of peace, before she opens fire on us with her heavy artillery-"the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday."

What an amazing view of the Creator's condescension is thus presented to us! There is no creature so humble and lowly in spirit as the Creator and Lord of all. In His hand are all the creeping things we cannot bear to look upon. He takes the foulest corruption into His custody, and turns it to good account. He condescends to fashion creatures that seem loathsome to us-so constituted as to find their pleasure in our pain-that we may learn, from the dread of their appearance, to correct those evil conditions of life out of which they spring. It is reasonable, therefore, to fear the appearance of all malignant vermin, for they are the precursors of Nature's heavier curses.

Our

There is a continuous correspondence between the life of Nature and the life of man. inward condition is reflected in our outward circumstances and surroundings. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner was aware of slimy things within his soul

"And slimy things did crawl with legs
Over the slimy sea."

All hateful and hurtful creatures are the visible embodiments of hateful and hurtful elements of human life. The presence of wild beasts is an evidence of human savagery; the presence of foul creeping things is an evidence of human filthiness and degradation.

When man himself ceases to raven, the ravenous beasts will disappear; when he attains to purity of life no unclean vermin will molest him. When the nations walk in the light of the Sun of Righteousness, "the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as a rose." On the way of holiness there is no ground for fear; for "no lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon; it shall not be found there, but the Redeemed shall walk there." Then, as Virgil sings

Si qua manent, sceleris vestigia nostri,

Irrita, perpetuâ, solvent formidine terras."

"The doing away of whatever traces of our guilt remain, shall release the earth from fear for ever."

V.

JACK SPRATT AND HIS WIFE.

THE PERFECT LAW OF LIBERTY.

"Jack Spratt could eat no fat,

His wife could eat no lean,

And so you see, between them both,
They licked the platter clean."

There was a constitutional difference between Jack Spratt and his wife. Each liked something which the other disliked, and yet they seem to have liked each other. Their difference of taste, so far from separating them in spirit from each other, became, through mutual accommodation, the very basis of good-fellowship between them. From this, then, we may learn—

I. That tastes differ.

(1.) Taste is the language of the Constitution ; and because constitutions differ tastes must. Infinite variety distinguishes all the wondrous works of God. The liturgy of nature is new every morning." Every succeeding day is full

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of newness. Every fresh production of the earth has its own fresh, distinctive features. The harmony of creation runs through infinitudes of variation. You cannot find two blades of grass precisely similar. And no two human beings are ever constituted exactly alike. Every individual, even a Siamese twin, is separated from all the rest of mankind by various distinguishing characteristics. By birth, climate, food, education, occupation and social surroundings, the stamp of a distinctive personality is set on every human being. And since there is this endless variety of constitution, it is evident that there must be diversities of taste among individuals.

What is one man's meat may be another man's poison.

(2.) Since tastes thus differ, allowance must be made for their diversity. If Jack Spratt had not treated his wife's taste with leniency, or had Mrs. Spratt been so infatuated as to make no allowance for the leanings of her husband's taste, there must have been a bone of contention between them every time that they sat down to meat. But each made concession to the taste of the other, and the result was peace and good

economy.

But then, it may be urged, that there is such

a thing as bad taste, and that bad taste must be repressed and corrected—and that is true; only we must not set down every taste that differs from our own as necessarily bad on that account. A taste is bad in so far as it is at variance with the order of nature; and when it can be shown to be so, no allowance is to be made for it. But mere difference of taste is not to be regarded as a proof of wrongness. There may be wide differences between the tastes of the most wholesome natures.

Pernicious tastes all spring from constitutional derangements. Every vicious appetite is the perverted form of some wholesome natural appetite. The love of money is just the love of Heaven run a-muck; the love of gaudy raiment is just the love of the Beautiful run to weeds; the love of strong drink is just the love of freedom gone to the devil. So that after all— "There lives some soul of goodness in things evil,"

and if you would correct bad tastes you must assail them from within; it is useless waging war upon them from without: you must endeavour to remove the constitutional derangements from which they spring, and to lead back the soul of goodness that lives in them to the way of wholesome life.·

Yet you will find many well-meaning people,