from first to last, the great idea must be constructed out of our intuitions?-that we must lay our foundations and rear the super structure with the incontrovertible affirmations of the unsophisticated intelligence?-that we must work out the momentous demonstration with these indemonstrable principia? Must I not believe that, these apart, the possibility of such an accomplishment is not to be found?-that with the ignorement of our intuitions, the suppression or rejection of their evidence in this important investigation, our highest interests are imperilled, and theology, as a science, is at the mercy of every sceptical assailant?19 I anticipate your coinciding opinion.-I am, Rev. and dear Sir, yours very truly,

---

INQUIRER.

'STRENGTH" AND "BEAUTY,"

THE ATTRACTIONS OF GOD'S HOUSE.

THE sanctuary has attractions other than material ones. Not with the eye of architect, or artist, simply, did the Psalmist look upon the sanctuary of God when he said "Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary," (Ps. xcvi. 6.) It is not column and curve, or line and colour, that fill him with rapture. No doubt he had an eye for these. Familiar with the hills around him, and the heavens above him, with the flowers beneath his feet, and the stars over head, he could feel the might of form and the majesty of loveliness. Finely strung by nature, the power of sweet sounds could never be lost upon his ear. But stone, and wood, and form, and colour, and all the endless combinations of which they are susceptible, only veiled a strength and beauty to which his eye delighted to penetrate. And when he sang of strength and beauty in the sanctuary, he had more than walls and pillars and tasteful adornments before his mind. The spiritual was to him as real as the material; the divine, as the human; the infinite, as the finite. The presence of God in that sanctuary was to him the prime fact; and the strength, and beauty, and all the claims upon the creature-heart for praise and grateful offering, were the resultants therefrom. The living, conscious, all-present, almighty and beautiful God, is the ceaseless burden of his song. Multiform, but perfectly accordant harmonies are made to gather round the fact that the great God has come near to little man to make

19 Assuredly. And many thanks to Inquirer for his admirable, and admirably suggestive, article.-EDITOR.

him also great, to give him strength and beauty, and fit him for taking a part in the universal song of praise. Hence, while his eye runs a glowing circle of thought, while his ear listens to the rejoicing heavens, and the glad earth, and the roaring sea, and the exultant trees of the wood, he rests with peculiar pleasure on the sanctuary wherein strength and beauty are revealed to man. . The sanctuary has thus peculiar attractions for this jubilant soul. The material was indeed something; though it was not everything. The creature company was something, too; though it was not everything. The sunny memories that gathered round that sanctuary were very precious; though they did not exhaust the attractions this man felt. He felt, as men should ever feel, that while physical strength and beauty around them may aid them in their song and service, while intellectual and moral strength and beauty in our fellow-worshippers may wake our enthusiasm and kindle our hearts into a holy flame, while the memory of thought directed, of love unsealed, of peace imparted, and of heaven brought near to man, may quicken into more earnest and noble life;-the one supreme attraction must be, that in the sanctuary may be found the God, who is strong to save and beautiful to attract.

Strength is a permanent and pressing want of our souls. The thing is a matter of consciousness. We know and feel that we are weak. It is the result at once of our creaturehood, our character, and our circumstances. As creatures, strength will be an endless want with us. We shall never cease to need it. We shall never grow independent of the arm strong to uphold. We shall never be able to uphold our own goings, or direct our own steps. And, hence, it will be an unspeakable blessing if, as we come into the sanctuary,-if, as we withdraw from the hum and hurry of every-day life, we get to feel more deeply how weak we are, and also how great is the strength on which we may rely. O it would be startling could any one inform us that the divine arm had become paralyzed,—that there is no one in the universe stronger than ourselves,-that decay has fastened on deity, and that the fountain of life and strength is being dried up, that the maker of the heavens and the earth is now no more. Could we

go down to our banks, and markets, and shops, and workhouses, with an easy heart, if, as our consciousness of awful weakness deepened, we learned at the same time that the source of all strength had dried up? With what enthusiasm may we cry-strength is in his sanctuary." He who has become the sanctuary of souls has said-"Behold, I am alive for everinore."

But strength is a permanent and pressing want because of our

character. Erect and regal though the human form may be, there is, notwithstanding, weakness and impurity in the heart. The sceptre is in a trembling hand. Sin has unnerved the soul, has dethroned it indeed, has given the body the supremacy, and brought every kinglike faculty into captivity and serfdom. Join with the consciousness of creature-weakness, the consciousness of sin, and then say if strength be not required. Is it not true that so far as propitiation, and reparation, and recuperation are concerned, we are without strength; and from what source then will it come? From the senate? No. From the studio? No. From the deep arcana of scientific thought? No. Does philosophy hold it in her hand? docs poesy shake it from her wing? will the footsteps of heroism guide you to it? Can the girdle of mere human thought compass the mighty want we feel? Can human deed heal "the broken law, and give it back its glory"? Can it hush the tumults we have raised? Can it stanch the deep wounds that bleed within us?-can it minister to a mind diseased? -the wounds, the bruises, the putrifying sores within us, can it bind them up and restore soundness to the soul? With what a significant gasp must the whole circle of human effort cry outStrength is not in me. And blessed will it be, if, as we withdraw from all such shadows, we learn that in God's sanctuary there is remedial, restoring, perpetual strength.

