encounter them, and which only perfectly illuminates our several successive steps.

To these instances of the way in which the habitual study of the written word tells upon our daily life, a few others may be added which more particularly connect themselves with the requirements of our present condition. Under this head we may consider the daily resort to the Bible as effectual for the following ends :

1. For correcting the tendencies of nature.

The human heart inclines naturally to error and sin, "and this infection of nature remains, yea, in them that are regenerate." We need then to be not only taught but reproved, not only guided but corrected. How fully this service is rendered by the Bible its patient readers know. How often do they find themselves judged before it, their reasonings convicted of folly, their motives rebuked, their purposes disallowed! Again and again, in turning to the familiar page, have they seemed to hear the voice,-"Thou knowest not what manner of spirit thou art of-Thou savourest not the things which be of God, but those that be of men-This persuasion cometh not of Him that calleth thee." This converse with the mind of Christ has in it a proper power to detect and shame the contrary tendencies of our own hearts, and to reanimate the better spirit, which was yielding to decay through our own carnal will or frailty.

2. For counteracting the influence of the world.

For nothing is there need of habitual resort to the Bible more plainly than for this. "These are in the world," said our Lord, when appealing to the Father for the disciples whom He left. Deep compassion was in those words; for He knew all the dangers which that situation implied.

It is fit that we should know them too. Some, indeed, are obvious and tangible; but others are subtle and diffused, like that which lurks in tainted air, eluding our notice while it infects our frame. Such, indeed, is the atmosphere which we are breathing here. The course of things around us, the habits of thought, the characters, the ways with which we are familiar, the whole system of the world, are not according to the kingdom of God. They tend to disorder and undermine, to damage and destroy, the principles of Christian life. A perpetual antidote is needed, and in the written word it is provided. What power does the Christian find therein to counteract the influences by which his outer life is surrounded? His moral judgment, confused by what he has seen in the world (even in the religious world), is cleared again; his failing confidence in truth and goodness revives; the cheats of the world are exposed; things appear again in their true proportions, their real character, their eternal results. This is that "going into the sanctuary of God,"

which is so beautifully represented in the 73rd Psalm as the only restorative for a mind disordered by the spectacle which the world presents, and which suffices to place again upon a rock the feet that had well-nigh slipped. This resort is always open to those who know the hurtful influence of the world in which they live; and they will count it their safety and their happiness to frequent it daily.

3. For interpreting the experience of life.

An interpreter is needed. Life is a tangled web, a perplexity, a mystery. It often seems as if our affections were the sport of accident, and our destinies the subject of causeless and perpetual change. The thoughtless mind is borne, without plan or purpose, down the stream of circumstances,-now whirled round, now swept smoothly on, now dashed helplessly against opposing rocks. Not such is the voyage of life meant to be: not such will it be where there is the pilot and the chart; but as the one must be fully trusted, so the other must be constantly used. We speak now of what is needed, not by the thoughtless and the ignorant, but by those who know in general that there is a purpose in their appointed course, and a wisdom which guides their way. Yet, even with them, this is a consciousness often suspended, a conviction easily overborne, a knowledge which is hard to apply. How apt they are to sink into a state in which events come and go, meaning nothing and teaching nothing; in which opportunities are passed unperceived, the round of necessary duty is wearily and listlessly trodden, and the heart frets against discipline which is not understood, and trials which seem to come without cause. For all this the provision is at hand. The Bible is the book of life, in more senses than one. It teems with the varied forms of human experience, and places them all under the light of heaven. Even for this reason only it is plainly meant, not as the book of occasional reference, but as the habitual companion of life. Thus used, it explains as we go the meaning of events and the purpose of opportunities, and harmonizes the changes and chances of this mortal life into a fore-ordained scheme of spiritual training, full of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. When we withdraw from the actual scenes of life to converse with the word of God, we rise to higher ground, and go up into a mountain apart. But it is an eminence from which we command the scene below. each fresh occasion we experience again something of that clearing of the mental view which a living poet has gracefully described :

"As from a mountain's top the rainy mists of the morning Roll away, and afar we behold the landscape below us

Sun illumined, with shining rivers, and cities, and hamlets;

On

So fell the mists from her mind, and she saw the world far below her

Vol. 60.-No. 278.

Dark no longer, but all illumined with love, and the pathway Which she had climbed so far lying smooth and fair in the distance." But we may also reverse our view, and say that, as the Bible is the interpreter of the experience of life, so the experience of life is the interpreter of the Bible. As circumstances arise, as feelings change, as the habits of thought and the tendencies of character are modified, as time develops new perceptions in the mind and new wants in the heart, so do our interpretations of Scripture enlarge and our personal commentaries accumulate. Responsibilities bring out the power of one passage, and sorrows that of another. Struggles with the world, conflicts with self, the shame of a fall, and the bitterness of sin, leave in clear light before our minds the words which we had scarcely noticed before. The sweet experience of mutual affection, married life, parental love, domestic happiness, add elucidations to the sacred page. A visit of death brings new discoveries; and in the darkened chamber its views of human life are recognized, and its deep consolations understood. The widowed heart finds sympathy and companionship where it had been missed in happier hours; and, in declining years and the season of decay, we read by the lights of evening things which the morning and the midday had failed to show. This wonderful and exquisite adaptation of the Book to the conditions of human life and the wants of the human heart, is best known to those who have tried it most, and is itself the strongest proof that the words are the words of God, and that He meant them to be the habitual counsellors and daily companions of individual life.

