a suggestive book. It means a book, that to a thoughtful mind touches a great many springs of thought and feeling, pronounces the open sesame, to a great many doors in the rocky but gem-enclosing caverns of the soul; a book that sets the mind upon tracks of investigation, and calls up shadows of prophetic revelation before it, making it earnestly inquisitive; a book that like a flash of lighting in a dark summer's night reveals for the moment a whole horizon. Now such a book ordinarily affects a young mind and an old one in a very different manner. In a young mind it meets a growing, germinating power, an enthusiastic, imaginative, impressible, impulsive tendency, and carries the mind onward to results. In an old mind it stops at the threshold where you have laid it; it enters not into the activity of the being. Old men may make suggestions, but cannot so easily receive them. If, during their suggestive period, they received and acted upon good, rich, noble, powerful suggestions, under which magnificent habits of character and life were formed, then, when their own susceptibility to impressions, new impressions of thought and feeling, their germinating period, is gone, they will still be able to communicate power, to electrify others; their sowing time in the hearts and minds of others shall never be gone, if their own receiving time and growing time from others was rightly improved. Hence the Apostle John could touch the keys of revelation when he was old, could pour the light of truth divine upon the minds of others, even when he had received all that he ever would or could receive from others. Hence Dr. Payson, when dropping his mantle of mortality, could throw the mantle of his piety, and the flame of his rejoicing soul upon the watchers around him, long after he had ceased to receive any new suggestions or excitements from the things of earth, or the discipline of heaven.

Now this suggestive period seems with some to be longer, and with some shorter, just as the growing and developing

period is various with different individuals. But it seems to be a limited period with all. That is, there is a period of receptivity and growth, looking to a period of bestowment and results, of harvest and of fruits. The period of receptivity and growth stops for the most part where the period of harvests and of fruits is expected to begin, or ought to begin. Just so, there is the period of increase and of receptivity in the human life, and then the period of decline and of spending. The energies of this mortal frame are first gathered and compacted, then thrown off in preparation for the grave. First in our being is the period of Genesis, then Law, then Prophecy, then Fulfilment and Revelation of eternal results. Out of the nature of the law which we have made our own, working in us, whether good or evil, in the period of receptivity, germination, and growth, springs the prediction of the future, never mistaken, never annulled.

SIMPLICITY.

SIMPLICITY is a thing that cannot be learned. It must come either from the nature of nature, or the nature of grace; if it be copied, it ceases to be simplicity, and becomes affectation. But it is absolutely essential to the highest excellence of character; all is but varnish without it. Faith in God is child-like simplicity, parent of strength. Without it, all knowledge is vain; the light of the mere understanding, to use the strong image of the Poet Cowper, is only like a candle in a scull. With the same deep meaning, Mr. Coleridge once said that all products of the mere reflective faculties partake of death.

Child-like simplicity is clear-sighted, and sees into the soul of things; it sees also the soul of beauty in little things. Simplicity goes hand in hand with humility, and they two have great insight and great enjoyment together. Pride and self-complacency draw a veil before insight, and then the man goes about well-nigh blindfolded, yet thinking that he sees all things. Such men often overlook things, because they are so plain before them, and for the very reason of their simplicity and easiness to be understood. Men are always looking for some great thing. Tell a proud man to go into the fields and bring you home the sweetest and most beautiful flower he can find, and probably he will go with his head high up in the air, hunting after the Magnolia. He may tread upon five thousand violets by the way, and never see them, never be conscious that precisely the most beautiful and the sweetest flower is that he is trampling under foot; and when he returns, if you ask him if he saw any violets, very likely he will say no.