But strength is a permanent and pressing want because of our circumstances. We dwell among men of unclean lips. The social atmosphere is tainted, charged indeed, very often with weakness and death to souls. Words are charged with poison, and winged with death. Deeds are drawing thoughtless myriads on to ruin. Example flings its cords, and habit weaves its cables, and evil in a thousand forms only dazzles to destroy. O were it not for the sanctuary and the strength that is in it, evil would make short work of our world. And hence, the working man in contact all week with souls that could almost see the Christ crucified again, feels that earth would be parched, and dark, and dismal, were it not that in God's sanctuary there is strength. And the man of business too, fretted and fretful by the incessant friction of the world, would yield the struggle, were it not that in the sanctuary there is strength. And our mothers and sisters and wives, with a thousand things to vex and wear them out, would grow sick and weak and fall asleep in soul, were it not that in the sanctuary there is strength. Yes, our circumstances make strength a pressing want. Why, you cannot betake yourself for rest to the side of the great sea, or the mountain's breast, or the rural village, without feeling that there too, as well as in the heart of great cities, there are elements that weaken; and

this should deepen the delight with which, as we come from the sanctuary, we feel that strength is there.

Coming, then, into the house of God, trembling all over with weakness, with fainting at the heart and agony in every moral nerve, what is the strength we need? We want strength for life, for labour, for death, and for the everlasting future. We want truth, we want rectitude, we want love. How shall we get them?

I can imagine the Psalmist's eye sending its vision away down through the material sanctuary, and resting with unutterable rapture on Him who has become the strength of souls-who has become the place of shelter and of song, who has become the sanctuary where the exposed may hide and the earnest serve. It is by turning attention to him we find the strength we need. We need strength for salvation. We need a strong One to snatch us from perdition. He, then, is our strength. His gospel is the power of God. We need strength, too, for life,-for earnest holy life. Well, he too can give us that. Strengthening us with all might in the inner man, he can give us the victory. We need strength for useful labour. In him we may also find that. It was because they had been with Jesus, that with great power did the apostles witness concerning him. And we want strength too, with which to die. Will he give us that? "I can do all things," says Paul, "through Christ which strengtheneth me." He could die. Now, bringing all aspects of our weakness and wants to Jesus, we find just what the Lord told the prophet to say that he is "for a sanctuary," in which there is indeed strength. And it is just in proportion as the strength that is in him for us is exhibited and enjoyed, that any earthly and material sanctuary will have attractions for us. If they take away our Lord, and bury him among the flowers of human fancy, or grim spectres of empty speculation, or lifeless forms of endless routine, what is there in music, what is there in painting, what is there in oratory, what is there in dumb show, to make us strong to live, strong to die, strong to go up to the world's judgement day?

"Beauty" is a permanent and mighty power upon our souls. It is a felt charm. It is, moreover, a deep want of our being. Our creaturehood, our character, and our circumstances, cry for beauty as for strength. The junction of ideas is delightful. The sanctuary does not simply symbolise strength,-bare, awful strength. There is beauty coupled with it. The beauty is divine, and, therefore, perfect beauty. It is beauty which, as it dips to earth, softens into love, and mercy, and compassion, on

1

which a shrinking world can gaze, which a sinful man can feel, and which, as it rises towards heaven, kindles into glory amid which an angel veils his face. It is a beauty which, in the sanctuary, could make the posts of the door move, and yet amid which a man could have his sinful lips touched, and his iniquity taken away, and his sin purged.

Our creaturehood, we have said, cries for this beauty. It would be terrible to be doomed to call some repulsive being, Creator, God, Father, and Friend. It would be saddening beyond measure to have to trace our origin and parentage, to render our homage, and yield up the secret recesses of our heart, to a devil. I rejoice that while I am a creature I can see beauty in the Being who gave me existence, whose hand shall sustain me on through the years, and to whom worship alone is due. And ever as I come into the sanctuary, and find that God has come before me, it will be a joy to my soul to know that here there is beanty as well as strength.

But our character especially calls for this beauty. Sin has made us conscious of an awful shrinking of the heart. The name of God has been a terror to us. Our guilty fears have

robed him in darkest colours. His throne has been amid thunder-clouds, and lightnings have been the glancings of his eye. A holy place, a holy person, have filled us with a sense of shame and trembling. Now, this beauty comes to captivate the heart, to enchain its affections, to woo it, to win it, to ween it away from all impure thought and feeling. It comes to beget love, kindle admiration, and give the heart an endless pleasure in its presence. It is beauty with compassion in its eye and pardons in its hand. It is thus a beauty which, as it flings its spell upon the heart, secures the mastery of the whole man. It annihilates the shrinking we have felt. It gives a charm to every holy place and person, and we feel that there is no being in the universe so attractive as that Jesus who is the sanctuary of our souls. The first in beauty, he is the first in might. And it is because his name, and his beauty, and his might, and his love, are presented to us, that any earthly sanctuary has attractions for us. It is thus not the throbbings of a little human brain, or the tracings of an earthly finger, or the little human centres of associated effort and aspiration, but the outrayings of divine beauty, that make the earthly sanctuary attractive to us. It is because there we are accustomed to learn, that for our imperishable souls there have been revealed divine strength and beauty-strength and beauty which bring salvation to every one of us.

But our ci cumstances also cry for this beauty. There must be something higher, purer, lovelier, than anything we find within us, or around us. The measure of the mightiest, purest spirit