sought at times from other departments of reading, recreation and amusement are not the objects to be sought in the reading of strictly religious books: far higher objects come before us there—even the purification of our thoughts, the lifting our affections upwards to the supreme Author of all Good, and the fastening of our hearts on Christ, the only name given under heaven whereby we can be saved; and to secure these objects a different frame of mind must be maintained from that in which we indulge when we take up a volume simply to relieve a jaded mind or to while away an idle hour. IV. If one use of the many books in the world be our own edification, another use to be made of them is the spiritual welfare of others. Although it follows as a necessary consequence that if Christian literature be available for the first of these purposes it is available also for the second, we find it very difficult to impress some minds with a due conviction of the value and importance of such instrumentality in promoting the highest interests of our fellow-men. There are many whom it is hard enough to inspire with zeal for the direct conversion of their friends and neighbours by means of circulating religious tracts; but there are more whom it is still harder to convince that spiritual benefit may be indirectly communicated to large classes of society by purifying the streams of general literature, and by promoting the issue and circulation of good books of various descriptions. Yet the former kind of zeal—zeal in circulating tracts for strictly religious ends—is supported no less by facts than by sound reasoning. A good man, Richard Knill, used to say in his own simple, emphatic, earnest style, “One tract may save a soul.” That simple saying he was wont to establish and illustrate by incidents which had occurred under his own notice; and incidents full of this evidential force, and fraught with heart-stirring influence, are accumulating every year. And as to zeal in the second direction, a conviction of the good which may be effected by the circulation and diffusion of works upon instructive and interesting subjects, imbued with a Christian tone and spirit, is deepened by a consideration of the present state of the world, with all its mental activity and inquisitiveness; the habit of reading now on the increase in all circles; and the instances frequently occurring, through the means just indicated, of the removal of prejudice, and the commenced preparation for something better in certain minds athirst for knowledge. I am perfectly sure, and my confidence is the result of long reflection and experience, that Christians have not yet paid one tithe of the attention which it deserves to this pressing claim of the present day. A great deal of money now injudiciously but benevolently frittered away with the hope of some immediate brilliant spiritual results, would, I am satisfied, be invested far more wisely, and, in the end, with a deeper