Still, we doubt not, many will revert to the thought that the perpetual going over again of that which is fully known must become a form, and partake of the nature of a superstition. Only those can think so whose condition of mind prevents them from appreciating such purposes and effects of devotional study of Scripture as have been already noted. But how many are there in that condition! How many of those whom we now hear urging that the Bible must be dealt with "like any other book," and who know that such use of any other book would be intolerable, and well-nigh impossible. Would that these men, and those that hear thom, would give due reflection to this very fact, that human hearts do find in it the companion which they need, one that associates itself intimately with all their experience, and ever wears a freshness of aspect which only an inward life can supply.

Ďoubtless it is a remarkable thing to see men engaged through the successive days of successive years of a longcontinued life with the same psalms and proverbs, the same parables and prophecies, the same histories and discourses. Yet even in the scenes of nature the same objects may be contemplated through a long life with ever-accumulating associations

and ever-growing interest. Here is one who sits in his own peculiar seat, and from the window of his home eyes the scene before him with "boundless love." Ask if he be not weary of looking continually on the same objects, in which nothing new can be discovered. He will tell you that, though he has been pleased to visit other scenes, he never feels at home but in this; and that, far from being of unvarying sameness, the life that is in nature makes it always new. The morning sun throws the lights on one side, and the shadow on the other side, of the church-tower and of the distant hills; the declining day reverses them. Now, the mists are rising in floating wreaths from the meadows; now, breadths of clear sunshine and shadows of clouds chase each other over the fields; now, the scene is swept by coarse and gloomy weather; now, it is radiant in the glory and stillness of summer. How he watches the returning seasons on the familiar trees,-the bare stems, the welcome buds, the full foliage, the sere and yellow leaf! And in what different moods has he looked upon the scene! It has associated itself with his sadness and with his joy, with his "sweet and bitter fancies." The recollections of life are in it. It speaks to him of other days and people who are gone. He sat on that hill-side in the enchantment of youthful emotion; he walked under those trees in a well-remembered hour; on that lawn his children played; at that gate he has watched their departure or welcomed their return; he has walked up that churchyard path with a breaking heart; and under those elms there are graves which, in his apprehension, have made the earth more holy.

Thus, in minds of a certain cast, the scenes of nature gather to themselves all the associations of life, harmonizing in their own perpetual changes with the changing feelings of the heart; and thus does the same field of vision become continually more full of hoarded interest and various suggestion. In a far higher sense, and in a far more general experience, it is thus with the Scriptures of God. There are still the same scenes, characters, words; but the life that is in them allies itself with our own in the manner and with the effects which have been described. It does So, that is, if our life be a life in Christ: not otherwise; for then it is not the life for which the Scripture is provided. The Spirit of Christ has prepared it for the servants of Christ. They alone are possessed of the principles of thought which open its varied treasures, and are leading the life the exigencies of which it is fitted to meet, and the experience of which it is fitted to guide. Let all who propose that life to themselves be faithful in the use of the help ordained for them. In so doing they will become fresh witnesses to the origin and purposes of the word of God. No arguments are so strong as the testimony of those who say, "Thy testimonies are my delight and my counsellors. Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage."

T. D. B.

DR. HOOK'S LIVES OF THE ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY.

Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. By Walter Farquhar Hook, D.D., Dean of Chichester. Vol. I. Anglo-Saxon period. Richard Bentley, London, 1860.

LIVES of ancient saints and worthies have lately issued from the press in unusual numbers. With few exceptions they are fabricated from well-worn materials, presenting nothing new except the arrangement and the author's own reflections. Such works are often popular, and may be useful in their day; but their day is short, and they are soon forgotten.

The dean of Chichester's volume certainly does not belong to this class. It is the well-considered work of a laborious student and a fair scholar. It aspires, and not unreasonably, to something beyond an ephemeral existence. It professes to be something more than a mere record of the lives of individuals, many of whom even the high dignity of the metropolitan throne has not retrieved from insignificance. The prelate whose life is under review is made the centre of the piece; around him we see the ecclesiastical world revolve; and thus the work now presented to the reader becomes a history of the church of England. The idea, Dr. Hook tells us, presented itself to his mind at an early period of life, and now in his old age he resumes a task which he unwillingly relinquished, and which, he modestly says, "if it fail to afford amusement and instruction to others, will at least supply him with employment in the service of a Master who is not extreme to mark what is amiss."

This method of treating his subject has some advantages. It has this at least,—that when the subject of the biography happens to be an obscure person, or one of whom little is known, it gives the author a fair opportunity to make excursions into the more inviting fields of history. In truth, of the private lives of the Anglo-Saxon prelates there is little to relate. From the arrival of Augustine to the Norman conquest is a period of about six hundred years, during which thirtyfour archbishops of Canterbury ruled the English church. The names of most of these are all that is recorded; around the rest some events of great importance cluster. Great assistance has been rendered of late years to those who would investigate this portion of our history, in the publication of the Saxon Chronicle, the Anglo-Saxon laws, the histories of Bede, of Florence of Worcester, and other reprints of early monkish I writers hitherto inaccessible and almost unknown. Of all these Dr. Hook has availed himself. His volume is an original contribution to our ecclesiastical history. We have often had