the beauties of the earthly side of these things, or of some of them; and all are more or less alive to the heavenly one, because of the native religion which exists in every soul. But to see through the natural to the spiritual aspect, so as to perceive their original intent, to discern their spiritual æsthetics, something more than this is needed. There must be a divine atmosphere received into the soul, which shall quicken its latent tastes and apti tudes, taking the scales from before its eyes, the heaviness from its ears. The thickest night cannot veil the beauty and mystery of Nature one tenth part so effectually as a low moral state. Divinest forms in vain present themselves to eyes whose mechanism communicates with no recipient soul. Those who love most, know most. To the true wor shiper Nature exhibits beauty and sublimity, where to the irreverent is barrenness and vacuity. Two men may live on the same spot, one dwelling in an Eden garden sparkling with fountains, odorous with the loveliest flowers, full of celestial sounds; while the other is in a desert, the abode of uncleanness and desolation. In proportion as a man develops beauty within, does he find it without.'*

The needfulness of the atmosphere to the existence of sound, illustrates a peculiarly fine phase of the correspondence. For sound, when its tones are agreeable and harmonious, is music, and music is the audible counterpart of whatever is lovely and perfect to the eye, being

* The Ministry of the Beautiful,' by H. J. Slack, p. 72, a book abounding in striking thoughts, pure and elevated philosophy, rich poetry, everything, in a word, that can delight the heart, and quicken the love of truth.